If you're still running, your past is still leading.
There's a project on my laptop I've opened eleven times and closed eleven times. Not because it's bad. Because if I actually built it, I'd have to stop being the guy who only works two hours a day.
A buddy from back home asked me last month what I was working on. I said "nothing much, just maintaining." He laughed and said "man, must be nice." And I sat there after we hung up feeling like I'd just lied to someone who trusts me.
I spent my twenties and early thirties destroying myself for a logistics company. Sold it. Burned out. Rebuilt everything around the idea that less is more. Two hours of work. Three revenue streams that run on their own. No meetings. No obligations. Wake up, check dashboards, go live.
I told that story everywhere. In hostels. Over beers. To strangers at coworking spaces who asked what I do. I became the guy who got out. The one who figured out that the real flex is a Tuesday afternoon with nothing on your calendar.
And it was true. For a while it was the truest thing I'd ever said.
But somewhere around month fourteen of this life, I started getting ideas again. The kind that wake you up before dawn and won't let you go back to sleep. The kind where you fill a notebook in two days and then stare at it feeling something you haven't felt in years.
I felt that pull. And I shut it down. Every time.
Because following it would mean working more than two hours. It would mean caring about something enough to lose sleep over it. It would mean admitting that the freedom I built might not be the last thing I need. And I've already told everyone it's the last thing I need.
That's the trap. You build your identity around the exit. And then you can't move again without blowing up the story.
You know this one even if you've never sold a company. Maybe you left a corporate job and made "I'll never work for someone else again" your whole personality. Then a role came along that actually excited you and you turned it down because taking it would've proved your old coworkers right. Maybe you told everyone you were done with relationships and then met someone worth being serious about and pulled away because commitment didn't fit the narrative. Maybe you moved abroad and built your entire online presence around it and now you miss home and can't say so because you've made the location your identity.
The story you tell about who you are starts as a declaration. Then it becomes a reputation. Then it becomes a cell.
I sat on that project for five months. Five months of opening the doc, feeling the pull, closing it because the guy I'd decided to be didn't build things like that anymore.
What cracked it was a morning out in the water. Nothing day. Small waves. I was just sitting on my board waiting for a set that probably wasn't coming. And it hit me that I was doing the same thing with my work that I used to do with my old life. Playing it safe. Calling it something nicer.
The old version of safe was saying yes to everything. Working every hour. Never stopping. The new version is saying no to everything. Working as little as possible. Never starting.
Same fear. Better branding.
I started building the thing. I don't want to say what it is yet because it might not work and I'm trying to be okay with that. Some mornings I work five hours on it. Some mornings I work one. There's no system. There's no announcement.
I just stopped pretending that the two-hour version of me is the final version of me.
My youngest sister called last week. She's 23. Just started her first real job. She asked if I was still "living the dream." I said yeah. Then I caught myself and said actually, I don't know. I think I'm building something.
She said "good, you were starting to sound bored."
Twenty-three and she heard it before I did.
The version of you that got you here doesn't owe you forever. Sometimes the bravest thing is letting yourself want something again, even if it makes a liar out of everything you said last year.
— Best, Jose
