Balance

I’ll be honest: this is one of those subjects for which I know I have a lot to write about, but I don’t know exactly where to begin or what to even say. So here’s my stab at the biggest thing that’s been on my mind for the past four months, which have been especially energizing, thrilling and stressful, due to a combination of factors.

Where I’m coming from

My transition to adulthood was kind of late. From the time I was 17 until 2020, I spent almost four years building a community business. I deeply appreciate what I learned, but my revenue depended on appeasing thousands of people online at all hours. From 2 a.m. calls to the server crashing, if you missed a day, the world moved on from you.

I didn’t know how to delegate, and I made no friends until after I sold it, basically in college.

I’d be introduced as a founder and get social validation because I was a founder. Young and scrappy. Add the quick feedback from Twitter, seeing the numbers go up, and it was deeply addictive. It filled something I think I still have: the need to be validated by others. Without, keyword, balance.

I remember the day I broke. The numbers weren’t doing that well, and I realized what I’d built wouldn’t reach the lofty aspirations I had for it. It felt like it had all been for nothing. My product was my identity. My God, who am I? It was almost like a breakup: your vision of yourself and the future suddenly isn’t true.

I drove over to my co-founder’s apartment and just let it out. Then I blocked all social media for three or four months. I disappeared. I needed to collect my thoughts. A couple months later, I sold it for honestly way less than I should’ve. I just wanted to get rid of that thing.

A while ago I read about this thing called a trauma response to burnout. I recognized the horrible feeling of becoming incapable of doing the things you thought you could do.

For almost four years I couldn’t build anything. Nothing. Suddenly I’m not a founder, suddenly I’m not important, suddenly everything I’ve been building is just bullshit. I grew a deep resentment to what I viewed as startup culture–and still hold it. For honest reasons–once it chews you up and spits it out you see it for what it is. Exploitative.

And I couldn’t even do the one thing I thought I really enjoyed: building things. No ideas, no nothing. I just couldn’t sit down and do anything.

At this juncture

Taking a job at BigCo helped me find my way back. I eased myself into building progressively more ambitious things, architecting and planning and seeing people enjoy what I made. I found that joy again. Even in that very limited environment—I mean, be for real, it’s fucking BigCo—it was a very, very good place to rediscover it. Something about that team was incredibly special.

But then I got bored. At some point I realized, fuck, I want to do more. That took me to my juncture today.

Now I’m at a deeply intense job with a lot of people to satisfy, a lot of stakeholders, somewhat public. I’m back on Twitter. These things give me a whiff of my past, and they’re incredibly addictive and also incredibly dangerous for me, because I know what they did to me. The kind of burnout I described feels possible again.

I like to think I’ve changed, with hindsight and maturity and everything I’ve learned. I didn’t have a life then. Now I do. I have a girlfriend I love, friends I love too. A home. I have plants I love, for God’s sake.

That should change something. But I’m scared I might go back. That I’m playing with fire, and all these stressful Slack messages in the middle of the night might break me again.

So I try my best to take care of myself. It’s not easy when the stresses and pressures are just insane.

If anything helps, I think something changed after 25: I stopped believing I could do everything, every day, at all times. It’s okay to prioritize myself. I hope I’ve learned that lesson.

The irresistible nature of progress

There’s an irresistible nature to progress. To building things other people use and having them tell you they like it. To seeing things be built, to being in the room. There’s something addictive to it that I don’t even know how to describe. That’s what makes balance such a difficult question for me. I love what I’m doing, even when I recognize where it can lead.

I’ve talked about this here before. When I first moved to San Francisco, I worried about the trade-offs and the difficult decisions I was making to get here, because I knew this was coming. I worried about when I’d recognize what I had and decide it was time to choose the things that mattered more. I still worry about that. About when I’ll be able to say, no, I’ve had enough. If I’ll be able to say it at all. Or whether it’ll just become an endless treadmill and my work life ends up taking over me.

I’ve been thinking about this all week: I don’t want my identity to become tied to work again. I go to friends’ hangouts and they ask about my job, and honestly my job is so fucking interesting.

But I worry that I’m no longer multifaceted. That I’m losing the things that make me interesting, or a good friend, or a good human. I worry about the energy demands work has on me, and the demands it makes on my identity.

I know what it feels like when what I’m building becomes who I am. I don’t want to end up there again.

This keeps me up at night

I want to be present for everybody. I don’t want to be half present everywhere. Sometimes I worry that I don’t really know how to compartmentalize. I worry about how much of me work takes. It just doesn’t shut off.

I hope, I know, I trust the maturity and the lessons I’ve learned help me navigate this.

Progress is never free. There’s always a cost. I think I heard that in some TV series, probably in a really bad context. I think it was For All Mankind. When they were jailing that guy caught in Operation Paperclip who turned out to be a Nazi. Lmao.

But it’s something I try to tell myself: making your work your identity is a one-way road. Letting it take over your life will cost years off your life and hairs on your head.

So yeah, reader, hear me out. If you’re expecting some grand bow to tie this together, there isn’t one. However.

As much as the doubt hits, I do trust myself to handle this new job well. I’ve been down that dark road. I know where it leads, and I know what’s left once it spits you out.

The one thing

Worked on this shit ‘til I was a pro Ran through these streets, ran through these beats Ran through these thoughts, ran through these hearts I was in the dark ‘til I caught a spark

Take one thing away though–as much as I stress about these things, I also understand there’s a yin to this yang.

There’s no such thing as perfect balance. I don’t think anybody should be held to a standard where you calculate the numbers in your head and arrive at exactly 50%. That’s bullshit.

But there’s value in trying. In shutting down the phone and the notifications, and being present, not half present.

In knowing about multiple things, multiple domains. The greats, I like to think, become great because of balance. They create and they consume. They write, they paint, they read and they work. They don’t just work.

Balance is everything. Balance is all that matters. So yeah, hopefully this helps.