Were They Right?
Dedicated to those who work on side projects
Friday night and you’re at home working on your side project. Chances are, you’ve already been branded at work as “that guy with the side project.” You’ve spoken to colleagues about it — “it’s this thing that does this,” you say. They all nod with approval. You didn’t exactly say it like that, but that’s probably how they heard it.
It’s almost 10:00 pm — you’ve already gotten distracted twice, once by your phone, which led to a random web browsing session, and now YouTube. Guilty of having just spent the last twenty minutes surfing YouTube for cool tech reviews, you begin to question yourself.
Were they right?
Isn’t free time supposed to be spent free from the stress of work, from the bittersweetness of execution? Aren’t you supposed to be having fun on a Friday night instead of hammering away at your keyboard, writing out that next blog article that you know will probably only reach ten or so people? Or building that B2C product for your next three MVP users who are probably not even going to pay you, even after three follow-up messages?
Man, does all of the above sound like fun.
But then, you remember.
You remember what you once said when someone asked — “why do you work after work?”
You told them that while work after work can be strenuous and painful, you’ve always worked on something that you’ve wanted to work on. Even so, it gets hard sometimes — all that thinking, but imagine the pain, you say, of being 50 and with kids, haunted by the knowledge that you could’ve, in your 20s, worked for three, maybe five years, to build something of your own. You had the chance and didn’t take it.
Now you’re too burdened by obligations and know that you’ll live the rest of your life
haunted by the notion that you could’ve tried,
but didn’t.
And now you can’t.
So were they right?
You ponder the question for a few more seconds and then exit YouTube.
It’s time for another article.
