I Am Not an Entrepreneur.

I do not want to join your start-up.

You will not find me next to you on your boat, sipping a mai tai as the sun recedes into the ocean in the west. You won’t be able to take that selfie with me in the board room at the top of the skyscraper. I won’t be there. I’m not one for acquiring new capital. I’m wasted on crowd-funding.

I have bills to pay and I intend to pay them. I’ll get a job. I need to eat, so I’ll go to the grocery store. The rest of the time I’ll be writing and playing PlayStation and making love. I might be so adventurous as to purchase a new potted plant, if the weather is fair.

I have no interest in attending your leadership conference.

I have no need for people to follow me; they’re around enough as it is. I don’t care what my body language is broadcasting. Spare me your coaching. I don’t have the patience to listen to a man in a pin-striped suit in front of a projection screen who barks orders into a microphone and doesn’t notice that his make-up is smeared.

I’m busy with naps. There is tea to be brewed. I don’t want to fake it and I don’t want to make it. You can make it without me. I’d rather stare at my feet for an hour and think about gravitational waves. I want to listen to the sound of the ceiling fan and hear if it slows as the night gets colder. I want to pet my dog and wipe the crusty build-up out of her eyes.

I am not a go-getter. I am not even a getter. I am a given.

I am a gull feather on the crest of an icy wave in the North Atlantic.

I am the crinkling of leaves under boots in the yard of a poorly maintained elementary school.

I am a dripping faucet in the early morning.

I am a bruise on an elbow.

I am not an entrepreneur.

I am a man, in a room, with a ballpoint pen and a blank sheet of notebook paper.