That’s all you need. To live. To love. To be happy. But also to show up, ship the work, and change our perspective.
You don’t need an editor. You can proofread yourself. You don’t need a publisher. You can use Amazon. You don’t need an agent. If the work is good, people will come to you. You don’t need a developer. You can code the software yourself. You don’t need a team. You can provide the service, first for one person, then ten, then 100.
There’s beauty in staying small as long as you can. Sometimes that’s forever. Collaboration is impressive, but it’s also complex. Each next person has a life as full and intricate as yours. If you think managing one brain is hard, what about two? Twenty? 5,000?
Thoreau felt wealth was proportional to “the number of things we can afford to let alone.” Humans aren’t things, but they’re the biggest additions we make to our lives, often without thinking. Sometimes, it pays to leave them alone – for only once we look inside may we discover: Everything we need is already there.