Closing A Chapter and Staying In Your Lane
Closing A Chapter
It feels weird leaving the life you love for the unknown.
About 3 months ago, I semi-moved to New York, with the idea of keeping my place in San Francisco, and spending about half the year in each place. After about 2 weeks in New York (and during a long walk with my friend Ado, who made me come to grips with the fact that I need to leave SF), I realized that I didn’t want to be half in New York; I wanted to be all the way in. New York is where I need to be at this stage of my life. For young, ambitious people who want to play life on hard mode and really put themselves to the test, there is no other place to be.
Mentally, it was really difficult to make the decision to leave SF. For the last 4 years, SF has been my home. My friends, memories, routines, apartment, and most things I care about are in SF. Saying goodbye to almost everything in my life that is good has been hard, but I know this is the right choice. I’ve loved this chapter of my life, but frankly, it is time to close it. New shores await, and for now, I must go.
When I sit and think about the right decision to make in a situation like this, I try to think about what I’ve read and consumed over the years. I’m reminded about JFK’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech; I’m not making the decision because it is easy, but because it is hard. You should do things that challenge and scare you.
This next chapter of my life will have twists and turns, but through it all, I am glad to be here. Life can be great if you decide to make it great.
Staying In Your Lane
One of the benefits of having a weird business is that if you don’t fit into a traditional category, you don’t have the ability to compare yourself to anyone. It allows you to not focus on vanity metrics, but rather on things that actually matter. While most people are running the same race, with the same strategy, selling the same services to the same customers, we are a weird outlier that no one gets, cares to get, or will get. We exist in our own little galaxy, silently trudging along.
Over the years, I’ve come to really appreciate this fact. It has allowed us to build a strong business that has solid fundamentals, while not getting distracted by what our competitors are doing, because we don’t really have competitors. The recipe from here on out is simple. Continue doing what has made us great, do more of what works, invest the money we make into things that make us more money, and never lose track of the fact that you will die if you get lazy.
I think there needs to be special emphasis on the last point. At any point, everything you’ve built can explode if you don’t ensure it doesn’t explode. Hubris will creep in and, like a cancer, slowly corrupt everything that has made you great. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve come, what you’ve built, or who you think you are. You can lose everything. Like literally everything. The solution is actively preventing it. This is a bit different for everyone, but the theme is coming to grips with the fact that hubris will show its nasty little head like Mr. Hyde. You do not have a Midas touch. You are human and are fallible. A lot of the stoic writing is particularly good about discussing these types of topics. It is important you read this before you need it. Like a rabies shot after symptoms are showing, once it’s too late, then it is too late.
As a closing note, which is somewhat related, there was a line in “Dialogues” by Seneca which particularly stuck with me (this is paraphrased from memory, so don’t quote me), it reads “some men would have reached wisdom if they didn’t believe they had already reached wisdom.” I’ll leave you with that.