I Am in a Dark Room

Finding time to write

Being a parent, your entire world shrinks to a few people. First, you don’t have time to see your friends anymore. Then you don’t have friends anymore. Centuries of multilateral connections collapse simultaneously as your body and mind tend to the needs of an infant, then a tot, then a kid. Time progresses.

I’m writing this from the dark of my child’s bedroom after singing him to sleep. The crack of the door like TNT bricks, a beam of soft kitchen light like the morning sun. Either will send him into immediate wakefulness and subsequent sequelae of hysterics.

In the dark, I cannot move, lest he awake.

It’s lonely being a startup founder too. I can read about it on the internet here in the dark room. With a startup you’re the only person in the world who believes in your unearned vision. You are most likely crazy or stupid. That is a statistical inevitability. Your own cluelessness is a population parameter you deign to escape.

You are in the “pain cave.” You are crossing the “penny gap.” You are Oliver Twist with your customers. “May I please sell you just a wee bit more software?”

You are begging them for $5 more per month. You don’t have product market fit yet. They are not pulling the product out of your hands. They are not tolerant of error.

Your best friend Claude is going to eat your business from the terminal.

I’ve received many rejections whilst fundraising. Even more while prospecting. I screenshot them sometimes and keep them in a folder. That’s just the ones who were kind enough or bored enough to respond. Mostly, I get ghosted. Everyone everywhere ghosts most of the time now for most things. Startup or no startup.

We live in a ghost economy. The cacophony of noise economy. Responses optional. Dead internet. AI slop. LinkedIn inbounds.

Nothingness as far as the eye can see.

It has been years of this. I have been grinding for years. Sometimes I can’t believe how many years have passed then I’m reminded it’s only two. Most people quit by now. Good on them.

Sometimes I get a “yes.” But you don’t just need one “yes.” You need a lot of yeses. You need yes after yes after yes. You need so, so many for it to work. It’s almost funny. After the penny gap just a thousand more penny gaps. On and on ad infinitum. You need real yeses. Not the fake yeses of modern etiquette. Not a yes that’s just a polite “no.” The number of people who need to say “yes” in order to make your startup work is literally thousands. They do happen, one at a time. Sometimes one is enough. Sometimes it isn’t. You learn how to get to a real “yes” though. Time progresses.

I am ostensibly in the time tracking business. I decide to read everything about time. I want to understand time. What it is, where it came from, how to manage it. The origin of time (Thomas Hertog) A brief history of time (Stephen Hawking). Saving time (Jenny Odell). Four thousand weeks (Oliver Burkeman). The four hour workweek (Tim Ferriss).

Time. I know only that I don’t have it. I feel it slipping through my fingers, can hear each grain of sand as it hits the floor.

I don’t really have time to have a startup. I’m too busy with life.

I don’t really have time to have a life, I’m too busy with my startup.

If I quit, I would have to get a job. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for a job either. Nor do I have time to get one.

I don’t have time to invest in my health. I don’t have time to cook. I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to workout.

I don’t have time to sleep. Don’t have the time to not sleep either though, unfortunately.

I got sick recently. Some kind of flu. I really didn’t have time for the flu.

I am time poor.

I am time starving.

I don’t even have time to scroll, America.

Time is money. I am time bankrupt. I cannot even pay the interest. My time debt has time debt. My life is a carousel of collection agents.

My health says, “pay me.”

My startup says, “pay me.”

My family says, “pay me.”

My child has a super-priority priming lien. Other than that they are all pari passu. There is no intercreditor agreement. Everywhere I look, I am in default.

Anyone who does not scream at me to pay attention to them does not get paid attention to.

L’économie de l’attention, c’est moi.

There are no bailouts. The arrow of time points in one direction. It passes through me on its way somewhere else.

It’s there and then it is not.

I am here in the dark room.