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Sara Campbell's avatar

Fantastic post, Mark. A lot of it resonated with me, having been through my own founder arc and discovered it wasn’t hitting the way I’d imagined. My wish for you in this next phase of exploration is to *have fun* with it and be open to the idea that taking all that pressure off yourself is where the journey really begins. That’s what I’ve discovered, anyway. Your head is already there from the sound of it, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll need to frequently remind yourself of that fact. 😆 Looking forward to reading about how it all goes.

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Bowen Dwelle's avatar

Beautiful parallel that you draw between relationships and dreams or ambitions in "feeling okay without them can help us say yes to the right one." I got a lot better at relationships after I gave them up for a solid year, during which time I got a LOT more comfortable being with *myself.*

Respect the clarity and the courage to listen to yourself. There's nothing particularly, totally unique or amazing about being a tech founder. Far from it, really. It's perhaps an even harder grind than other types of entrepreneurship—and so unless you *really* really _really_ love computers, and software, why go there?

I went diagonally from tech very early on because, despite the allure, I didn't want the costume either.

Even the business that I did start was at least as much "no" as yes, but at least it was mine, and, despite my mixed feelings, it was unique. Obscure, and hard to explain, but at least I wasn't one of a million others doing the same thing. For me, that mattered.

https://open.substack.com/pub/bowendwelle/p/12-wired-tired-fired

Still, I was conflicted just about run of it (15 years). During that time, and much moreso afterwards, I gradually accumulated enough experience listening to myself to make choices more with my soul.

Now, while it still pains me to give up certain dreams, because I have so many, I know that there's no way that I could ever get even close to doing all the things that I might like to do, and I have come to enjoy the moment of moving on, of giving something up intentionally, which I've written about here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/bowendwelle/p/the-last-time

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