Give Up

When you're a kid, everyone tells you "You can do anything! Follow your dreams!" But that's all feel-good fluff. No one ever tells you that you'll fail a hundred times before you accomplish that thing you wanted to do. No one tells you how scary it will be, how you'll have to pour everything you are into your dreams, and then still dig a little deeper because everything you think you are won't be enough. 

The past six months of our journey have been riddled with problems:
Should we pivot to a different business model? How will we print these cards? How will we cover our costs and make a profit, but still get people to buy? The app is broken again. How will we integrate payment systems that comply with the thousands of rules and laws out there? The app is broken again. How can we possibly follow the new confusing tax laws that were just passed? Is this idea even going to work? Will people even want this after it's all built and out in the world? The app is broken again. What else do we need to do to build our company? What other products should we start building? Should we go after fundraising right now or wait until the first product is released? Should we give equity to people that want to join our team, even if they won't have a defined role yet? Should we patent more things? Should we trademark? The app is broken again. Are we ready for beta testing? Are we ready to release? Why are people confused by the process? How can we change the app UI? How can we make things work better? Look at all of our competition! Are we ready???? The App Store rejects our first submission. Stripe doesn't understand the way our payment system is integrated and could shut us down. 

And this is where we are today. 

I actually cried this morning, quietly to myself. Today, this isn't fun and exciting. Today it all just sucks. 

But Ben took a deep breath and said, "I won't take 'No' for an answer." And he won't, because he knows how to keep going. He knows how to squash down all of the doubts and insecurities because at the end of the day we've come too far to give up. The world seems to be screaming at us to give up. It will keep screaming at us to give up. 

Our favorite movies right now are "Walt Before Mickey", "Joy", "The Greatest Showman", and "Meet the Robinsons".  The world screamed at these real and fictional characters to give up. But they didn't. They easily could have, and no one would have blamed them. 

I think nobody would blame us for giving up either. I think it's almost expected of us. The world isn't actually built to help people realize their potential. It's built to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. It's built to keep everyone in line, to keep everyone selling themselves short. 

So I guess that's why we can't give up. That's why we have to keep moving forward, even on days like today when everything sucks.