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The world can wait.

Yep, I am talking to you.

You have too much to do, so many people to please, so many deadlines to meet that you might as well be underwater. This is the point where you have to stop what you’re doing and get a little perspective.

You, my friend, are one person in a very small city, in a small county in an over-populated state at the corner of an average-size continent on an infinitesimal rock spinning around a sun that other suns think is a midget. You live in an unfathomably small galaxy in a universe that is bigger than you have the capacity to comprehend. The reality is, nothing you have going on is that important and your problems are not as big as you think. Your deadlines will not kill you. Telling someone they have to wait will only mean they will wait. With that in mind, slow down buddy, take a step back and ask yourself what is really going to happen if you take the night off…or the weekend…or just take the next few hours and sit on porch with a book? Well, the answer is, nothing major.

Our greatest, and simultaneously most unfortunate gift is the ability to take that big ol universe and make it as small as our problems or tasks. That gift is precious when it is focused on our families, friends and art. But when used to complain or create urgency where there is none that gift can literally bury you.

Life is short. Do your best, but realize that when it comes down to it, you are trading dollars for hours of your life and sometimes it’s not worth it. This is a very difficult thing for business owners and startups to realize. We are so focused on the money and the bills and the progress that we cannot see for forest for the trees. No deadline is worth your piece of mind.

So, slow down buddy…

…you’re doing too much.

I ran into a high school friend at lunch and among the obliging questions we volleyed back and forth, he asked me what I do. I told him about the business I own, about the different businesses I have started and some of the new business ideas I would pursue in the near future. He laughed and said, “Oh, so, you’re one of those ‘start-up guys’, huh?”

That question stayed with me all day.

I’d never thought of myself as a “StartUp Guy” before. In fact, I have always thought of the Startup Guy as an utterly fearless young entrepreneur who makes money by the bucketload. He is the guy who can come up with a business idea out of thin air and has the fortitude and courage to make that idea a success. You know him, he is the nice-blazer-wearing, fohawk-rocking, cappuccino-drinking smooth-talker who can walk into a room of Fortune 500′s and disintegrate their hairpieces with his ideas. I am not, don’t want to be and will never be that guy.

From day one of “starting-up”, I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what I was doing, no concept of what success was or wasn’t and I even had to have my vanilla sidekick walk me through incorporation. Don’t tell the IRS, but it took me almost a year to get my first accountant. There was nothing magical or smart about my venture into starting a business.

But, even now, as I really think about it, my quixotic definition of a StartUp Guy was flawed: it was too romantic. No one is that guy, or at least not really. At some point, every StartUp is scared and clueless, praying all the time that a potential client or investor will understand their vision. The truth is, what drove me to create my own business is the same substance burning at the core of every StartUp: Passion.

I love what I do. Love it like a dog loves smelling butts. I’ve worked for big and small companies, worked for crappy bosses, took jobs I hated to get by and quit jobs I liked, yet, in the middle of a recession, 90% passion, 5% courage, 4% naivety and 1% luck, pushed me to do whatever I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do and made the decision to just do that. That decision is why I am able to write this post, why I wake up every morning excited about my day. Every business I start, fail or succeed, makes me a better person, a contributor to society and builds my courage to continue pursuing what I want. I created my own job. I created my opportunities. I can create whatever I want, because my passion is stronger than my fear. That idea, creating with passion, is what makes the StartUp Guy. In creating with passion, the StartUp Guy is changing the face of business, creating his own options in an environment that encourages the yielding of passions.

What I would tell anyone who has a deep passion, something they think about in quiet moments and wish they were doing, is to go and do it. Go big, no, go huge and go stupid. You’ll be scared, you’ll have no idea what you’re doing, but it will be fun. If you are reading this and thinking, ‘but I have to pay my bills and take care of my family,’ then this is the perfect time. You will always have to pay bills and will always have to take care of your family. This won’t change. But you can create your own change–your own chance.

Go be a StartUp Guy. Don’t grow old wondering about it.

Man, so many things have changed as of late, most of which had no real catalyst other than evolution. When I was twenty, all I wanted to do was become a successful writer. On some level, I thought that would just happen; that the effort to make it a reality wasn’t necessary because, well, I thought I was destined for that. This, of course, was twenty-year-old me, all the brashness and talent, but incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. It occurs to me now that what held me back was fear–or the Resistance: that thing inside you that always says, “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that…” or “You’re not good enough to do that, don’t kid yourself,” or “If they don’t like what you write, it will only make you feel bad, do don’t bother.”

What has changed most, in me and in my life, is learning to recognize the resistance when it comes and work through it. So, I quit my job, even though the Resistance told me, “you can’t quit, you have a family.” I started multiple businesses when Resistance tells me, “they will all fail and you will fall on your face.” I put my goal in front of me, thought deeply about the steps it will take to achieve it and got to work, even though through it all Resistance fights my every move. It can’t beat the thirty-year-old me and it knows this. Only now am I back to writing, back to thinking artfully and not just plugging away hours for a paycheck. Only now are my goals more than just apparitions. Things change, but I am not afraid of what baggage it may or may not carry, because now I can handle it.

Be fearless in the face of your goals. Step back and see every situation for what it really is. Know that there is no risk, there is only reward…whether that reward be the completion of your intent or the lesson of knowing which path has a dead end. Go confidently always.

I got this semicolon to celebrate the construction of written language. It’s placed on the back of my neck, separating mind and body—two independent (but closely related) “clauses.” Though realistically, one can’t survive without the other, figuratively, we often make decisions relying solely on logic (head), emotions (heart), or impulse (gut). But really, we function best when they all work together.

When people on the street ask, “Because I’m a nerd” will be an easier explanation.

It is in 200-pt Times New Roman and was done by Chico at Stingray Tattoo in Allston, MA. It’s my fourth (nerdy) tattoo.

So, the other day I had a simple thought, “If you no longer have a desire to go out on a limb, quit your job and go find a tree.” That thought has been vibrating in my head so much lately. I think we all have a belief, at some point in our lives, that we will create, do, or accomplish something that will change the world–that we well put our dent into the universe. Somewhere that desire to do something novel gets lost. We wake up, go to work, keep our heads down, collect a paycheck and do it all over again. The desire is hidden in that rat-race shuffle, paled to process such that a once radiant thing is hardly more than an annoyance; one is so strong that we snicker and condemn those whose desires still burn, “You’ll never be able to do that,” we say, “It’s impossible,” we declare, “You’re wasting your time.”

The truth is, we only live once. If you have ever had a desire to do something, do it. Today. Everything else is an excuse. Your obligations should not keep you from your dream, but inspire it–drive it into fruition. And don’t confuse making millions with accomplishing your opus. These things are monumentally different. Do something because you want it. It will not be easy, but neither was The Creation of Adam or The Republic, works that simply by being have changed the world and will be marveled through all time. What sparkles of genius forged them into reality, sparkle within you as well. What separates you, me and Plato is fearlessness; pushing through the BS and realizing you can do anything you want if you want it enough. Never, ever let anyone tell you what you cannot do. Go big.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. ” -Thoreau.