For all of the striving and pushing and climbing until your hands are raw and bleeding — what do you have to show?

It’s an honest question that I don’t think we ask ourselves often enough.

Perhaps put in simpler terms: What the fuck are we hustling for?

Is it free expression? Financial freedom? Lifestyle celebration? Freedom from the albatross of average? The rush of the hunt? Pursuit of passion?

I can generally tell right off if someone is more on the practical, lifestyle side of the why spectrum. The tell tale signs flash in bright, bold and true.

If their reasoning for why they do what they do is simply a means to an end or a means to create space in their lives, then I typically poke and prod to dig under the surface of it.

Typically this reasoning is attached to the teat of creating space, both physically and financially, where said person is untethered from a 9–5 or status-quo existence.

And while I respect and realize that each and every one of us has our own personal reasons for stepping out into the unknown, I can’t help but wonder, “is that enough for me without the presence of joy in my work?”

And I’ve answered that question, time and time again, with an emphatic no.

For me, true freedom will never come on the back of opportunity or the war drums of the entrepreneurial community.

There will be no chest thumping for task lists slain; no honor badges worn for simply being out on my own.

For me, true freedom is part of a larger DNA where truth, pure creativity and love each play their part.

In other words, I need to give a shit, to feel genuine connection and to find more than an exit wound to a sense of achievement in the work that I give myself to each day.

For some, freedom is largely a rite of passage.

But if I am to walk, and in many cases crawl, simply to gain access to the hallowed halls of the bootstrapped few — then it must be with the light of joy at my back.