The praise was not wrong. It just arrived early.
A buddy asked me last week what I'm building next. I said nothing. He thought I was being humble.
I wasn't.
I haven't wanted to build anything in almost two years. Not a product. Not a project. Not even a rough idea scribbled on a napkin. For a long time I told myself that was the whole point. I escaped the thing that was eating my life. I got free. Of course I'm not building. Building is what almost killed me.
But there's a difference between not needing to build and being afraid to want.
I sold my logistics company after ten years and swore I'd never let anything own me again. Sounds healthy. Sounds like a guy who learned his lesson. What it actually was: a guy who touched a stove and decided all fire was the problem.
Fire wasn't the problem. Standing there with my hand on the burner for a decade was.
That's the trap. You go through something that costs you everything, and instead of questioning how you built, you question building itself. You kill your own ambition because ambition is what hurt you. And then you sit in the ashes and call it peace.
I did this for over a year. I'd see an opportunity, feel that old pull in my chest, and shut it down immediately. Like a reflex. Like swatting a mosquito before it even lands. I'd tell myself I was being smart. Protecting my time. My freedom. Not falling back into the machine.
I wasn't protecting anything. I was just scared.
I was sitting in a coffee shop in Medellin a few months back. Two guys at the next table were sketching out some kind of product launch on a napkin. Talking over each other. Laughing. One of them kept saying "no no no listen" and then describing something that probably wouldn't work but he didn't care yet. That energy. I recognized it from a long way off. I used to vibrate at that exact frequency. I could feel the ghost of it sitting in my chest like a dead battery.
My first instinct was to feel sorry for them.
That's when I knew something was broken. Not in them. In me. Because feeling sorry for two guys who are excited about building something is not wisdom. It's damage.
— Best, Jose
