Last night and today were bad days. Actually, it’s been a bad 3 weeks – I just didn’t realize it. About 3 weeks ago the data feed that powered the website running subscriptions stopped working…permanently.  Without the feed it renders the website impotent, as the entire site is built of the fact that people have up to day information. But it wasn’t until last night that I learned not only that our website wasn’t refreshing current data, but that it was never to be refreshed again.

When I first read the note from our developer, I don’t think the full implication hit me. The idea of the site not working just doesn’t register. I’ve been working on this site for literally years. To one day wake up and find that it is no longer working and won’t for the foreseeable future just doesn’t compute.

But within an hour my brother also saw the note and said, “This looks like trouble. Do you see a way around this”, to which I replied, “Nope, we’re screwed.”. That’s when it set in. That’s when I allowed the consequences of of what happened to hit me. As is usually the case with emotions, I am more aware of how I am responding emotionally than actually feeling immense emotions about it. “I should be really upset about this. This is something to be upset about. Can you just walk away from all the money and energy you put into this?”, were some of the things going on in my internal dialogue. I was and am upset about this. I’m not ready to quit on this. The time and money I’ve spent cannot end here.

And yet…

I have feelings of potential relief. Doing entrepreneurial means that you are never doing enough for your own business. You can’t just leave your work at the office. It means that the wonderful time I get to spend with my family always has a nagging question with it – should I be working on the business? And of course, it goes both ways, when I’m spending time on the business, there’s a nagging question in my mind – should I be spending time with my children? Often for me this means that I tend to do neither completely well. I struggle to be fully engaged with my family and I struggle to be fully engaged with my business. So the potential relief is that maybe I can fully engage with the other things in my life like my family.

But I’d be super non-self-aware to think that not having my business to make me feel guilty about my priorities. That’s just who I am. That’s my M.O. Whatever I’m doing right now is always brought down by what I could be doing instead of what’s to come. Why is it that when I have an appointment in an hour, I can’t get any work done? It’s not like I’m prepping for the meeting. If that were the case then good on me, but I’m so caught up in the fact that I have a meeting soon that I can’t focus on what else can be done. And once I get in the meeting? I’m thinking about the meeting or what I could be doing instead of that meeting.

Anyway, the question I’ve been asking myself is whether or not I’m depressed. (Again with the self-awareness, I know.) But I think the answer is no. Honestly, I tried to convince myself that I should be. But depression would only come if I’m actually going to walk away from this project. And I’m not. I may have lost my early adopter customers and may lose my business partners, but I’m still not giving up. No way. I’m going to find a solution to get the data flowing again. I’m going to pay for it and I’m going to continue investing in the business. I’m convinced the site can and will be successful. Up until today, we had 5 really consistent subscribers to the service who were paying faithfully each month. I paid a lot of money to get those subscribers, but we had them. That means that the platform was doing something. It was on it’s way to being profitable. I may be a glutton for punishment, but I’m absolutely convinced the idea is going to make me self-sustaining. And that is my goal – to be self-sustaining.

So, yes, it’s been a bad couple of days, but I will carry on. I will rise above this. I will double down and make this thing work.