Stanford Duck Syndrome
Keep calm and carry on?
Most of the top posts on here are “professionally” oriented, whether it’s tactical advice for e-commerce startups or a discussion of the scientific evidence on the benefits of alcohol on creativity.
For me, that’s fun to read, but not fun to write.
I’ve always been fixated on the personal. The raw, the relatable, the ugly. Not the carefully curated anecdotes that illustrate a highly successful image that must always be “killing it.”
When nothing else is there for me, I know that words are. I can always turn to the familiar pitter patter of keys and words on a screen. My words are for me—and if someone else finds it interesting to follow along, that’s cool—but I don’t write for you.
I’m reading Mao’s biography. My mother calls him “vile,” which is justified. She lived through the Cultural Revolution—her generation was told that education was evil and were made to toil in the fields instead. My father was made to denounce his mother as bourgeois. But 200 pages in and what strikes me is how long it took Mao to really get things rolling. In other words, how much of it was grind? How much of it was standing up after failure?
In general, we don’t enjoy talking about the grind or about failure, even though that’s an inevitable part of the process—and maybe even healthy. The Stanford Duck Syndrome. Everything has to look effortless, even as we paddle furiously underwater. And as we do that, we feel plagued by doubt. We feel lonely.
In my other blogs, I’ve talked about startup stress before and how it doesn’t go away, no matter how well you do, because there’s always more you could be doing. Usually, I would say that I’m pretty good at handling stress—I did not find college particularly stressful, and even when it was, I could always smile and find time to go out and blow off some steam.
However, last month, I found it particularly difficult, because the baseline startup stress (meeting self-imposed sales quotas, preparing the technology platform for beta, firing someone, etc.) was also coupled with not just one, but several difficult personal life events (terminal illness, family death, ending a friendship).
It snowballed into something terrible. I lost ten pounds, ate next to nothing, cried often, and slept four hours a night.
The last two weeks have been relatively smooth sailing. There has even been some significantly positive news on the business front. So, things are returning to normal. They’re chugging along. Fullblown optimism to fullblown pessimism to cautious optimism again.
And socially, things have returned to a pleasant normalcy too: going out for dinner and drinks with friends, catching a play at the theatre (The Real Thing, which was good, minus the terrible British accents by the very American actors who kept slipping into American, ugh!).
But just admitting that going through that period was difficult is difficult—I’m guilty of shoving unpleasant things under the rug, too.
Protestant stoicism.
But maybe it is healthier and even a sign of strength if we can just be open and talk about it.
