Leaving the company I co-founded
&gt;&quot;Like, sure, I can give you a list of things I think you should do, but unless it comes from you you&#x27;re never going to actual do it in the long term. We&#x27;ve seen that already. And, like, it&#x27;s not my job worrying about whether or not you&#x27;re doing what you&#x27;re supposed to. It&#x27;s exhausting having to think about it&quot;<p>God this brought back some memories because I have had to say the exact same thing to someone, and the memory was just infuriating to think about, and I totally understand how Romy felt saying that.  Then as I continued to read what they wrote I realized this person is indeed identical in just about every way (except not the same person).<p>The person I knew eventually cleaned up their act a bit, and what it came down to was that they were completely obsessed with themselves.  A strange kind of narcissism (I know it is trite to say that, but in this case I&#x27;ll use that word because it isn&#x27;t obvious how).  These problems he is having - extreme fear of failure, essentially - can easily be fixed.<p>Notice when you read this that he spends paragraphs and paragraphs going on about how he feels.  When he talks about how he is letting everyone down, it is never about how he is letting everyone down or how they feel, it is how it makes him sad that they are sad.  How stressed he is.  How he isn&#x27;t a quitter. Notice how when he talks about leaving emails unanswered for weeks the first thing on his mind is how sad it makes <i>him</i> to make life difficult for everyone even though he could simply answer the email.  It isn&#x27;t how hard it must be for them, it is how sad it makes <i>him</i> that things are difficult for them.<p>Now there is nothing wrong with worrying about your own feelings, but this kind of self destructive event which he describes came about solely because he was taking himself too seriously.  In fact, he was completely and totally obsessed with himself above all else which lead to a complete and total neglect of everyone and everything he was responsible for.  If anyone you know ever ends up this paralyzed from fear of failure just try to remind them to stop taking themselves so seriously and try worrying about something other than themselves for once.