I helped build a billion-dollar company. Now I’m a nobody.
From the top of one world, to the bottom of another
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There are, of course, many great ways to get high.
Thanks to seeing Requiem for a Dream as a teenager, I’ve stayed away from the hard kind. I prefer to create my own hallucinations, thank you very much.
But there are plenty more legal, and certainly encouraged, ways to get high. And for me, none better than the drug of validation and status.
Oh damn, that’s some good shit.
As you all know by now and no doubt think about all the time, I used to be a Pretty Big Deal. Respected, admired, and even hated in that special way someone gets when they’re successful while also young and way too obnoxious. I advanced quickly in my career, faster than most, which offered me a swift and significant dose of the greatest of all drugs: prestige.
Big titles? Great. Impressive accomplishments? Even better. My enemies admitting they were wrong about me and that I actually am quite impressive? Well, one can dream, can’t they.
People looked up to me and wanted to recreate my journey. People looked down at me and wondered: “WTF is this kid doing here?” It’s the latter kind that really got me high; in fact, it might be my Ikigai.
So when all the status and validation and ego got ripped away when I stepped away from the corporate world nearly 3 years ago, I lost that buzz. And now, I’m feeling the lingering effects of that status-bender.
I’m hardly the only addict. You know the type: the many who need to maintain the high.
The guy who’s been successful for years—could probably coast, maybe even step back—but can’t. He needs that next deal, that next $$$, that next room where people know his name.
This guy doesn’t even know who he is unless he keeps chasing the rush.
Or the woman who keeps reaching, who says “after this next thing, I’ll be good.” After she makes partner. After her next bonus. After the <whatever>. There’s always one more hit between her and peace. She thinks, only then, for once, she’ll feel done.
She won’t.
But you don’t need big ambitions like this to get hooked. Only a few dreams and some intermittent reinforcement here and there does the trick. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I mean…
For anyone who’s been through a major life transition, professional or otherwise, you know what it feels like to lose that high, willingly or not. You know what it feels like to have built up something, maybe even something great, putting in all that goddamn work, only for it to do you no good now that you’re here.
In my own transition, I’ve passed the initial “lostness” feeling—the emptiness that comes when you have no idea where you’re going. But this new stage I’m in, a second hangover, really sucks.
And I want that high again.
To catch you up to date: over the last year, I wrote my first fiction novel and am now trying to get it published.
The writing of the book: fulfilling.
The selling of the book: humbling.
Here’s how I know I’m still in a state of withdrawal: I crave validation in my new “mountain” immediately. I feel guilty when I relax, like I’m being watched. And I still want my old colleagues to think about me.
(Do they think about me? Why don’t they think about me? I don’t ever come up? Not even once?)
It’s like I’ve come to peace with losing my prior status, only to wish I had new status in this new domain.
In the writing world, no one cares that I used to be a Pretty Big Deal. They don’t care if I helped build a $2B+ company (yeah, BILLION!), or a lot of people reported to me, or I did talks at conferences, or was a Senior Vice Peasant, or whatever.
On top of that, while creative endeavors help satisfy the intrinsic motivations, they do little for the extrinsic ones. There’s no money in this game and I’ve conveniently timed this transition to coincide with a surge of AI slop into the market. Just great, Rick!
The most likely outcome of my art is irrelevance.
Jeff, who built/sold a 9-figure business and walked away from it, nailed this when I interviewed him:
“When you get to where I am, it’s time to embark on a second hero’s journey. But the catch is all the things you learned before are gonna work against you now.
Because the dragon’s already dead. So now it’s different. Your sword does you no good at all.”
I want my book to be read. To be loved. To make lists and win awards and get optioned by Netflix. It doesn’t matter that none of this is likely… I still want it.
And hey, I’ll just take one of those hits, man. Only this last project. Please?
My prior prestige-filled-network? Does me no good in this new world, though this moment is exactly when some network/reputation would help most. I wrote a dark, intense post-apocalyptic story with a psychological bite. You know how many people from my old world care to read something like that?
Consider this:
100 people used to report to me. Now, I’m not sure if 100 people will read my book.
I’m no longer a Pretty Big Deal. I’m a Nothing Deal.
I know what I’m supposed to say here. This is the part of the essay where I show you I’m now enlightened, that I’m above all this nonsense, and here’s how you can be too. Something like: “I’m a nobody, and that’s okay.”
Not this time. Not today.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t still want a dose of that old drug. Just one last hit of validation, one last high on this project and I’ll be done. I promise.
Tomorrow, I quit. Today, I get high.
The Way of Work is a newsletter for mid-career professionals who are successful on paper, but suspect work can’t deliver what it promised. This is part of the series, How to Be Irrelevant: on creativity and identity after the hunger to be impressive wears off. A few good ones:
Or if you want to know where the addiction started:
Can resonate a lot with this, as I imagine the vast majority of people who read this, especially given how society conditions us to tie success and ultimately identity to work. Not sure if you've read it, but David Brooks "The Second Mountain" deals a lot with the issue you describe. His whole point is that most people spend the first part of life chasing success, status, building something, and then at some point it either ends or just stops feeling like enough.
It's fairly funny that society puts the idea of success as the whole basis for identity in the first place given how shaky and inconsistent most people experience success anyway! It works while you’re in it and as you describe feels like an immense drug high, but once it’s gone there’s nothing underneath. Brook's answer isn’t really “find a new game”, it’s more about shifting towards commitments, like people, a vocation that feels like service, community, that kind of thing. Basically moving from what you achieve to what you’re responsible for.
Ryan Holiday’s "Ego Is the Enemy" feels related too, but more as a way to avoid getting too wrapped up in the first place. "The Second Mountain" feels more like what happens after the fact.
This level of self honesty and the ability to gently poke fun at oneself is a lost art in this hustle-grift-hype-achievement society, and it’s one I sorely miss. Thank you for this refreshing hit of courage. Chasing gold stars is indeed addictive and heavily reinforced, but we need EVERYONE who woke up from it to be shouting alarms to everyone. Just look at the world we sleep-built in that smoke-filled opium den. And fwiw, your book sounds absolutely up my alley.