Closing a company is extremely emotional. It's rough, all the sensations of a hysterical jag stretched out across a couple of months. And you know it's coming; it's not like you don't know you're running out of money, but you're trying everything, really putting in your all, doubling down on caring and time. And the worst thing is, every few days or weeks, you end up with hope. Someone might buy a lot, someone might invest, someone else might hire your whole team to keep doing what you're doing. And you hope, because it really might work. It might not be over. Because initial success is at least as implausible as eventual failure. Neither feels quite deserved, and at the end of the day you don't know why anything is really happening.

With the wisdom of reflection, I remember that for months at the beginning, I told people that our success felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was true; how could we be allowed to be celebrated, given money by strangers to work on something we thought was interesting in a space and time all our own? Because that's the other thing: it did feel like success, that whole period of time. Learning, growing, working together in a way we got to choose, and getting paid- that is the dream. That is success, even if it doesn't last.

The strangest part about the other shoe dropping is that if it takes too long, you don't really believe it's going to fall. And then when you realize it will, it seems like the sky is falling with it.

That's probably part of the reason the failure is so emotional, other than the pure and simple fact that it is failure. You've pinned quite a lot up there, on the underside of the sky: who you are as a person, for instance. When people meet you, they know you as that person who is so passionate about her company and the problems it is trying to solve. That thing looks like your one success, and all your friends and family are so proud. You've moved your life for it, poured out your time for it, more than staked your reputation to it. To many, even you, it is the thing that you are.

And so when you think you might have to shut it down, it's a bit emotional. Because it won't work. Because you still have hope. Because your friends and family are asking how it's going, and the real answer is both too heavy and too unstable, so should you distance yourself from the failure, or from your friends and again double down?