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It's been years of grind. I didn't actually start the business, but I've been running it during this era. I've got 45 people full time people across 7 states, and the last three years, we've barely been making it (why is another story, suffice it to say, the next big project is not going to save you).
I was working all the time, and well before those three years.
It was a near thing, the tick tock of my life was the every other week payroll, all my closest friends work for me, and while I do have a business partner, my best friend, I'm the guy in charge and it's not the same thing. I couldn't ever really share my stress with him or anyone, and while I had a wife, for most of that time, I couldn't share my stress with her. For... mostly unrelated reasons, my marriage to her, someone I'd lived with literally my entire adult life, ended at the very start of 2025, and while I took a week off to sob, after that, I kept going.
Because I love my team, because they gave me their loyalty (we've had 3 people quit in the last 4 years, and two of the three have asked to come back) and if we were going down, I wasn't going to do it without a fight. They trusted me and I lived up to that to the best of my abilities. I know everyone says this, but there really aren't many places like this, I'm proud of it, and I fuckin sacrificed for it. There were times I couldn't afford food, but was eating the snacks at the office.... My life had fallen apart but I kept going.
I kept going when no sane person would have kept going, and kept my team going, kept our culture, didn't put the stress on anyone except for small doses placed strategically on key people who could actually do something about it.
I grew so much, I learned how to persevere, learned how to maximize my time, learned to relax efficiently. I learned to lead.
By the end of last year, I had stopped feeling emotions, things weren't really feeling real, and I was not able to work quite as much, but brain storming and writing messages to my team I could trick myself into thinking wasn't work.
Over the holidays, I realized that realistically the chances of suicide had gotten high enough, and my ability to function was diminishing rapidly that I had to make some changes to ensure the company could continue functioning without me, especially when we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I put all my time, all my evenings, everything I had into a restructure. Near the end of February, we flew in everyone in leadership and had a kick off meeting at my house. And as February came to an end, and March began, by design, I became increasingly less critical, though that had been something I had worked on for 6 months prior too, but the leadership restructure really changed thing. Everything was going exactly to plan, and the money started coming in. It happened the exact week I'd been saying it would for 3 months prior, but it still felt surreal, and the pipeline is stronger than ever, the team is functioning better than ever, there are more people in leadership, we're moving forward with more hires, closing out debt, and things are going even better than forecast.
And 5 weeks ago, as the good news was coming in, I took a step back, working about 40 hours a week but my entire life was built to work all the time, so 40 hours or so leaves.... time like I literally can't comprehend. I have no social obligations, I have no hobbies anymore.... And the fact that I have absolutely no life, that almost all my closest friends work for me, that no one understands my bizarre little life, that I don't even want money, that the people with whom I want to celebrate don't even really understand the scope of what we've overcome.... It all came crashing in.
Some of this is just delayed mourning the end of my marriage and my entire life that wasn't work... but some of this is also not knowing how to be a person who isn't navigating a crisis and pretending not to.
I don't give a shit about money at all. As long as I have enough to buy food and live where I live... I don't give a damn. I want to build things. But I'm empty, lonely at a level I've never experienced before, and have all these habits that prevent me from having fun, plus I don't even really know what fun means any more. I'm starting to climb out of my hole, and I'm refreshed enough that I am starting to work more. And I could just latch on to work again as my identity. But it's not the same now that we have money, that the pipeline is good, the leadership team has really taken accountability. It's too easy (it's not EASY, it's just easier), it doesn't feel like enough of a reason to sacrifice so much. But without the sacrifice, without the endless obsession, what does my brain have to obsess on? It has been trying to solve the loneliness, but loneliness can't be solved the way an inefficient process, a job going bad, or even employee performance issues can. I can't pace around my house (a house I've put up whiteboards and screens everywhere so I can work in any room) and map out how I'm going to solve my loneliness. I suddenly feel left behind by the entire world. Like I was designed for a job that is now complete.
Has anyone else experienced this before? I know they are out there, but I'm just curious to hear your experience.
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