Tuesdays are for reflection

Background

For a majority of this year I have been struggling with who I am, what I am doing, and why I am doing anything. I of course had/have a lot of reasons to be making money. Helping support my S/O, my family, friends, community, etc. Be able to eat, drink, and sleep in peace. Be able to go outside with my friends and have some fun in a captialist society. But,

What does it mean to actually support them?
What does it mean to be able to eat/drink/sleep in peace?
What does it mean to go outside with my friends and have some fun?
Why does it have to be a capitalist society?
Why am I asking all these questions?
Where am I going with this?

So many questions buzzed in my head every day and I would feel more and more confused about what I am doing, about who I am, and why I care about the things I do.

I can’t stop thinking I used to know what I wanted. I’m sure we’ve all been here at some point in your life and may be here now. I’m still confused and working through what it means for me.

Now

The company I was working for got acquired. GREAT! I should be happy and excited! I’m getting some money from the stock I held. Yes, I’m getting a mini payday, but I joined a year ago. I have very little equity and am getting very little.

Ok. Cool, but you get better benefits right?

Yup, but that’s not why I’m here. I never joined this job to work at a big company. I never even joined this job to work at a job. I don’t like working at a job. I don’t like following someone else’s dream. I want to create my own.

But, why?

I have been able to work on a project that I know isn’t helping the world when it’s someone else’s dream and not my own. I can’t do that when it’s my own project. I know that when I create something I want it to be helpful to others. I think that’s what’s stopping me from doing something because sometimes I think back to this phrase my friend said and I’ve heard everywhere

I can help more when I have more resources to do so

At one point in my life I truly believed that. I believed that the most outsized impact was by billionaires who were giving back as philanthropists. But, then why was the world getting worse as more money was being poured into humanitarian acts? Why was my friend who is well educated and also a pleasant person about to experience homelessness.

Okay, so money and power doesn’t mean you will help people, but it should give you more resources to help people if you choose to. Right?

Okay, so building a business around the idea of helping people should be the best idea to make this possible. Business get a lot of money/power, they make outsized impact by helping hundreds to thousands if not millions of people. So, let’s build one. Let’s build a company dedicated towards helping people. Let’s use the latest technology and help people instead of causing more problems and alienating people. Let’s make people’s jobs easier so we can make outsized use of the people who are helping others. Let’s make it so that one person can help 10 more than they could yesterday. Everyday I worked on this idea I felt excited. I kept getting validation from everyone I shared it with that this was a very noble goal. This was a good idea that people saw value in it. I found ways to build, I found people who would help and believe in me and my mission. But, the biggest hurdle was and is always sales. I hate selling. I know

I haven’t introduced myself, but I am a solutions architect. (I hate defining myself by my job, not because I hate the job, but because people should be and are much more than what they have to do to live the life they want to live. I know it sounds pretentious, but are you the job you work?) Anyways, putting that aside, I work as part of a sales team to help deliver what sales people consider a technical win or a vendor of choice. Essentially I am a sales person who works on the technical side who says their job is to help you find value, but ultimately I am incentivized (monetarily) to sell you, not to give you the best value. With that in mind, I hate sales! I hate that none of it ever leads to helping people, I hate that every part of it leads to finding ways to make someone feel better, but not about how we can actually help the people who need the help. Putting it in another perspective, you would want the government to use the best resources available to help the most amount of people effectively, but realistically, they use an exobratant amount of money to pick vendors in a way that is all handled by a few companies who you have to butter up to. This sucks! Even if that’s not the case, which in a lot of smaller contracts (like the ones I was vying for) it isn’t, there’s already a vendor in place… Great, so I’m fighting an uphill battle. Okay, that’s normal, right. It’s not like you would have different odds in any other business.

Okay, let’s fight it out. Me and my team got someone who was willing to be our design partner. Strong emphasis on team here. I could not do this on my own.

Amazing! Everything is fine now.

Budgets are cut!

We’re locked out for a year.

Fuck!

Okay, let’s move on.

We got one, we can get another!

Every other program doesn’t want to look at us. They have something. They barely have the budget they need to help people or the time to transition. Is it worth it? They don’t have time to think about that either.

Okay, so everything I’ve done for the better part of a year. Gone. Can I hold on? Keep trying? Yes, but at what cost. As one of my teammates said as I started to lose motivation and things started winding down.

I was more impactful in the soup kitchen or doing the daily taks I am doing every day than what I am doing now

That hit hard. It was the exact feeling I had been feeling and didn’t know how to verbalize. That was the moment it hit me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I could keep pushing for this to work. I could try to build out this company and hope that we help thousands of people by getting out there and actually making an impact, or I could give up and try another way. Is giving up the right answer? If I give up now, what’s to stop me from giving up on the next venture when it gets too hard? How do I perservere through and find out that I am headed down the right direction.