Who Are You Outside Of Work?

A Founder’s View on Identity, COVID-19, and Coping with Difficult Times

I recently took a hiatus from social media.

At this point I could lie and say it was because of lent (always a good excuse), but it was actually because I lost a competition I thought I should have won.

I wore a purple suit in honor of Kobe, pitched my ass off, and was more confident than I had been in months, and I still didn’t walk away with the investment.

I felt robbed. I felt confused. I was pissed (like Kanye at the VMA’s mad)and the worst part was I couldn’t come up with any answers.

Startup life is abundant with rejection and things not going as planned, so the feeling wasn’t entirely new, but for some reason this time it was harder to shake. For all intensive purposes I am the definition of the “strong friend”. People expect me to have it together, and I expect even more from myself. I didn’t want to bother explaining to others what had happened, when I couldn’t even wrap my head around it, so I decided to take a break.

I deleted Twitter and Instagram from my phone with plans to return in the following weeks with some kind of positive message and new content to share. I had been thinking a lot about “who I am outside of work”, a conversation…