Tuesday was my last day as CEO of CircleUp
I'm happy everything worked out for you Ryan. But I was left so queasy by this whole read.<p>This is presented as a victorious journey. By the end of it he's got his health back, his kids, an easy job, lots of money. The company's in good shape - everyone's a winner.<p>And you're telling readers - it's GRIT! I'm a super Gritter! I never give up!<p>Mate, you got so lucky, to be alive, to have kids.<p>Yet you lost years of your life, plus all your kids' early childhood fretting over terrible bosses. And by the end of it you're still wondering whether in future VCs will find you worthy of investment.<p>And in our day and age you're considered a winner!<p>You're the person YC points to and says - See him, you could be like him one day!<p>"Life, if you know how to use it, is long.<p>But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless;<p>one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth;<p>one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain;<p>some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own;<p>some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great;<p>many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own;<p>many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new...<p>Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them:<p>A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master."<p>-Seneca, On the Shortness of Life