Solo "co-founding" is HELL. I am doing it until I can find another Arabic speaking hacker who can switch between ar and en and able to travel 20% of the year (e

Solo "co-founding" is HELL. I am doing it until I can find another Arabic speaking hacker who can switch between ar and en and able to travel 20% of the year (emphasis on hacker.) I am bleeding, man. Most days pass with me either not doing much of anything but feeling sorry for myself, or going on 3 day streaks kicking, minor but important, ass and taking pseudonyms. You could be the most skilled Jack of all trades, but the moment you start solo you can count on spending 50% of your time LEARNING on the job. Just a list of things I have done since I woke up today: 1) responded to emails in 4 different languages. wrote some. 2) wrote CSS, for 5 different browsers until my arm hurt. 3) wrote html, javascript, postfix config, make files, shell, and C. 4) wrote excerpts for manual. 5) took phone calls, pausing between them as I switch my spoken language. 6) bitched about Internet Explorer. 7) found out I was benchmarking my fast object store on the wrong server; I was ssh'ed to my fat box at home, not the deployment VPS. 8) made 1 pixel wide graphics with gradient for repeat-x; got RSI with it. In between all this I read industry RSS feeds. Then talked to family, friends, acquaintances and potential angels; adjusting my pitch for each, encouraging some and scaring others. All this time I'm drinking coffee, smoking and eating in my car with laptop. Or I am crossing the street with notebook, gesturing wildly and modeling interaction and snappy animated ajaxy stuff with my hands, oblivious to the oncoming Ford Tauri. You will talk with tens of people everyday and NONE will know how you truly feel or where things really stand. You just can't; your loved ones wouldn't understand, and the cognoscenti in your social circle couldn't be trusted. There you are, a poet sworn to secrecy, a bard turned backup vocalist for white noise. It's draining. But it's GOOD :-)