Competent people did competent work, and the enterprise proved to be just what enterprises really are — a system, robust and self-sustaining, that had never required my martyrdom, only my ego’s belief that it did.

Which meant that every hour I had stolen from my family and fed to the business had been stolen for nothing.

The business would have been fine.

It was my family that was starving, while I fed a fire that could have burned perfectly well on its own.

I will carry that knowledge for the rest of my life, and I have decided to let it be useful rather than only painful: to let it stand as permanent proof that the thing which demands all of you, and insists no one else can do what you do, is very often lying to you, and is very often the thing that matters least, dressed up as the thing that matters most.

Chapter 14 — Not a Fairytale