Employment scares me more than failure

Having a full-time job and doing a side project on top of that is hard. Accept that you'll fail. Statistically, you just will. First time, second time, third, fifth, tenth. Maybe you'll never break through.

I've done about 12 projects over 10-11 years. Most of them went nowhere. There were gaps where I had no side project at all, or was just learning. At one point I was building a house, dropped side projects entirely, and took a second full-time job for about 1.5 years because I needed more money.

But here's what's even harder for me personally. I can't accept working under someone without the authority and ability to influence the direction my life is going. I just can't sit with that. The idea of being tied to that setup for the rest of my life is worse than any failure I've experienced with side projects.

That's why I'm ready to invest the free time I have now in the form of risk. The odds are bad. The track record proves it. But the alternative isn't safety. The alternative is giving up control over where my life goes. And that scares me more than failing again.