Marco Arment, founder of Instapaper, on Build and Analyze Episode 92, which is my favorite podcast:

I’ve lived under this constant stress for the last two years, since it’s been my full-time job, this constant stress that I’m going to wake up in the morning check Twitter and check my email and find that someone has launched and taken all my customers away. I literally dread checking my email every morning and dread checking Twitter every morning just a little bit because I think this might have happened.

I have never worried about all my customers going away, but I always wake up with a dread that yesterday’s sales are going to be 0, that I never have enough money in the bank, that I’m never going to realize the vision I set for this company.

I turn 39 today. I was 23 when I started Infinity Softworks. 16 years have passed with a blink of the eye, the ups and downs, the business growing and the business shrinking. Only twice in that time did I ever consider leaving to join another company, once Intel and once Nike. Both times I decided it wasn’t right for me and realized I probably wouldn’t survive a big company’s culture. I’m not very good at being a cog.

There’s days when everything seems to go well, every decision goes the right way, every dollar made is ten times what it was before. And then there are other days, when nothing seems to go right, where the task list is too high, when I look at my kids and realize they are growing up too fast and I have no time to figure out how to stop it.

I spent years trying to figure out how to stop this roller coaster. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no way to do it, enjoy the ride instead. Experience teaches me that the lows are never as low as I think and the highs are never as high as I think, and that the coaster always goes the other direction eventually.

And when it all gets overwhelming or I have big issues to think about, the best way to handle them is to go for a bike ride.

And that’s where I’m headed right now! See ya!