I’m Suffocating Under This Mask (Part 1)
The Voices in My Head
This is a four-part post. I’ll publish a new part each day this week.
I can’t let anyone know. Everyone’s counting on me. I have to stay strong. But I’m so tired. I’m mentally and physically exhausted. I just need some time to step away. Some time to think. Actually what I could really use is a good night’s sleep. Just once, really sleep through the night peacefully, without replaying the numbers, the lists, and the problems over and over again in my head…
I think Jared may be onto something. That new user sign-up flow he mocked up the other day could really be the key to improving our customer acquisition numbers. I love the way he’s been working overtime to figure out what we need to get over this hump — what a team player! Maybe this really could be our turn-around quarter…
No way - Darrell’s company is on the front page of TechCrunch! Man, they’re really killing it, and they started nearly a year after us. How are they growing so fast? We really need to step our game up. Perhaps it’s time to sit down with my co-founder and have a serious talk. I just don’t feel like we’re seeing eye to eye anymore. Is his heart still in this?…
Maybe a team retreat would help? Even just for a day. A chance to really get away, clear our heads, and recharge. I think Yasmine said her parents have a house in Tahoe we could all stay at. No, no. There’s simply no time. We really need to ship this new version by Monday. All hands on deck again this weekend…
Shoot! I forgot about Amanda’s birthday party. I’ll have to tell her I can’t come. I hope she’s not upset. I feel like we’ve been growing apart anyway. Actually I feel like I can’t relate to most of my friends anymore. They just don’t understand the sacrifices I have to make. There’s too much at stake right now to just be “hanging out”…
Wow — look at this email from Leslie. Five of her students got jobs using our site last month. See, it’s times like this that make all the hard work totally worth it. To know that we’ve built something that’s changing people’s lives; you just can’t put a price on that. Wait til’ the team sees this; it’ll be a great morale boost…
Oh it’s mom again. I’ll call her back tonight. I seriously don’t know what I’d do without her; she’s been such a lifesaver. I owe her big time. All the money she loaned me to help get this started. I have to make sure it doesn’t go to waste. We have to make this work…
Ahhhhhhh — I just want to scream! SO.MUCH.PRESSURE. I’m barely keeping my head above water. I seriously want to go dig a hole and hide away for awhile…
No, you have to snap out of this. Everyone’s counting on you. Have you eaten today?
That right there, that’s a true reflection of the thoughts that could often times be found running around in my head on any given day, while I was trying to figure out how to build a successful tech startup a few years back. It was like there was some sort of mental tug-of-war going on inside me, with anxiety and excitement facing off on opposing sides, and fear of failure as the ever pervasive underlying force.
But if you ask most people in my life at the time, they probably didn’t know about this internal dialogue that was renting space in my head. By most accounts, it looked as if I had “made it.” I mean, not making it in the sense that I had built this hugely popular, profitable, and soon-to-be public company. I’m talking about making it in the sense that on my very first try as an entrepreneur, I had successfully transitioned from a bootstrapped founder to a funded startup, backed by several leading tech investors, and situated right in the heart of startuplandia: Silicon Valley.
No one — not my teammates, not my family, not my friends — knew how I was handling the pressure of being a first-time founder, especially not my investors. (Are you crazy?! Risk them thinking I wasn’t fit for the job; that would have been career suicide!) So whenever I got the question: How are things going? I had my response teed up and ready to go: Oh fantastic, just fantastic! Everything’s moving up and to the right, you know?
Day after day, despite these inner struggles I was grappling with, I just sucked it up, and kept showing up. I kept showing up for work, I kept leading my team, I kept going to events, I kept a smile plastered on my face, and I kept telling everyone that everything was great.
Continue on to Part 2.
