The Thing You Won't Admit You Want

I. The gatekeeping argument

There's a line I heard recently that's stuck with me: if you can't afford a Lamborghini, you don't get to say the Lamborghini is overrated. Earn it first. Then have your opinion.

It sounds harsh. But the more I thought about it, the more I think there's something honest underneath it. 去魅, the act of seeing something clearly stripped of its mythology, requires that you've actually been close enough to see it. Otherwise you're not being clear-eyed. You're being defensive.

Most "going beyond the hype" is just sour grapes with better vocabulary.

II. The story I told myself after the breakup

When I was in a relationship, I used to say things like: I don't need to be like those ultra-busy CEOs. I don't need to chase that kind of life. I want something simple. A quieter version of success. Less pressure, less money, more presence.

And I believed it. Or I thought I did.

After the relationship ended, I started asking harder questions. Was that genuinely my value system? Or had I already decided, somewhere quietly, that I probably couldn't reach that level, and so I'd gotten ahead of the disappointment by telling myself I didn't want it?

I started actually paying attention. I watched founders and executives who had families. I got close enough to some of them to observe how they moved through the world. And what I found was: it wasn't either/or. Demanding schedule and a good relationship with your kids. Those weren't mutually exclusive. I had been wrong about the premise.

I wasn't seeing clearly. I was protecting myself from wanting something I wasn't sure I could have.

III. The question I still don't answer honestly

When people ask me why I'm building Dodeez, I give them the clean version. I'm a huge foodie. I save a ton of content across platforms. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Lemon8. And I could never track back the places I'd bookmarked. I wanted to solve my own problem. Simple.

That's all true. And it's also incomplete.

The fuller answer, the one I've never said out loud to anyone, is that I want Dodeez to be worth a lot. I want financial freedom. I want to be known. I want to be the kind of person that people point to and say, he built that.

I don't say that version. I've always defaulted to the humble origin story, the problem-solving framing, the I just noticed a gap in the market. It sounds cleaner. It sounds less exposed.

IV. The flip

We talk about 去魅 as something you do to the world. You see through the hype. You stop being naive about money, about status, about what success actually looks like up close.

But there's a version that goes the other direction. A 去魅 you do to yourself, or more specifically to your own desires. You tell yourself you don't really want the big thing. You dress it up as wisdom, as maturity, as having your priorities straight. But sometimes it's just fear. Fear of wanting it clearly and still not getting there.

The most dangerous 去魅 isn't the one you do to Lamborghinis. It's the one you do to what you actually want.

V. What I'm sitting with

I'm not saying ambition needs to be performed or announced. I'm not going to start every conversation with I want to build something worth hundreds of millions. That's not the point.

The point is the internal honesty. The recognition that there's a gap between what I'm willing to say and what I actually want, and that gap has a cost. Because how you see yourself shapes what you're willing to do. And if I keep giving myself the humble version of my own story, I might not push hard enough to close the distance between where I am and where I actually want to go.

认知 isn't just about understanding the world correctly. It's about understanding yourself correctly. And sometimes the biggest correction is the one aimed inward.