Now is the time to do a startup

People who rent can sometimes scale down without too much difficulty. Also, people who rent choose a place that meets their current needs. When people buy, they often buy what they think they need/want in the future, so they are usually paying for more house.

It has never been so easy to start a company - the author is right about that. Because of that, however, there have never been so many companies starting. As a result, it has never been so difficult to rise above the noise.

It feels as though the culture is that you're expected to have ambition to create your own startup, thrive to do better, if not the best, and make yourself matter, except in this case, there's always an unmentioned postscript "in startup world"

I don't even want to discuss the Red Queen Effect, but hear me out. I am a recently graduated developer, with little ambition in technical side. I find some stuff very neat, and am working on a side project that has more caveats on writing than technical.

Whenever I find things that bother me in a day-to-day basis, I can whip up an application for myself. Integrating MSN chat logs into Skype logs has been my recent project(ongoing), because I've used MSN auto-logging very extensively. I am content with what I will have and I intend to share to people who'll miss MSN chat logs, and who value them as ostensibly as I do.

Why do I feel like I should be compelled to feel I'm not thriving enough? I've got a decently paying job, I'm learning(SICP is my current project), I'm relatively content doing what I love(writing), and enjoy my free time(gaming, writing and some side short projocts).

Sure, I'm learning but not researching the most important research in my area, I'm content doing what I love but I'm not thriving to achieve the best and make the world better place, I enjoy my free time playing games, but I'm not using the time to better myself.

A couple of my deeply respected friends, who I believe without a doubt have a chance of looking at this comments here, keeps telling me that I need to thrive. I want to tell them, please, just to leave me alone.

I know this comment isn't probably the ideal response to the article. It however is my response to why aren't you more like me and improving undertone of which the article deeply suggests.

Perhaps in a decade or two(or in smaller period) I'll come across an idea niche enough that future Me will think would work, and start work on it. I, currently, am too content with what I have and its prospects to think of anything better. I have some ideas but what good are the ideas? The work is the most that matters, and I am not motivated enough to do them yet. Please accept it. "Wanting to do startup" should not be the reason to do it, in my humble opinion.

You can also regain some flexibility by renting out your home and temporarily staying somewhere cheaper. This probably isn't doable if you've got kids, but getting a cheap apartment and AirBnBing your old place might be what you need to do to keep the house without sinking your financial ship.

That said, if you're going to start a business while buying a house, better to buy a smaller house and have a working spouse who can carry all/most of the payment for a couple of years. I wouldn't probably wouldn't do it unless I had a reliable high-earning spouse willing to share that responsibility.