Dear You,
I wanted to just check-in. You see…

I’m sitting on an air mattress in the living room of my apartment. I’m broke as shit. I have no clue where rent will come from this month, but I’m strapped with a laptop and a cell phone. I’m surrounded by white boards. I’m covered in ideas and debt. I’m learning, breaking down, getting excited and getting sick. I’m dreaming, networking and eating leftover chocolates next to my computer because I forgot to eat this morning.

It’s 12:13AM.
I’m a mess, and you’re just like me.

Sure, the paths are not similar. The interests are different. We have two completely different approaches. There’s actually nothing that connects my story to yours in any way.

But you’re just like me. You want it too.

You feel it. You know it’s close. You know the hours and the sweat and the heartbreak had to be leading towards something. There’s no way it was all a lost cause, right?

I wrote this for us. I don’t know how it’s going to help or where this will end. But I wrote this for us.

And I don’t want to take up too much of your time, either. You have calls to make. You have lunches to plan, ideas to pitch.

And I don’t know what exactly it is that’s burning inside of you. I don’t know the passion you’ve decided to dedicate your blood and sweat and tears to, but I know you have a focus.

I know you wake up in the middle of the night and Google endlessly. Sometimes, you can’t sleep because you’re working on how you’ll write something, how you’ll convince someone to believe in you, what you’ll say to keep your team going.

I know.

At times, you feel guilty when you achieve something, it’s hard to celebrate. You feel guilty for the praise. And what do you do? You go back to work. You have work to do.

You’ve always had work to do.

This is a letter, but it’s really a gathering of people who believe just like me that hard work and pure work ethic is a requirement. Pain is a requirement. Sleepless nights, lost friendships, sickness are all requirements. This is a message to the overachievers in my generation who give themselves away for the things they believe in.

The funny thing is you probably feel like you’re not working hard enough and you shouldn’t define yourself as an overachiever or a go-getter, or even as an entrepreneur.

But even that is characteristic of who we are.

We’d never define ourselves as such because that would require having a deep intimate understanding of the accomplishments we’ve made. It would require taking some time to sit back, take a deep breath and say, “that was good”.

We don’t have time for that. We live in the future. We stress on the future. The present is and will always be dead for us, and that’s why I’m talking to us.

We should never relax. I don’t think that’s emotionally possible for us. But I do think we should allow ourselves a pat on the back.

So, I’ll say it. You, my friend, have worked hard. You’ve worked hard all of your life.

You see, all of our lives we were told we were meant for something. We were the smart kids. Some of us with GPAs and degrees to prove it, others with pure gangster hustle and work ethic. It didn’t matter, we were all smart kids.

We excelled at whatever we put our thoughts to; we saw what a little hard work and a few extra hours could do early on.

The attention, the doting, the kind words, the bonuses, the extra care… All of it was given to us because we were extraordinary in our respective schools, classes, projects and so on. This happened when we were young, and when you’re young competition doesn’t exist.

We were rockstars.
We were prodigies.
We knew we were meant for something.

We figured if we were killing it when we were young, there would be no chance for the future! We were going to take over.

So, what is this really?

At times, I read this and saw it as a reminder.

It’s a reminder that you are actually all of those things. You actually do deserve all of those things. You actually can do what you’ve been dreaming to do.

This is a reminder that you led your entire life by doing just a little more than the others.

It’s a reminder not to forget your roots. Not to forget the energy you had. Not to ignore how you got to be sitting reading this in the first place.

Also, it’s a reminder not to become the person they expect you to become after you get deeper into the “real world”. In fact, it’s a plea to never enter that world at all.

That’s not what we’re here for. You’re here to create something and you need to tell the world that you’re ready to raise fucking hell until you do so.

I don’t know you. You don’t know me, but I’m here to help you raise fucking hell. I’ll bring my pitchfork, I got your back.

Why?

Because I struck me that you really don’t need anything to raise hell. The requirements for hell-raising are pretty low this time in the year.

In fact, you have everything you could possibly need to do anything you want tomorrow to start a movement, to encourage change, to take over the world… You can literally do ANYTHING. Absolutely anything.

And, I’m sure it doesn’t feel like that. You’ve made commitments. You have to keep your word. Quitters never win. Cliches are even sexier when they are used to hold you from doing something scary.

I got your back because you can do anything, but more importantly because sometimes you just need someone there to remind you what your heart is thinking.

Hint: it wants to jump.

Your heart wants passion. It wants numbing fear. It wants anything opposite a flat line. This letter is a reminder of that. A reminder that you’ve done it before, a reminder that you’ve felt like this before and a reminder to never forget your heart wants more.

Because think about it.

Imagine how crazy we all have to be. There are six billion people in the world, living today.

Every single day, each one of us thinks we will create something that no one in the entire world’s population has created before. Let’s ignore those who have died trying.

Do you understand how fucking crazy that is?

But you think it. You believe it. And, you have every single reason to do so. Because you will.