We went from living a very charmed, spoiled life, to living a stressful, drama-filled existence. There were so many times I longed to be back in the "good-old days" of lounging at the country club pool, awaiting hubby's return from the golf course.....instead we were struggling to figure out how to pay this month's bills and wondering whether or not we had made the hugest mistake of our lives by risking EVERYTHING for this "vision". Some days I wondered if hubby hadn't really had a vision, rather he had dragged us unwittingly into his mid-life crisis and we were never going back to our old life. This internet startup was really an illusion and he would end up losing every penny we ever had and our family would be destroyed.
But something really beautiful happened on the way to poverty......I fell in love all over again. Not overnight, but over a few years and now I feel like despite the struggles, the pain, the sheer desperation you experience when you are "down to zero", if you survive it - you get to enter a "secret club"....The ironic thing about this whole mess is that my marriage would have ended in divorce if I actually had enough money to afford one! But when times were really bad in the business and the marriage, we clung to each other and somehow survived and now that we are starting to move toward rebuilding our financial position and getting a foothold on life again, we are so grateful that we didn't have two nickles to rub together otherwise we would have gone our separate ways and destroyed the family! We bonded as a family, we realized that nothing else matters in life except the connection we have to each other and the intimacy that we share now (so much better than the materialistic life we led in our old life) - we have arrived at a place now that we never would have gotten to had we not struggled like we did!
Today's "words of wisdom": this is a business that consumes your life and you spend most of your time looking into the future (we are going to get funded and be a big hit one day), and looking in the rear view mirror (too many should-have, could-have, would-haves), that you can very easily miss the everyday pleasures...take time to stop and celebrate the "small steps" you've made as a business, as lovers, as a family - however small the progress, stop and enjoy the moment!!! The good times are few and far between - grab a hold of them and celebrate!
