Two Phases of a Venture
Or The Excitement and Mourning of a Project
Pre-mourning is a healthy thing to do. Whether you know a job, experience, or relationship is going to end, it’s more than okay to mourn its upcoming loss.
You may have seen me post on LinkedIn the other day, more or less saying that I’m winding down Chapters Creative into a part-time project. Given that I like to sleep on big decisions before and after I make them (I have every right to change my mind!), it’s been two night since I posted that, and I don’t feel like that decision will change.
When I started Chapters Creative, it was a reaction to getting fired from my last 9-5 and a feeling I had since 2019 to go on my own, but I was just too scared. Scared of the judgment of family and friends. Scared of failing. But sometimes, when you’re pushed off a ledge, you figure out if you can land, and I did more or less, and I’m glad I did it. I needed to prove to myself that I could help people and make money on my own terms, and damnit, I did it.
The other day, I was reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I always feel like I get so much from reading a paragraph or two. It also feels like I’m doing reading for a college class, and I kinda miss that. The headiness of academic writing is difficult for me, but reading stuff like Campbell 13 years after graduating is almost like a workout.
In this particular paragraph I read, he talks about how myths and stories from around the world have a hold on us as people, and specifically, how our lives have the same format. He argues that Sigmund Freud “stresses in his writings the passages and difficulties of the first half of the human cycle of life, those of our infancy and adolescence” and Carl Jung “emphasized the crises of the second portion—when, in order to advance, the shining sphere must submit to descend and disappear, at last, into the night-womb of the grave.”
Campbell says when we enter the second portion, our desires and fears become inverted, “for it is then no longer life but death that is the challenge… looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, unpredictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and women have undergone in every quarter of the world, in all recorded centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization.”
Campbell is talking about life in general and how we all more or less have the same standard codas of life, but I couldn’t help but think about it in how we build our businesses, non-profits, and creative projects.
When I started Chapters, I was guns ablazing full of ideas, excited to find work, and eager to prove everyone who slighted me wrong (by the way, the latter’s energy can only last you so long.) A year into the work, some large personal things happened, and I could no longer bring the same energy into building Chapters. Yes, I was still able to help a lot of people, but I felt like a husk of myself.
What began as something to be excited about—the growth and challenges of building my business—became questions of sustainability, not just of Chapters but of myself as a person. What started as a vehicle of spite and purpose became survival, and that’s not sustainable.
You may be at a similar crossroads for yourself. You may not even have a business yet but you’re really excited to have one. That’s great! But there will come a day when you will have doubts about the business and/or yourself. I think that’s a completely normal aspect of any venture. The decision is yours whether or not to go on with it. But when you begin to feel the call to take a break or put a venture to rest, you’ll join the billions of people who hung up the gloves to do something new and exciting or rest up to make sure they can live another day (sometimes this can be taken literally).
When that happens, success isn’t the goal anymore. And despite what the Hormozi’s in the world may say, giving up is the right thing to do sometimes! Sometimes success means surviving to fight another day.
For those moments, there’s grace. Sometimes, failure isn’t a failure when you’re only turning the page to another chapter.
Now Listening/Watching: Fiddlehead’s 2024 Outbreak Set
I’ve been a fan of Fiddlehead for the last few years, but I was unaware at first that their vocalist was Pat Flynn from hardcore legends Have Heart when I first found them.
Fiddlehead is essentially if Superchunk was a hardcore band. But what really draws me to Fiddlehead is its general themes of death and mourning, with songs about devotion, friendship, and self-improvement sprinkled in.
This set from the Outbreak Festival in the UK is everything you need to decide if you’ll be into Fiddlehead or not. Pat’s passion and connection with the crowd is obvious.
Portfolio Corner: D’Addario
I did some video for D’Addario (a legendary guitar accessory company) for an old employer that never saw the light of day until recently for their NYXL line. The video lives on the NYXL landing page, and I’m so proud the work has lived on.