How to be an asshole

I’m an asshole. As any goodhearted Dutch person I try to be direct and honest in my dealing with other people. However, in most social interactions directness is a sign of insensitivity, a sign of being a dick. But, as many of my friends can attest, I don’t mind being an insensitive dick. I think it runs in my family.

Yesterday I had the unpleasant fortune of having to tell someone that I did not want them to join in an upcoming social event. I won’t go into details on why I didn’t want her to join, that doesn’t need to be shared with the rest of the world.

The problem was, I share a large social circle with her and I do not actually dislike her, it’s easy enough to be direct and honest with someone you dislike, less true if you don’t want to put their head on a stick and burn their innards. To cut a long story short, my attempt at being tactful (and operating within what I consider a shared social paradigm) was unsuccessful. To put it mildly.

Lessons Learned

  • Being direct and being tactful can have the same end result.
  • Maybe I’m not an insensitive dick after all. Maybe.
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Entrepreneurship is only sexy if you’ve never done it before

I honestly believe that most people who haven’t started their own businesses yet underestimate some of the emotional swings that the pendulum of entrepreneurship throws at people.

But Spencer Fry puts it a lot more eloquently than I’ll ever be able to:

One day you’re on the top of the world — you’ve hired the person you dreamed about, you received your first term sheet, you pocketed your first revenue, etc. — and the next moment the world feels like it’s crumbling down around you — traction is slowing, you have to fire an employee, revenue is slowing, employees are losing morale, your shipping deadlines are not being met, etc.

Read the rest of Spencer’s excellent post here: Startups: Stress and Depression.

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