~Dsyke Suematsu from his white paper discussed at Why Ad People Burn Out.

Our generation is looking for greater meaning in their work, and we’ve proven that we are willing to compromise deep savings accounts, home ownership, and clear work/life separation in favor of finding and doing something we love.

My decision to pursue a career in entrepreneurship was a difficult decision to make and is proving difficult to follow through on. I did however know that if I had continued on the path I was currently on (chasing a Creative Director position in the agency world) I would burn out long before I was able to create anything meaningful. 

I’ve left the agency, and joined a small (team of 3!) start up. Designing for interaction and building platform for users to use and express themselves, it is exhausting. But burn-out is not a risk. Financing our vision, finding traction in a crowded market, designing a great experience — those are very real and heavy risks. But burn-out is not a risk.

I am building just a bit of what I believe will be a world changing project. I am laying track into a foggy future unknown. I am enjoying working with and associating with others building the internet and trying to understand how this thing is going to work. The internet is a massive project that is open for anyone to work on and I get to own it as much as anyone else does. I still get to make things, but now I get to make them for myself and for people. That opportunity is an exhausting, humanizing challenge.