Message to Self: It’s gonna be worth it

I wrote this a couple of days ago as I was feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and a little hopeless about my current situation. Wanted to share that with other, in hope that it’s something they can relate to.

I’m a little stressed. You know, it’s been a very long stretch of time. Not only am I stressed, I feel lonely, exhausted, and a very tiny bit hopeless.

I started this startup journey about one year and 2 months ago, with enthusiasm and excitement to really change the educational system. But this process has been dire and slow and slowly, it is, killing me from the inside.

I’m still working on this alone, currently no professors/students using it, not much money coming in on the side. This instability and uncertainty has truly gotten the best of me.

Sometimes, like at this moment, I just want to stop everything completely and start a new. I want to drop everything and recharge, but then I realize that shit, if it was easy, everyone would be successful. If becoming a billionaire was easy, everyone would be one.

It’s hard and it’s going to even get more harder. It’s hard to convince people to trust what you’re building when they just don’t see it. It’s hard to progress because people just don’t give a shit.

People tell me that I should be proud of myself for being able to do what I have done and accomplished, but I still feel empty from the inside.

It’s not just college that sucked which made me feel this way. It’s just the feeling of not being able to control everything. I can’t control how professors/students like my app. I can’t control whether I get into an accelerator, I can’t control if someone wants to join me, but I wish I did.

This sense of not being able to control things, on top of things not going well, on top of being very unstable financially, on top of being alone all the time has taken a huge toll on me.

I want to feel purposeful again and that purpose will come from building and doing something people will love and enjoy. It’s hard to building something that no one later uses. Actually, to me, it not only hurts, but I feel useless.

I want to be able to change the world. I want to be successful, and I realized that it’s fucking hard. Being able to manage your emotions, your financial situation, and still work on something that no one is using can be hard and is.

But this is my process. It’s not going to be great all the time. It’s not going to be amazing all the times. It’s this period of lows, stress, pain, grind, solitude that I will learn how to become a better entrepreneur and a better individual.

I care too much about the result. If I build something, I’m thinking about how people who use it could become better off using it. I care about that more than going through this process of making it happen.

Like I mentioned, people said I should be proud of myself, but being proud of myself doesn’t suddenly fixes or changes my situation. I can pat myself on my back and seconds later, it’s all the same again.

It hurts. I feel sometimes that I am just not made for this. I feel like I suck at it. This feeling makes me want to wish that I could just disappear somewhere and forget everything.

People say I am young and it’s going to be a huge learning process/curve for me. It is. But maybe it is my fault. I compare myself too much to other people, like Mark Zuckerberg, who was running a company with 6 million users at age 21.

Maybe because Bill Gates was a running a business that generated $1 million at age 21. I compare myself to these people that are probably one in a billion and I ask myself “Why can’t I be them?” What’s stopping me from being them?

Maybe I need to realize that I am my own person and I have my own distinct path to whatever I am trying to do. I am not Zuck or Gates. I am Keshav.

I shouldn’t be comparing myself to what those guys did at age 21. I need to figure out how can I maximize what I am going to be accomplish at this age.

Snap back to reality, and it still is. I want to make a change, inspire a change, and do all that, but just imagine how amazing it would be to do that after going through what I am going through now.

Going through this painful phase right now will make everything ahead of me worthwhile. Just like how without the lows, the highs in life wouldn’t be highs — it would always be constant. Just like that, the lows in this startup phase is what makes the highs in this journey so rewarding.

Whether it happens or not, just stick through. Understand that all the great founders have gone through this — the pain and the stress. Everyone has different stories and you have yours.

It’s not about being the youngest billionaire, it’s about being someone who truly impacts the world in positive ways. Whether that happens when I am 21 or 31 or 41 or 61, just remember that it’s going to be worth it.

It’s going to hurt, but it’s going to be fun. It’s going to suck, but it’s gonna be worth it. It’s okay to feel all these negative emotions, but it’s important to not let them control how I feel or approach my journey.

Honestly, it already feels good to just write this out. I feel like I just spilled how I felt here. I feel better.

You got this Keshav! Go now, and start jabbing!