I'm in a somewhat similar situation to you, but on the upward slope. If you don't mind, what was the breaking point for you? How did you approach your recovery? How much time and effort did you put into getting your business off the ground? How do you manage to combine enjoyable work with delivery (nowadays it is the mantra - everything has to at least help provide value for customer)? How do you handle employee's failures and your own?
I have started to think about these points a lot.
Given I basically have a coworking workshop (it's a 3 friend little webdev company), there is a lot to consider.
Solving and handing over of my current obligations, dedicating to my shop, or starting a new one my way, or finding a new place to soak in more experience (I'm 32, but somehow my brain still works well enough to quickly absorb new stuff).
It got exponentially harder to get out of bed and get to work. I just had to quit because I couldn't show up. I didn't give anytime to interview or find an offer. I was also in a weird situation with regards to immigration. So it was reckless but goes to show how much I had to leave.
>How did you approach your recovery?
Joined a big company, got myself on a path to be comfortable financially, took every weekend off. Picked up hobbies, coded for fun. Worked out, visited doctors, changed my eating habits -- got healthy.
>How much time and effort did you put into getting your business off the ground?
Part of 2015 and 2016 I started working and growing on an old side project of mine until got to a point where I knew I could raise money for. I quit in April 2016 and worked like crazy for a month to raise enough money to hire a couple of engineers, get to feature complete, and start selling (which is what we're still working on now). I wrote about it here: https://amasad.me/2016
>How do you manage to combine enjoyable work with delivery (nowadays it is the mantra - everything has to at least help provide value for customer)?
If you're building a startup it's one of the hardest thing you'll ever do so in my opinion you need to align the mission, the product, and the market you're going after with what you care about. Whether that social good, tech, or business. Given that, it's builtin the company that you should enjoy what you're doing. Then hire people that enjoy that too and it all (seems) to fall into place naturally. To sum up, you're in a position to design your ideal work environment -- do it! (You may fail, but that's better than being stuck with something you don't care about).
>How do you handle employee's failures and your own?
I'd be lying if I said I don't push myself and others around me to be the best they can be. You just need to give feedback regularly so that there are never no big surprises (this is something that you can learn by being at one of the good big companies) and always be kind.
Oh you are the guy/one of the guys who made repl.it! I saw it on HN couple of years ago, it's an awesome product, congrats! I hope you succeed with it.
Don't sweat getting older. My theory is that the capacity to learn doesn't really degrade much if it's used regularly, and that the real issue is that incentives change for older demographics.
I have started to think about these points a lot.
Given I basically have a coworking workshop (it's a 3 friend little webdev company), there is a lot to consider.
Solving and handing over of my current obligations, dedicating to my shop, or starting a new one my way, or finding a new place to soak in more experience (I'm 32, but somehow my brain still works well enough to quickly absorb new stuff).