.. and my own anecdote. I am FI for practical purposes, and did on and off stuff for the past few years. Sometimes six months without anything, then a few days or weeks of parttime consulting, that sort of thing. All those pants-optional days were nice. But I don't feel I am definitely done with getting out and about yet for a number of reasons: I could use a bit of structure, a place to vent my ideas (beyond this forum
), and there a number of interesting (to me) things that would be fun to work on with a small group of people.
Last year I started a venture - my involvement in that is now ending (and I didn't make any money from it). Was at 20% of my time the last few months, so pretty low stress to begin with.
Currently in discussions with a company to help start a new venture, this time I'll ask for a bit of compensation, and if it works out a decent equity portion too. The out of pocket number I asked for is silly low on purpose, my market value is about 5 times. We discussed going zero compensation even, but both parties decided that is not really a smart thing to do.
And yes: the anxiety is indeed building: this will be a full-time thing with responsibilities, deadlines, longer days etc ... I'm pretty confident rationally I can pull it off, but emotionally it feels daunting. Nevertheless I'm going to try it - assuming I can get my own rhythm back up to acceptable standards there likely will be lots of fun to be had.
It takes days (even weeks) for example to put together a simple presentation that only took hours when I was "active".
Worst case scenario: I fail miserably, reputation in one area is ruined and I'm back home, ready to travel the world. Best case: I can afford my second home in New Zealand.
