Age of Ultron
…and choking on the bone
Avengers: Age of Ultron is hitting the theatres in a couple of days and earlier today I struggled with with a dilemma. That I am even calling it a ‘dilemma’ is a cringing blow right to my guts. That I struggled with it, albeit briefly, rattles my innards.
My seven year old simply loves the Avengers. So do I.
Thank you, Marvel!
But the tickets to the movie would have to be classified under ‘discretionary expenses’. Those two words have invaded my psyche and grown to a certain level of proportion, over the last few years, that can only be termed as monstrous. They should not have.
Five years. Five years since I dived head first into the fresh and crisp looking waters of entrepreneurship. As any first time entrepreneur would certify, it’s an exhilarating experience. The first couple of years were buoyed by the exuberance of having created something new from scratch. Revenues were just about meeting the expenses of the enterprise and hey, there was also ‘value creation’ happening.
So I continued to dip into my personal savings for family related expenditure. And began a disciplined approach to reduce expenses. The non essential ones. Like not changing phones every few months or even years, especially when the old one works just fine. Not going for the latest gizmos. Moving to a cheaper accommodation out in the suburbs. Continuing with the old car. Going easy on the consumption of good whiskies. Bootstrapping. Sensible bootstrapping. Though I’m still not too sure about the whiskies. Whether that was sensible, I mean. ☺
Then one day, shit really went down, or up depending on which one meets your fancy. As most entrepreneurs would also certify, it usually does. When it does, you start afresh, you reinvent yourself. I managed it, caught a few lucky breaks along the way, and started to make some money but still not enough.
The fear of failure, having encountered a big one recently, was always lurking over my shoulder. I allowed it to reach out and grab me by the balls. In a desperate and misguided attempt to somehow make it work, I started strapping my boots even tighter. Unreasonable bootstrapping.
Forgetting that after a while, they will begin to hurt, impairing my ability to walk, let alone run.
There is something to be said about being frugal, about pinching your pennies for a while, because it’s practical. There is something also to be said about overcompensating just because you are a stubborn ass.
When most of your energy is being expended on hammering down expenses, what is left of it is usually not enough to feed your revenue enhancing efforts.
And when they are not going upwards, they have an uncanny certainty with which they start to come down. You miss out on new opportunities because you are so focused on making it work with the existing one. You lose the ability to gauge when it’s time to walk away, to let go, to reinvent yet again, pick up something new or even live to fight another day. Because you are constantly reducing the threshold, the tipping point, trying desperately to justify your ability to hold on.
By this time you also begin to lose focus of what’s really important. You start reducing the family outings, the evenings out with your wife, the movie dates with your kid, those small things that help you unwind, that keep it all real. You stop going out on family vacations, even the short ones. At first for one year, then another and another and wake up one morning finding that with those you love most, the years are indeed short.
Guilt follows, perhaps misplaced, of not being able to provide your family with the good things in life. When you allow that one to get cozy in your head, you forget that the most your family craves for, is you, your time, and not the incidentals that money buys. But you choose not to see that. You focus on trying even harder to make it work.
You avoid going out with friends. You start to politely say no to invitations because that would mean creating an obligation to reciprocate and you really are trying to cut down those discretionary outlays. They wonder what’s happening, but you won’t open up or admit you’ve taken a beating. You are still trying to make it work. The rest will sort itself out later. But ‘later’ decides to procrastinate. Before you know it, the invitations begin to dwindle. Old friendships begin to die at the hands of your misplaced sense of ego and a mistimed urge to doggedly pursue your dreams.
There is something to be said about following your dreams. There is something also to be said about choking on the bone you are trying to suck the marrow of.
Being an entrepreneur is not about what you do but who you are.
If sucking marrow is what you enjoy doing, there is no dearth of juicy bones out there. Let go of the one you are choking on. If another is not immediately within your grasp, chew on a side dish till one comes your way again.
We are having an extended family lunch over the weekend. In the coming months, I hope to be a more involved and engaged parent, husband, son, brother and friend. I hope to keep firm on my walk away / start again threshold and not let it become a defensive victim to my obstinance or my fear of failure or to being called one. That, I believe, will only add to my entrepreneurial spirit and not take away from it.
Most importantly, the tickets to the movie have been booked.
It’s time for some kick ass action!
