Manifesto Item 7

This is the final item of the manifesto I found hidden away in a notebook a couple months ago. This has been an incredible journey working through them and doing additional introspection into these items that I felt were so important to write down.

Taking a once-hobby and monetizing it into a business is a constant process of holding things in tension--work vs. relaxing, profit vs. inclusion, sustainability vs. rapid growth and so on right down to deciding what and how much to share of my personal self and life in the business line.

I suspect many people, especially those also with a kind of micro-business or side gig or whatever you want to call it, are aware of the tendency toward grind culture and productivity every moment of every day.

To once again reference a favorite movie of mine, Dead Poet's Society, they talk about Carpe Diem--seize the day. The connotation of this is making the most of every single moment of every single day to advance our goals as quickly as possible. Get out there! Do it! And after Charlie Dalton has done something dumb (as teenagers are wont to do) in the name of carpe diem (sucking the marrow out of life), Mr. Keaton tells him that sucking the marrow doesn't include choking on the bone.

Grinding feels like choking on the bone. Working all the time feels like choking on the bone. And when I work all the time, it can put unneeded pressure on those around me to feel like THEY need to work harder, too. And it's this ripple effect of people trying to outwork each other to the goal.
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But what if instead of trying to outwork ourselves to death, we instead honored who we are as people, who our potential customers are as people, who our associates (pattern testers, beta readers) are as people, and so on? What if we spent time publicly honoring ourselves as a person who needs rest and recuperation and had business practices that could accommodate that? Is it possible to hold all these things in tension and still be profitable? I suspect it is, although I am still muddling my way around trying to find that sweet spot.