You Can’t Do That

Jake Doe Burning Bright: This was a favorite of my former business partner Bryan Mundy, who, after an especially bad meeting facing the naysayers, would always say in a playful voice, “We can do it!”

The naysayers have pecked away at me during this process of writing my first book.

It’s rarely been a frontal assault, instead arriving with silence, a critical question, or just a general lack of encouragement.

I’m old and wise enough to let ninety percent just slide off my duck back, before pocketing the other ten percent and using it to fuel my fire.

We used to comment on this same negativity in the start-up tech world. The truth is some people just take pleasure in shooting down ideas and dreams, believing it makes them seem smart, not realizing that it’s the easiest thing in the world to shoot down a new idea. What’s hard is finding the kernel of truth or creative genius in that idea and encouraging that kernel to grow.

Evie would tell you these naysayers are looking at the world through a lens of fear that seeks to “constrict and control”, while the ones seeking to cultivate that grain of genius are the ones living in love, opening up the world for themselves as they open it up for others.

Outside of my parents and sister who had courtside seats to the creation of Jake Doe Burning Bright, two of my biggest supporters were friends who’d known me the longest, even though we hadn’t spent any time together lately.

My best friend starting at around the age of fourteen and my high school girlfriend have been nothing but encouraging and optimistic, seeking out early chapters to read. A part of them still sees me as a small-town teenager who makes all A’s on his English papers and seems poised to take on the world, and, likewise, I still see them, know them, and love them as their beautiful eighteen year-old core selves, before the messy layers of life piled on to complicate things.

So, here’s to family and the oldest of friends. I hope you don’t ignore them and neglect them like I’ve done in stretches of my life, but if you have, find a way to reconnect and let them know that you still appreciate them now—just like you appreciated them way back then.