Being motivated by rage and fear

This is kinda unusual article to write. I’ve been in a startup world for quite some time, this is the first time I shared this story and I’m doing it publicly. Failure after failure and here I am sharing this with you.

Not everything is sweet, victory, success and celebration, there is the other side of each story and I want to share it with you. I decided to share what motivates me and why those 2 emotions drive me the most.

For those who don’t know me I’m a web developer from Croatia. I’ve been working as a developer for 15 years. I enjoy working on new products and startups, I enjoy different and unusual things. Every day I’m brainstorming about what new and unseen can be created. I’m just a regular guy, laughing, having funny and living normal life.

Does that make me a weirdo and outcast?

I’ve never heard from anyone that they are motivated by rage and fear. People are usually motivated by success, love or similar positive things.

I’m motivated by rage and fear. I guess it goes back to my childhood. Growing up in a small village in a poor family I didn’t get much opportunities. I didn’t fit in that community but I couldn’t get out of it.

I got my first computer Pentium 4 when I was 8 years old. That’s when I started working on my first website. I was so angry because of a situation I was in, angry for the opportunities I didn’t get and always feared for my existence, should I be able to get a proper education, should I be able to eat…

That was the time when I created my first online project called “uwriteabook” enabling people to write 1 book collectively, basically people would visit my site and be able to write 1 sentence. So at the end we would have a novel written. That was my 1st failure.

Fast forward today

That feeling stuck. Fear from not succeeding, fear from going back to how it was, fear from not living a fulfilling life, rage against system, rage against injustice… I learned to live with it. Throughout years it motivated me to do things, to learn more, to be better developer, to prosper, to create startups, to work on projects, to fail and to succeed.

Is it crippling me, is it dragging me down or maybe it’s doing just opposite? Honestly I can’t tell at the moment. I look at it as good motivation.

Sometimes rage and fear push you to go further and to do things people normally wouldn’t do. For me it does just that, it makes me to work more, to push further, to try things, to embarrass myself and to give 110%. Maybe I should leave it all behind and have a fresh start.