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Comment by seivan | Hacker News Reader

Bret Scares me. He makes feel inadequate on so many levels. Am I alone on this? I don't care for most 'successful' startup people and others, but Bret in particular - is amazing.

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Bret is a lovely and amazing person, but don’t sell yourself short. I guarantee you if you come up with a topic or problem to work on, and devote 10+ years to full time reading/tinkering/inventing/implementing in the field, allowing yourself to be creative, sweating the tiny details, and worrying more about making your inventions wonderful than profitable, you will be able to amaze yourself and all of the rest of us with what you make.

This is quite astute. Truly, I only dream of what the world would be like were we free to pursue our most profound curiosities instead of only our most profitable ones.

We are.

The we you're referencing includes very few people in the world.

I would think the number of people who are free to do this is significantly higher than the number of people who actually do it.

Freedom is a continuous unit. Just because I can take risks doesn't mean I will, or that I am necessarily "free" to do so, or that that freedom isn't highly limited (for example, I may be free to start a company with a 2-year ramp and some expected gain, but I'm not able to take 10 years with no income to pursue some ideas that interest me).

If so many people are truly free to pursue higher callings, why don't they? Look at reality, not theory. Find some answers to that question and you'll start to discover the wide and complex range of restrictions on true freedom.

Thanks for the encouragement, needed it.

"Count your blessings, not your troubles." -Dale Carnegie.

One of my favorite parts of his website is the Links section: http://worrydream.com/#!/Links

It reminds me that the way to be amazing is to do an amazing amount of work.

He's kind of woken up my personal motivation to do cool shit, actually. He doesn't scare/intimidate me; its more a sort of reminder that in fact if you work hard on something you love, you do it well and have a good time. So I'm getting on with it, all the while appreciating the genius that I am able to access ..

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