Why do I do what I do? I could quote Ozymandias or the story about the Businessman and the Fisherman. Instead, here’s this tweet from Andrew Wilkinson.

What a stark difference from self indulgent “How to be Successful” twitter nonsense threads from SV luminaries yet, still, too prescriptive and infused with unacknowledged privilege. It’s not that he’s wrong; it’s the distinct “welcome to everyone else’s life” vibe, the discovery of the joy of fishing once you’ve built the business rather than just enjoying fishing in the first place, that I both strongly identify with and feel is, at the same time, incredibly ridiculous.

I don’t have any aspirations to tell others what to do. The past decade has been insanely good to me, through a combination of luck and hard work. Coming into this decade, and starting the fifth decade of my life, I’d like to remember that the Big Things we think matter, really don’t that much. That I matter a lot to a few people and I don’t matter all that much to most people, and that’s just how life is. That after satisfying my basic needs it’s more important to think whether I should do something rather than whether I can. I will continue making mistakes, but maybe less. I hope to enjoy the journey more. Most of all, I hope to not take myself too seriously.