You've got to be crazy

I had an issue today with my payment provider, and this is the second time it's happened in the last year. I don't want to go into the issue, but I can say we're working through it, and the impact this time is not nearly as severe as the first.

Vicissitudes by Jason deCaires Taylor

Steve Jobs said you've got to be crazy to run a technology business. In his case, he suffered not only from the vicissitudes and vagaries of business cycles, but from his own demons driven by his passion for user experience and the result they had on him mid-career when he was ousted from Apple.

In the video in the link above, he implies you get kicked in the nuts in business so many times that you have to be crazy to keep going.

It's totally true. I can't imagine the gravity he was under. Stupid things happen to me like negative feedback towards my products or these billing cycle failures. I can think of dozens of hard learning experiences in the last year. And, when the income side of the business gets screwed up, and it's outside my control, I have a tendency to overreact (greatly) at first. Therefore, I've learned to just sit still and talk to my wife about it, and I eventually ebb and flow between heating back up and cooling down. Eventually, I get pissed at myself because I realize: the reason these relatively small vicissitudes and vagaries affect me so much is because my business is still growing, still fragile, yet big enough with such a time investment that if it were blown away, I'd have to be crazy to start from scratch to try and rebuilt it again. Then a calmness finally settles over and I can feel myself glowing a little when I realize something absolutely.

I would do it again if I had to. I'm too crazy to give up. Success is ephemeral, and unless you keep chasing after it, sometimes crazily, it will never coalesce into anything with substance that can keep you sane enough to eventually do the greatest work of your life.