Here we go again: Chapter II and the need to pause.
A few weekends ago, we had our annual shareholder meeting where we discussed our inaugural fund’s performance to date, presented a few of our companies, and reflected on what’s gone well, what could be better, and what to expect next.
We are extremely grateful that all of our companies had survived 2020, our investors seemed happy with our performance so far, and we have the final deal for our fund planned out.
Naturally, the topic of ‘what’s next’ came up during the meeting, in response to numerous whispers about the topic in the weeks prior.
The thing is, I was dreading the topic, and that wasn’t right.
I’m doing something I love, and yet, I was definitely not looking forward to the conversation, and not looking forward to potentially being given the mandate to do more.
It was crystal clear at that moment that I was reaching burnout.
I then realised that I actually hadn’t taken a proper break since we started.
Living in COVID times had completely altered my perception of time and space (doesn’t help that I live on the equator — every day, same weather, same length of day) and so while it has actually been 3 years since I left my corporate life, and 2.5 years since we officially started our first fund, I had completely lost track of the time.
Ok, sure, I’ve had weekends, and even a whole week of vacation in Greece back in 2019, but these were not true breaks — I still squeezed in work in the mornings and nights, took calls, and at all times of the day thought / worried about our companies (we even had a revolution to contend with) and potential investors.
Honestly, it was probably not the right time to take a true break during these past few years anyway, as companies were still early and we were still fundraising.
Now was the right time.
So… I took a two week break and it was glorious.
The first thing I needed to do was catch up on sleep — goal of 9–10 hours a night. No alarms.
The second thing I needed to do was ensure I had a clean break to decompress— two days of cellphone off time (unlikely that emergencies would happen over the…