The Cost of Chasing Safety

I was sitting in my truck the other morning, with my hands on the steering wheel. I was waiting for the frost to melt off the window. The light from my headlights was muted by the crystal kaleidoscope in front of me. Everyone in my house was still asleep.

There I sat, breathing in the stillness that used to feel unwelcome.

There was a time I wouldn’t have allowed silence like that. I would have filled it with noise. Calls, spreadsheets, and the constant pull to prove I was indispensable to someone else’s dream. It’s strange how easy it is to mistake exhaustion for purpose when you’ve built your identity around being needed.

In 2009, I started a company called Distribution Inventory Management. DIM. The logo had a lightbulb in place of the dot over the “i” — because I thought I was clever — and the slogan said, “The brightest people in the distribution industry.” There was no “people.” Just me, trying to sound bigger than I was. The first person I pitched to offered me a job instead. I took it.

I told myself I was being smart, responsible, stable. What I really was, though, was scared.

That one decision, to trade uncertainty for someone else’s certainty, set the tone for nearly 15 years. I worked hard, did good work, stayed loyal, and told myself it was temporary. But temporary has a way of stretching into years when fear is disguised as being prudent.

By 2021, I was standing next to a frozen cornfield in the middle of nowhere, phone pressed to my ear, pretending my hands weren’t numb, trying to control the tremble in my voice caused by the freezing Murtaugh, Idaho air.

On the phone, a client of the little consulting and software development company I kept telling myself would be the focus of my attention. Meanwhile, the cold bit into my hands as I worked hard building something for someone who made millions while I froze.

I had a tiny bit of ownership in that company—I still do. I kept telling myself that this—working on those horrid conditions—was the price of ownership, and that I was, at least, fortunate to have a good job while the world was reeling from COVID. I also told myself it was safer to say. That I just needed to wait until the timing was right. But every time I said those things, something in me went a little quieter.

Safety is expensive like that. It doesn’t always take your money. It takes your voice, your edges, and your courage to start again.

I finally started the process of leaving that company in October 2024, after one too many conversations that erased the line between partnership and manipulation. It took months to unwind everything. I walked away from half my ownership, still believing the other half might one day be worth something. But it probably won’t. And that’s fine.

I used to tell myself stories about fairness, about what I was owed. But lately, I’ve been more interested in what I’ve kept. I kept my integrity. I kept my ability to start again. I kept my belief that work can be good and people can be kind.

Now, I have a small company of my own. Fifteen people, most of them software developers, all of them helping build something I once thought I had missed my chance to build. We’re not rich. Some months I put more in than I take out. But it’s ours.

And when I sit in the car at the start of a new day, I don’t feel the dread anymore. I still feel tired, sometimes bone-tired, but it’s the kind of tired that belongs to something honest. The kind that reminds me I chose this, and that choosing comes with both cost and joy.

Playing it safe kept me small for a long time. But risk, I’ve learned, isn’t the opposite of safety. It’s the price of being fully alive.

I’m still paying it. Gladly.

And that is enough.