Years ago, I worked at a tutoring company called Compass. I tutored for them, then I did sales full time for them, then my car rental business picked up and I quit as soon as my gross income met my expenses. I’d figure out taxes later. I just wanted out.
I wanted it for so long. “Freedom.”
It was just me. Nobody I knew had nothing to do at 27 years old on a Tuesday at 11 am.
So I’d go to Library Alehouse by myself. With nobody telling me what to do or where to be and my income coming in sporadically through Cash App payments, it was like Home Alone every day. I had no internal drive to do anything real. However, I spent a lot of time drinking wine with my French neighbor in his lovely little Craftsman backyard, talking about all the things I was going to do.
For years, I was motivated by not getting hassled, doing what I should do.
In the silence, after two years of day drinking on Tuesdays, I got the urge to build again.
So I started Ashland Prep.
For others, the silence of ambiguity leads them back to the structure of a job and a new appreciation for it. For me, I found out that I just liked building shit. The world needs both types of people. It needs people to build, it needs people to execute the build, it needs people in between doing the actual work. It needs people buying. Key is to find out, in silence, and align unapologetically.