When the Fire Grows Too Big to Walk Away

 

 

Have you ever poured your heart into something, only to feel the inevitable pull to walk away?

There’s a story I’ve told myself for a long time. One that kept me from launching the most important thing I’ve ever built.

The story goes like this: I’m the kind of man who burns hot, immerses fully, then walks away.

There’s truth in it. I’ve done it countless times: diving headfirst into barefoot running, ultramarathons, careers, hobbies, each with fervent intensity, only to eventually step away when the initial spark faded.

It became a pattern: Dive in. Learn. Master. Spot the flaws. Leave.

I told myself it was just how I’m wired. That it’s an ENTP trait. Serial hobbyist. That I needed the freedom to evolve, to roam. And while there’s some truth in that, I’ve recently realized something deeper, something I need to remember and say aloud:

I didn’t walk away because I changed. I walked away because the thing couldn’t.

And that changes everything.

Because I’m not afraid of failure. Not really. I’ve failed before. A LOT. I flunked out of a college. I’ve bled on the mats. I’ve quit races. I’ve the reviews Amazon reviews for my crap. I once turned down an mma fight in the locker room. I can't sing OR dance.

What I’ve been afraid of isn’t failure. It’s betrayal. Self-betrayal. This fear of outgrowing my creation extended to the people who would invest their trust and belief in it.

I’m afraid that if I build something meaningful, and then grow beyond it, or worse, begin to resent it, I’ll betray the very people who believed in it. I’ll become the ghost at the center of a temple I can’t live in anymore.

That fear has kept me from launching this idea. "The Tribe", I call it.

Because The Tribe isn’t just a project. It’s not a brand. It’s not a community. It’s a myth made real. An ancient architecture for something I know could change lives, including my own.

And that’s why I’ve hesitated. Not out of laziness. Not out of doubt. But because I’ve been waiting for the thing to feel as alive and evolving as I am.

This week, something clicked. A voice... call it truth, call it memory... whatever. It rose up inside me:

“You kept waiting for something big enough to hold your evolution. But maybe what you needed was something built to evolve.”

And that’s the shift.

The Tribe won’t be something I outgrow. It will be something that sheds skin with me.

It will have ritual renewal points. Seasonal pulses. A core that burns but doesn’t calcify. It won’t demand I stay the same; it will ask me to stay present, to keep showing up in truth.

I don’t have to fear becoming trapped.

I just have to keep the fire moving.

And so, this is my offering, not as a marketing post or a launch tease, but as a mirror.

If you’re someone who’s started and left, who’s built and burned out, who’s hesitated to go all in because you’re afraid of what happens after the passion fades, I see you.

Maybe you weren’t wrong to walk away.

Maybe the thing just couldn’t breathe as you changed.

But maybe, now, you can build something that does.

I know I am.

And that’s why I’m finally ready to launch The Tribe.

Not as a finished product.

But as a living fire.

And I’m not walking away.

Not this time.

In the next post, I'll explain why it's safe to walk away. 

~Jason