I've told people that running your own business is a lot like playing one of those racing games where you get 30 seconds to get to the next checkpoint at which point you'll earn yourself more time. On several occasions it has felt like I have literally ran out of time only to coast through a checkpoint and be gifted more time.
Note: I know it's not a perfect analogy. I'm comfortable with that.
The book "Founders at Work": http://www.foundersatwork.com/
I think it comes from the sudden lack of responsibility. When you're in a startup, everything you do matters: if you succeed, it's because you rocked, and if you fail, it's because you screwed up. This makes you feel incredibly alive, but it's also incredibly stressful. When you go back to collecting a paycheck and have to grotesquely screw up to get fired, all that stress just evaporates, and it's like coming down off a massive high.
I still wanna try it again, and hopefully end up with a success instead of a failure next time. But I felt like I'd reached the end of my endurance when I gave up: I'd given it my 110% and it still wasn't enough given my current experience level. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything though.
How weird to use that metaphor. I passed a stone during college, and simply being rid of the pain was an amazing high, without the need for drugs. For a week afterward, I felt as though I had just been born. (Coincidentally, the next time I felt anything close to that euphoria was when I turned in the final draft of my dissertation.)
I suppose that once you've grown accustomed to severe pain, having it removed is a revolution.
I am wondering that it must have been such a magical moment
- suddenly knowing that the "stress" is gone forever...
I am sure it must change everybody.
Also, I really liked a lot your essay about stuff - this is probably one of my favorites. Also explains why you used to keep using your old powerbook :-)
When I was in grad school I once had a kidney stone so bad that I ended up in an emergency room on Thanksgiving Day. They gave me some fairly strong opiate intravenously. If you've ever had something like this, you understand the appeal of heroin. Especially coming after a week of being curled up into a ball with pain. The feeling when we sold was a less intense but longer lasting version of this.
In retrospect, we could have made Viaweb a lot less painful by spending/raising less money. That was what made it so stressful. But startups were more expensive then. Or at least, everyone thought they had to be.