Ask HN: How do I pull the trigger and start?
Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice, maybe some direction, or maybe just someone to kick my ass to tell me what I’m missing. I’m currently working with a good company paying me decent but I feel like I’m not going anywhere. Actually I started feeling this a while back a few years ago and thought of starting my own thing. Why? because I know I can grow myself more and put the full day towards a visible end goal. Where I’m today, I don’t see one. I wake up, goto work, come home, spend time with family, work on my side project, goto sleep and repeat. There are times when my side project takes a back seat because I’d been spent through the day. There are often times I find myself daydreaming at ‘work’ in a meeting about what’s the next thing I’m going to be doing on my side project, maybe a new feature would be nice or how I’d attract customers etc.

So what’s the problem, right? Why don’t I just quit? Because between myself, my wife, and an infant, I’m also supporting 4 other adults; my parents and grandparents. I’m 32 by the way. I’ve got a house to run and support the expenses needed to run a house, the baby and shit just comes up during the day. I’ve always put other people ahead of me and maybe that was my mistake. I’ve always thought to get someone else comfortable before thinking about myself. What bothers me now is that I used to believe that it’ll get better but it isn’t getting better. I find myself taking on more responsibilities, more demands and more expectations on me and there’s always some fucking reason why I shouldn’t quit my job to just go full throttle in working my own business. Mostly the reasoning is that how are we going to support the house, there are other people that I’m supporting, I’ve got a kid and I’ve got to think of him. I AM thinking of him and where I can take our family years from now if I start going hard on my own now. But then, there’s that Risk guilt-trip bs. Wait until we’re more stable she says, but doing this I’m going to just keep getting older and who knows if it’ll actually be getting any better.

I feel like I’ve got this vision of where I want to be, I’m sure like everyone else. I think I know the way but I keep hitting a block actually getting going. Now I’m married and supposedly more responsible. Is this what’s called a catch-22, in order to do something I have to do something else that is kind of depending on the first thing I’m doing?

Have any of you found yourself in a similar situation that you felt you were tied down and tried getting out of this rut? I don’t want to just let the people who depend on me hang but because of them, I’m hanging. I don’t see myself doing what I’m doing now when I’m 40 and I sure don’t want to be doing this then. My fear is that 8 years down, I’m going to look back at today and say some bullshit like ‘I should have tried harder or I didn’t give it a shot’. I think that will kill all that’s me. I’m scared of being at that spot looking back and justifying my unsatisfactory actions on a disguise of responsibility.

I’m fine with trying and failing, but I can’t afford to give up my job, drop my income and take this Risk. That’s the dogfood I get to hear all the time so I’m just repeating it here. We’re just breaking even so savings are very low.

Any thoughts?