15 years of failure
7 years later I graduated from college and started working. I like my work, and get a decent salary. I became pretty good at what I do.
At the same time I kept up my online ventures. I explored many paths, some minor successes, but mostly failures. Nothing big.
And here is where I struggle: I love working on my own projects! All day at work I'm thinking about how I could have used that time working on my own projects instead. It doesn't feel right to keep working 9-to-5. It gets frustrating to keep it up. Even though like I said: nice people, pretty interesting work, decent salary.
I could just quit and follow my dreams. But every time I think about it, I have those 15 years of failure smiling at me...
Am I just spoiled? Should I get back to reality and keep doing the 9-to-5 until I have worked out something that works? Perhaps. But this slows down my progress so much. There's only so many hours in a day.
At one side you have all those people online talking about how they followed their dreams and shaped their own dream life. But at the same time there's this feeling that those are just the lucky few and perhaps I'm just not good enough.
Don't know what I expect from posting this here, really... mostly getting it off my chest. Perhaps someone can relate.
[edit]
Wow, didn't expect so many responses. Thanks everyone! I was planning to reply to everyone individually, but that would kind of clutter the thread at this point.
I feel I should also give a little more info about my situation.
I'm working fulltime.
Have my own webdevelopment agency on the side (earning pretty good money, but few projects - not really my dream though, not very motivated to get new clients)
Doing my own website projects (-> this is what I actually want to do in life)
And at the same time I'm also building my own house, which takes up a lot of my free time.
So just to be clear: I'm not lazy. It's not that I'm not motivated enough to work on it. But at this point I have about 1 hour of "family time" left every day, and that includes weekends! There is just not enough time to do it all.
At the same time, because I work a lot, I managed to have enough savings to last about 3 years. So I wouldn't have to go straight into panic mode.
Though I'm not really looking forward to wasting all my savings either.
Lastly, failure is indeed not the best word to describe my situation. I have build some good stuff, not even close to replacing my job, but definately something I can build on.
What makes me believe I can do it now, after 15 years of failure? Well, for 15 years I've been building stuff. "If you build it, they will come". Well, some did come. But now I never did any marketing. Very silly that it took me 15 years to realise. But it's also a consequence of not having a lot of time. I used to work for months on a project, and when it was finally ready, I was exhausted! But actually, that should have been only step 1.
I'm working on something big now, planning to do everything right this time. Perhaps that is the best advice, finish that project and see if it's successful.
I'm exhausted, but hopefully it will be worth it in the end. There's no way I could ever give up the dream.
Nothing to see here including a Sig so just move on :)
― George Carlin
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