During a recent conversation with my wife, we were lamenting on the fact that we have hit yet another roadblock to overcome in our business. While there are some exciting things happening with Common Sense Development, this also brings new hurdles and issues that must be overcome. For a brief moment, we even played with the idea of me taking a job with a corporation. This conversation started after a very exciting-looking job opening was emailed to me. Of course, I soon came to my senses and realized that I really did not want to get back into the corporate world. I did not want to be someone else’s employee.

This is the curse of those of us with an entrepreneurial soul. While the rest of the world is content and seemingly happy with a 9-5 job, to us, entrepreneurial spirits, that can seem as bad as prison. I made the decision back in October of 2011 that I would never again be beholden to another man for a paycheck and a retirement plan. At that time, my wife and I both knew the sacrifices that we would have to make to accomplish our dreams. While our friends moved up the corporate ladder, we would toil on the ground in fresh soil, soil that we owned (no, I am not really a farmer).

Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with a 9-5 job; in fact, I often envy those people. I wish I could be that content and happy. But for those of us who have answered the entrepreneurial call, there is just something inside us that can never truly be content. We must constantly create, tinker, make new connections, and open new doors. We are modern-day explorers, blazing our own path through a concrete jungle. For us, we prefer the freedom of being able to move along on the ground, even if it means we never get a view from the top. For us, the idea of simply standing on a ring of a ladder, no matter how great the view, can never take the place of being down where the action is, where new ideas are born, and new adventures are forged.

I am not sure if I will ever fully understand why I would rather risk all I have following one idea after another down uncharted territory, versus settling into a nice cozy job with benefits and that thing they call upward mobility. All I know is that I can only really be myself when I am out in the wilds of entrepreneurship. Anything else is just not living. I know that I am not alone in this pursuit, and I take great comfort in knowing that there are others out there like me. Lone wolfs, answering the call of the wild, refusing to settle, dedicated to the pursuit of the next great idea.