I almost wrote about something else
Welcome Entrepreneurs, I'm so glad you're here. Today is tough.
I was going to write about something else. I had a whole issue done. Box checked, onto the next project. It felt so easy. So rhythmic.
But ultimately, the more I sat with it, so wrong.
I don’t have anything to add to what’s already being said by 90% of America minus 50 Senators. So I won’t try. I’ve compiled some links below if you want to learn more. Instead I just want to share my experience.
Immediately after the massacre in Texas, the 27th school shooting in US the last 5 months, I felt despair, anger, fear. I dropped my elementary-aged kids off the next day with a gamut of awful emotions in my stomach.
And then, honestly, the next day I felt pretty good. I played basketball. I did work I love, with people I love. I was excited about what we get to build for founders.
Every once in a while someone would bring up the shooting, and after a pang of… something… I quickly found myself returning my focus to the task in front of me. It was so easy for me to move on.
It’s hard to admit, but a part of me actually wanted to just move on. It hurts to feel angry, scared, and impotent. It hurts to think about your kids dying with their friends at school. And it’s easier to just busy myself in the stuff I’m lucky enough to get to do every day.
The problem is, I’m smarter than that.
I know that it’s possible to waste years of your life checking box after box, achieving someone else’s idea of success because considering what you might actually want is too scary. I know that it’s possible to be miserable for years, simply because the pain of change is too great. I know what it is to be productively numb.
I also know that the path to change, the only path, is by going through the fear. Through the anger and resentment. The sadness. Those emotions are the catalyst for our change, if we lean into them.
So I’m sitting here on Thursday night, after I just told my boys I love them and tucked them in, and I’m trying my best to feel it. Rage. Terror. Disgust. I want to run. I want to yell. I want to break something. I want to homeschool my kids because fuck everybody. I want to cry.
I don’t want to feel any of this any more than you do. I don't want to feel it so much that I almost wrote about something else.
But I know that if I don’t feel what I’m feeling, nothing will change.
It's so easy to do something else. Don't.
Things I read this week
One: Jimmy Kimmel on Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas (YouTube)
Two: America's Gun Crisis and the Rewriting of the Second Amendment: A Closer Look (YouTube)
Three: A Simple, If Extremely Difficult Solution: Reduce The Number Of Guns (YouTube)
Four: Everytown.org
You can do something.
Want to dive deeper?
If you liked this, check out this list of my top posts, read and shared by thousands of entrepreneurs.
Here are a few of my favorites:
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