Harder than you ever imagined

Ernest Fung
The Startup
Published in
2 min readJun 22, 2018
Photo by Filippo Ruffini on Unsplash

Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. It was obviously going to be hard, but THIS HARD? Nobody warned me about this.

Being a (practicing) stoic, I’m constantly assessing fear — what’s the worst that could happen? But no matter how hard you try not thinking about your problems, it’s only human to be affected by it. Bad days are bad days, and when they pile up in a long uninterrupted line of consecutive bad days, it’s going to take a toll on you no matter how stoic you are.

Working for yourself, things can go from 0 to 60 in a blink of an eye (e.g. making $0/month to making $10,000/month). However, it also goes that other way, falling all the way back to earth (and a little below that too). It sucks, but what can you do?

There’s something calming about knowing that you won’t necessarily starve to death (immediately) or that other people have gone through the same and made it out the other side. But inevitably, you also start thinking about whether there’s a reason for this — maybe you’re just not good enough.

Glimpses of success are sometimes just that. BUT, maybe there’s light on the other side too. I don’t know, I can only hope. There have been hints.

Interest here and there. Referrals every now and then. Opportunities with businesses reaching out. The problem has never been about showing (short term) value, as much as that it’s been about evolving the business to fit real needs (and showing long term value).

Head up, it’s a new day tomorrow. Hopefully the new day (and good news) comes sooner rather than later.

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