Jan 1 2023
I’ve had some health challenges which I decided to keep private. But this has been creating stress for me and those around me for too long. So here’s the simple truth:
I had a brain tumor.
It was successfully resected and turned out to be benign.
I am incredibly lucky and eternally grateful to so many people for so much.
In my enthusiasm to get back to life, and against the recommendation of many professionals, I came back to work too soon, ramped up too fast and took on too much. And even as my first set backs occurred when I got Covid I powered through, fooling myself it was just a matter of time to recover.
But that didn’t turn out to be the case and despite the many rehab programs I engaged in enthusiastically, the complications compounded and eventually just burned me out. Following some concerning signals, Doctors told me it is vital for me to reset my recovery and start by taking a year out to have the best chance of regaining my full health.
After a lot of struggling to find alternatives, frustration, denial, and other strong emotions, I’m finally accepting this reality and going to take a sabbatical. I not only want my full health back but I really miss my resilience and want to return to a life without the current experience I have of things unexpectedly derailing or exhausting me.
This is particularly hard for me as so much of my life has been wrapped up in the work I love in innovation and entrepreneurship, and latterly in mentorship and learning to teach. Right now however, I need to take myself off the playing field, at a minimum to give everyone else a chance to play at their best, unhindered by me.
Underscore.VC is in great hands, never better actually. It’s a joy to have already seen a natural leadership transition play out the way we planned for it when starting the firm as a multigenerational partnership, investing in great founders that themselves become independently successful.
Yet as I discussed with one of my longest-standing investors and LPs, even letting go is a process. And so I’m working to off-board all my other commitments with dignity and respect to everyone around me and hope to start my sabbatical at the beginning of February.
I’ll see you all officially in 2024. Until then please expect nothing because then I can’t disappoint anyone. Being a type A personality that has been a lot of my challenge this past year as I didn’t want to let anyone down so I rushed back to work, only to feel like I let everyone down by having to take this reset. I’ve learned that lesson. Now I’m putting my own oxygen mask on first, so to speak.
Thanks to anyone who has read this for even caring. I’m indebted to you all for all I have. I am beyond lucky and grateful for all the people in my life, and that’s what I really care about. So I look forward to being there for you when you need it sometime in a healthier happier moment in my life, something I envisage with optimism, as I haven’t lost my spirit in any of this.
In the meantime, in the immortal words of the Beatles “There will be an answer, let it be.”