I probably should have seen this coming. For the past two weeks I've been sleeping up to 10 hours a night because I'm having trouble getting up in the morning. My muscles have been aching, and I'm just not smiling as much as usual.
When I went to my cousin's home for Christmas dinner today, I spent most of the evening not talking, staring blankly off into the pile of mashed potatoes in front of me. I haven't seen some of my cousins, aunts, and uncles for over 6 months and I still didn't speak more than a sentence to most of them. I imagine I'm unpleasant to be around at the moment.
I feel like shit right now.
I recall when I started building this startup that it was easy to find treasure troves of great advice for what building a startup looks like (and doesn't look like), but I realized quickly that there wasn't much out there to help me understand what it feels like. Is what I'm feeling right now normal? Do most founders battle demons at some point in there journey? Does it tend to happen more often early on in the company's life or later?
It would make me quite the hypocrite if I complained about a lack of information about the personal side of being a founder without sharing my own experiences, so here goes:
What Founder Depression Feels Like
These feelings have been building up for about 2 weeks. Its been harder than normal to do things that aren't work, especially spending time with people that aren't my girlfriend (she's awesome, love her to death). Even my work has felt more difficult, but since I have an incessant need to be working I seem to get things done regardless of how I feel each day.
Right now everything feels slow, and I feel powerless to make things move faster. In startup-land, speed is everything and it feels like I'm treading water in molasses. Like I'm walking through a blizzard. Making things worse is the fact that all my (current and potential) customers and users are away right now, so any attempts to use to get some extra traction improve my mood would likely be in vain.
I'm playing the criticisms from some of the advisors at the startup space we're in in my head over and over, but its not a constructive exercise. It would be fine if I was learning from these criticisms, but its mostly quips about "you haven't figured out X yet!" or "you're not growing quickly enough!". I fucking know that already, thanks for point that out. Perhaps if you spent more that 15 minutes every 2 weeks getting to know what we're building you'd have something more helpful to add.
That's not a knock on those advisors as people or as strategic thinkers, they're trying to help out lots of companies and don't have much of a vested interest in us.
I think most of the bad feelings I have stem from my startup life and my struggle to be a better founder. The highs of startup life are very high, but the lows are downright awful.
So What Now?
Well here's what's not going to happen: I'm not going to quit, cut down my workload, or make excuses. I just don't have that in me, and I don't have a backup plan if things doing work out well with Steadfast. No matter how shitty I feel, I'll be in to work tomorrow bright and early.
Getting back on track is going to be tough, but there's a feeling stronger than this depression I know I can always tap into: anger. Its powerful if used in the right way, though very destructive if used indiscriminately.
I think about the people who don't believe in us, who dismissed me, who think I'm wasting my time. How can thinking about that do anything but make my blood boil? I'm channeling the energy from that frustration into traction for our startup.
Think we're too small to care about? So was Google once upon a time. Think our vision is underwhelming? That speaks volumes about your imagination, not mine. Don't think we're talented enough? Fuck you.
I feel like shit today, but this won't last. Bet against our team, you're going to feel like an idiot for a long time. This is the mindset I always go to to push through these difficult times.