I didn’t want to write about business on my personal site anymore. Yet, there are times when I want to write about my relationship with entrepreneurship, and that’s what this post is about.

I’m overwhelmed with questions on Quora around entrepreneurship and the journey. I do my best to answer as many as I can while still working on client problems. It’s had me thinking a lot about what it’s really like to be on an entrepreneurial journey. I’ve been looking for an analogy that fit what it’s been like for me over the years. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and this is what I’ve concluded.

For the founder, it’s as if you’re setting off across a lake for a swim, only to have it get dark after you’re far off shore with no idea where you are or where you are going, no reference points anywhere, other than a clue by chance here and there and occasionally something to hold onto until it sinks. What you find on the swim could be the right or wrong clue, but you have to trust your instincts and find a direction. You don’t know if you’re close to shore or if that shore is miles away.

Other swimmers may even be relying on you, but all you can do is guess which way to swim and keep swimming no matter how tired or exhausted you become. You can ask the other swimmers for advice about which direction to swim, but they are relying on you and they could be just as tired. You know if you stop swimming you die, and so does everyone else who’s followed you, so you just keep swimming, hoping you’re making progress towards an outcome that’s better than where you were, and better than where you are now. Except, you don’t know the real answer or what you will find. You may end up in a big circle, only to be right back where you started, or you could be someplace far better than you expected. All you know is that you can’t stop swimming.

As you move around, you find something to keep you afloat, and little by little you find more clues until finally you made it to your destination while exhausted from the journey, only to rest up and venture back out into the water to do it all over again.

People ask me how I am. I wish I could give them a better answer than I’m swimming in the dark all the time, but that’s what my life feels like every day. I just keep doing what I do because the alternative isn’t so good. Besides, this is what makes the experience of living so rich. I’d rather venture out and try than sit on the shore wondering what would happen if I tried.