It’s Time To Go

This past Sunday night I was working on a bike with my son. We’re disassembling an old bike and are going to build a new one from scratch on the existing frame.

We needed to take the chain off, so I went to pop off the side of one of the links. The piece of metal flew off and hit me squarely in the eye. The pain was excruciating and I immediately dropped to the floor, hoping that by some miracle I had managed to close my eyelid before it hit.

I opened my eye and saw nothing but red in my right eye. My vision was completely blurred, and it was obvious something was bleeding where it shouldn’t be.

The next two hours were some of the scariest of my life, as I realized it was quite possible I wouldn’t see again out of that eye. What would I do? How would I work? How would I drive? All of these questions came racing in with no answers.

As I sat in the emergency room for over three hours being treated, my vision slowly started to return. By the end of the night, I was able to see nearly everything as I had before the accident, with the occasional blurry spots and searing pain. It turned out I had only scratched the cornea, and it would be a couple of days to heal.

Here’s a cool picture of my eyeball, where you can see the scratch.

The doctor who treated me was amazed that everything had come back so quickly, and he made a point to tell me how fortunate I was. Several times.

What does any of this have to do with building technology companies? Only this:

If you’re waiting for the right time to start that idea you’ve been talking about, the time is more than likely now. Take the first step today.

If you need a kick in the backside, listen to Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art today.