Thanks for saying that. Comments like yours have prompted me to reconsider my goals as of late. For a couple of years now, I was sure that I wanted to live the startup dream: move to the Bay Area, work for an early stage startup (or even pursue my own), let it take over my life, compete compete compete... However, now I'm not so sure that's how I want to spend the rest of my twenties.

I would still love to work at a startup at some point, but I'm not going to rush into it. I want to take advantage of my youth to discover more things that make me happy. I want to travel—a lot. I want to learn new languages. I want to meet amazing people. I also want to design and build things, but I don't think that it has to take over my life.

I'm very fortunate to be where I am now: fresh out of college, already doing something that I enjoy, and making enough money to be comfortable while working a reasonable number of hours per week. Do I have to dive immediately into the startup world to be happy? I don't think so.

Here are a few other posts that have hit home recently:

http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-mo...

"In short, I felt that given a finite lifespan, there were more fulfilling and enjoyable ways to spend some of my healthiest years than 40+ hour weeks in an office."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213386

"I think the kind of worry in this post is a response to the world born out of hyper-competitiveness, and I don't think its a healthy one."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213736

"His mission statement shouldn't be that he wants a better epitaph. Other people get to write his epitaph, and by that time he'll be fucking dead. It's out of his control. What is in his control: whether his life was meaningful to himself. Did it express his unique talents, did it give him and others joy, did it help others? Did he make his own rules about how to evaluate his life or was he a slave to the caprices of fame and fortune? And this is about so much more than just a career."