Paramore, Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana music played in the background as we both worked all day on refining the site designs and identifying the blogs and forums we needed to be on and grow reputations point on. We also learned how to use digg, technorati and stumble upon and the overall philosophy behind their web technologies.

This type of “work” felt different. Although I felt tired from time to time, and had to take a break for dinner, we were pretty on point for most of the 12 hours we were drumming away. A couple of things became clear to me now that I am sitting in front of my computer at 2 in the morning that I want to share with you as you learn from my journey.

1. Having a partner who shares your vision and values is great. You may argue about small things, design issues, maybe an ego clash here and there. But the overarching goal of freedom and independence has more importance than anything else on both of our priority lists. As such, I realized that in order to achieve this goal, we were often aligning together based on interests, while also overlapping on the same business operations values like trust, timing, collaboration, and a passion for the artform of pickup.

2. This doesn’t feel like “work”. The more effort we put into it, the more returns we shall receive. What we receive in rewards (both monetary and emotional) are dictated by the flow of the world and the markets, and not by some pompous manager who is solely concerned about his or her career. It is up to you, the business owner. There is a direct and exponential correlation to effort and reward, that IS within you control, and this feels great. The light at the end of the tunnel is evident, and I am glad I saw a shimmer today as I gazed into the future.

3. This is perhaps a dark side of mine, but my dis-taste for the status-quo as well as the corporate life of servitude propels me to advance, and while there are negative feelings associated with this, I also find positive feelings in recognizing that at my core, I am an individual, a leader. This is who I am, and not someone I had manufactured or grown into. It is time to step up to my shoes as a leader. To really have the power, eventually, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years from now, to say, “Fuck you. You fucked me. Now I declare war on you” and to be able to have the power and resources to follow through with my promise to demolish my enemies.

Sun Tzu said the best wars are won before they have even begun and no lives are lost. I do believe this, and my desire for power is only derived from a necessity to guard against those with power who wishes their wills upon me. When you have no power, and you “stray” and step “out of line”, others with power and authority will make you feel pain, fear, a sense of insecurity. Some even take this opportunity depending on the weakness of your reactions and resources to advance their own interests. Counter-wise: when one has power and occasionally “strays” or “does the wrong thing”, they are politely reminded not to, and sometimes, even gets away with it. No feelings of remorse are forced upon him or her, rather, the feelings of doing something wrong and learning from it purely comes within the control of the person with power of who he chooses to have a relationship with.

4. We really had fun today. There was no drama. No one was thinking about his career – it was just about making the site the best that it could possibly be. No ulterior motives. I hope that one day, when the money starts coming in, that we both remember this passion and the real reasons behind why we started launching these collection of sites and hold true to our values.