Figuring out what I want, and where I'm at

Younger college me was at a Weatherspoons (cheap reasturant/bar) with two friends, Matt and Rich, Rich was just as nerdy as us but hid it well, he played a ton of games like Rome: Total War and read the books for Warhammer etc.

Here's a "great" picture of em:

 Matt's on the far left, Rich is on the far right.

  I wasn't much better:

Tonight he couldn't decide if he wanted ice cream or chocolate fudge cake, he closed his eyes and scrunched his face up.

Matt asked him what the hell we was doing.

"Shhh ! I'm consulting the council !"

After I stopped laughing I wondered who'd be on my council. To this day whenever I have something I really don't know how to handle or can't decide, one of the things I'll do is "consult the council".

"Why don't you ask your friends/family, you massive saddo !"

Shut up. I do, but sometimes that doesn't really help, they have their own motivations etc.

My council consists of: Me, me at 14 years old, the me that I want to be at 40, stupid awesome hero me and my three best friends. My biological father (who I haven't seen since I was ~5 and is a complete a hole) has made an appearance only once, when I was really lost.

Recently I've been trying to figure out what I want, and why, usually in the shower or walking to work.




So you probably need to know a little about what I've been up to to understand what I'm thinking about, so settle in, and read some of my story so far.

One of the core things that has driven me since the middle of Uni has been the desire to build and run my own company, something I build from the ground up and pour myself into. I can't remember exactly when I first started thinking about it, but I remember days I'd spend with Ren (one of my best friends) trying to come up with some product/service that we could then go and build.

I was on a sandwich course, which means 2 years at university book-learnin', then an optional year in industry, then a last year book-learnin' again. For my industry year I went to a consultancy in London (how I ended up there is a post on its own).

I was so nervous the first day I almost forgot how to write a for loop in front of him.

I spent most of my time working in an investment bank, doing extra projects for some Microsoft peeps/NHS/Inter-Americas Development bank. I had a ton of fun, my boss made a point of treating me like a new grad, to the point where even people in the company didn't realise I was still at uni. I was given responsibility and put in a position where if I fucked up the company's relations would suffer. After my boss decided that I "was not completely stupid" he asked his boss if he could put me on his team for 2 days a week (instead of me doing stuff at the office). The whole year really built me up, I was offered a contract to sign for a job when I graduated.

When I went back to uni I paid off the rent for a year and bought myself a new computer, I was still working remotely for the inventment Bank, the work was done but they had some reporting every month they wanted me to babysit. I didn't have to worry about money that entire year (and it helped me lighten a couple of people's rainy days).

The reason I'm including this is I want to give you an idea of how relieveing for me the jump from nothing to having a good amount of money (for a student) was. It really felt like I was getting closer to the me I wanted to be. Along with this came the feeling that my parents were seeing me succeed, they have always been super supportive (even when I wanted to go into games development and they didn't undertand what that was), but actually seeing me achieve something must have been wonderful for them, seeing their little kid in a suit working with the bankers, it's easy to feel good about something like that, the "Phew, he's probably going to be okay" feeling.

So I'm back in the final year, after a couple of months of playing Starcraft2 I get down to working on an idea, a nightclub events site, not super original but I think I can do it better than anything out there. That doesn't get much traction, during this my girlfriend mentions a problem they're having at work (a dodgy SEO shop) that I'm sure I can solve. I spend the weekend building a protoype and call the guy up on Monday morning, then go in the same day (wearing my suit) and do a little demo. He's impressed and we go and talk money. I didn't know what else to do so I put on my best drama-student confidence:

"Well Ste if we were in London I can tell you straight away what my company would charge for, it's X, but we ain't in London and I don't come with the same security as an established company, but I know you intend to hire 4 people to do this fulltime so regardless this is valuable to you, I'm going to say that Y is my offer"

We talked around for a bit, he agreed to my initial price, which was double and a bit of what I'd be very happy doing the project for.

I was living in a house with my girlfriend and 2 other awesome friends, we had our other friends over for about week at a time etc and it was great, it was a very childlike existence but it was amazing, I remember on one particular walk back to the train station I thought to myself "I could live the rest of my life like this and be happy", I took a picture to remind me.

Awww ! Wook at his big cuddly face !

By the end of the year I'd done 4 projects for small companies. I had to decide what to do next. I still wanted to start my own company, but I had a different view on it now, I thought "If 99% of companies fail, why not give myself an advantage, I've learned so much from my placement year and this small amount of contracting, why not work as a consultant for a few years, then start a company, that way I'll have the skills and the business chops, along with more contacts".

So I wandered back down to London, working for the same consulting company (and funnily enough going back to the same inventment bank). Since I've been gone my ex boss has left to start his own company, and another guy I really admired wandered off to Japan to build iPad apps. I have been working on a pretty crappy application and haven't learnt as much technically at work as I'd of hoped (to be fair when they placed me onto it work was very thin). So I started making a game with the hopes of selling it and I'm sure you can guess the rest, along with saying to my bosse's boss etc that I'd like to move off, which I will be in 11 days.

But it's my birthday in a few days, I'm going to be 24, recently it was my Dad's ( very technically my step-dad, but he raised me and I love him, he's my Dad) 50th birthday and I've started wondering why I want the things I want and if they'll make me happy.

I love my Mum's stupid grin at seeing how happy Dad is

On the easy, lame superficial side I want a sports car and other stupid status symbols, when I play the five whys with this it turns out it's more about having things that people can't deny are indicators of success. It's childish and I constantly try to uninvite 14 year old me from the meetings (he's still so concerned with what teenage girls find cool), but I can't, part of me will always be like that I reckon. I also want to have enough money to be able to buy all the computer components/tech things I want (within reason).

The next thing I want is to live with all of my friends, in a big dorn-house thing, we all have our own space but hang out. That will probably never happen, but living with my girlfriend (who was one of my best friends for years before that) is a good step, and inviting friends to come stay over is closer still.

I want to build a company, I want to sweat and bleed and cry to get to the point where we don't feel like we have to work, so that we can spend time building the things we want to build. I want to feel independent, like I have a bit more control over my life, nobody can fire me and we feel like a real team, not the "You're a team" feeling from corporate work, the "We could come to blows with eachother and be laughing about it a couple hours after" feeling you get with good friends. That might sound odd, but I have that with my closest friends and it's when you know you're in for life.

I'm very aware that my years are slipping by, that I have to balance living now with working towards the things for my future, recently I saw this and it resonated:

 

Even just writing this out has been a good exercise for me and shows how much I need to work on my writing skills so I think I'm going to be blogging more.

I'm going to think about my next steps and make a list of things I can do almost daily to get closer to them.