A while ago, I wrote an essay called ‘building software that “helps”’. In it, I attempted to formulate and distill a more operational format of the stuff I write about all of the time: software, technology, what it does to us and how to make that ‘doing’ more gentle and beneficial. As I was writing it, I came up with more and more caveats and other information I wished to pull in, but didn’t. There’s a number of core lessons that I’ve come to and written about, but I’ve never formatted it in a way that consolidates those learnings. In starting — I learned about how much was left to be done.

In startup terms, the whiteout is the constant envelopment of mental model gathering and shifting that someone must do to exist and excel in a startup environment. I used to think the hardest part of a startup is gathering the skills, and I now feel that it is managing the whiteout.

I’m 23 and running out of time to learn how to ‘change the world’, and it feels as though at some point the hourglass will run out of sand and the beaches and land will go with it. The threats to our world loom larger every day, and my contribution remains small. I don’t give a shit that it’s hard for one person to have a big impact. I love this world, and I want to give it everything I have. I keep on coming up shorthanded.

Startups are complex. There is a fuck ton of money, pressure, and time spent together. Some people resonate cohesively, and others explode, and will take you out with them. You need to really know who you’re getting in the plane with — who you’re trusting your company with, and how they think about what you need to do to make this worth their while.

I’m doing something harder than restarting a company: forcing myself to take a break. Dreaming up technical diagrams could happen in my sleep, because that’s not the hard part to me. The true hard shit is knowing I have this immense desire that’s been burning since I was 13, and not seceding to it.