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It’s Sunday and you know what that means — it’s time for your weekly reading list curated by me! Woo!

The Sunday Serial is a list of the best articles I encountered and read during the previous week. Sometimes they have a theme, but most times they do not. This week, it’s all about startups, becoming an entrepreneur and one thing that we all need, a little humor. Enjoy! And since the world revolves around reciprocation, leave me a link to the best thing you read last week down in the comments. Seriously 🙂

Links for the Entrepreneur in Training

Considering a Start-Up? Think Again. by Oliver Segovia on Harvard Business Review

Read this because: You’re attracted to startups, addicted to the culture of innovation, and addicted to doing something that no one has done before. And while you help build out other people’s ideas, you’re waiting on the sidelines, anxiously, for your own idea. Or you’re startup-curious and can’t wait to trade that 9-to-5 lifestyle of clocking in and checking out for something that will be much more exciting, you’re sure of it.

But are you? This is a great article with questions to ask yourself when it comes to figuring out if the startup lifestyle is really for you.

3 Reasons Why Every Smart Startup Is A Digital Media Company by Brian Clark on Forbes

Read this because: The word “startup” gets thrown around so much these days and I’m kind of confused – are all “new” businesses considered startups or do they have to have some “tech” element? And if they have to have a “tech” element, does an ecommerce site count?

Brian Clark, who’s most famously known for his Copyblogger empire, does not answer that question, but he does explore an opportunity that all entrepreneurs can take advantage of no matter what their product is, and that’s becoming a content producer.

Content drives everything. It’s marketing, a channel to your audience (customers), and gives you an unfair advantage over your competitors if you do it right and keep your audience first. This article is pure gold and worth reading.

How to Become an Overnight Success by Lisbeth Darsh on CrossFit Lisbeth

Read this because: Lessons that we learn in sports can be applied to business, and this is a good one.

Disillusionment of an Entrepreneur by Prerna Gupta TechCrunch

Read this because: First-time entrepreneurs believe that as they start to build their first startup and work towards making it real, someday they will sell it for millions of dollars and then get to retire. But as Prerna Gupta describes, as soon as she reached what she thought was her end goal, she came up with another one and kept working.

I don’t have my own business yet, but I’ve helped build three businesses and I’m on my fourth. Working every day with entrepreneurs is exciting, and knowing that what I’m working on will directly impact the business makes the long hours and the ambitious goals worth it. But at the end of the day, there’s always more to do. Good to know that I’m not alone in feeling like I’m never satisfied or “done” when it comes to work.

Three Years of Kickstarter Projects as an infographic on The New York Times

Read this because: Crowdsourcing has become a viable way for entrepreneurs to fund their projects thanks to websites like Kickstarter. It’s been three years and almost 50,000 projects since the site launched on April 28, 2009 and The New York Times put together this great visual about which categories of projects were funded and how much has been raised. It’s a fascinating diagram to study if you’re considering running a campaign on Kickstarter.

Bonus reading material:

• Start-ups Look to the Crowd by Jenna Wortham on The New York Times

• The 6 Variables Behind a Kick-Ass Kickstarter Project by Slava Menn on GOOD

Links for the Entrepreneur Who Needs a Break

I apologize, but the following two links have everything to do with being human and nothing to do with entrepreneurship.

#WelcomeToSeattle

Read this because: I love Tumblr, and every week I find a new meme that rocks my world. This week I discovered #WelcomeToSeattle. It reminds me of #WhatShouldWeCallMe, but appeals to my Seattleite sensibilities.

24 Life Lessons, Courtesy Of My Cat by Georgia Perry on Thought Catalog

Read this because: You have a cat or know someone who does. And yes, this was definitely written by a cat owner.

What’s the best thing you read this week? Leave me a link in the comments.

Photo Credit: cobra libre

There’s a cat on my desk and she’s growling at the cat on my floor that is sniffing around and has been worried about her all day. He, the cat on the floor, is about to be attacked by the cat on my desk.

I am in the middle of the battlefield trying to write my third-to-last blog post for National Blog Posting Month and I am dangerously close to turning this blog into a diary.

Damnit.

It’s funny. Again, I’m staring at my content calendar that has been telling me to write a post about the etymology of certain words and I really don’t want to write it. I don’t want to write it because I don’t have my point of view on that post fully thought out. I don’t want to write it because I have another blog post to write that has a more time sensitive publication date that I am (apparently) way more interested in than the deadline of this post that is midnight o’clock.

Isn’t it funny how the thing we want to do is never the thing that we want to be doing?

And Minnie, the cat on my desk, just chased Vito, the cat who is not on my desk. She has chased him because he is in her space – the space formerly known of as my office.

I guess I should be thrilled by this attack. Not because she attacked the Vito but because she’s sick. In case you were wondering, the worst way to start off a post-holiday week is in the veterinary’s office; the same office that put down the first cat that you and your husband and you owned together in your adult life nine months prior. And you’re there, alone, with your new kitty who just this last weekend you convinced your husband that you would like to keep.

No wonder I felt really wonky day today.

Minnie’s an Alpha. She came to us after being abandoned by her previous owners who moved out and literally left her in the house, telling no one. Her human grandma found her. And John found Minnie through a friend-of-a-friend’s Facebook. He saw per big blue eyes and her Siamese mix face and he fell in love.

We didn’t even ask if she got along with other cats before we made the appointment to meet her. That’s when I knew that as soon as we saw her, she’d be ours.

Old Man, may he rest in peace, passed away in April. We still haven’t opened his box of ashes that are sitting on my shelf, three feet from this computer.

Losing a pet opens a wound that never closes.

Old Man left behind a brother, Vito, named after the Godfather but has the personality closer to a teddy bear, likes to cuddle. He’s not an Alpha, though after bringing Minnie into the house, I keep hoping that he will be. As I said, he’s a teddy bear. Non-territorial, likes to show you his belly, and has the largest big green eyes of innocence that I’ve ever seen.

And then there’s Minnie, who was five-and-a-half pounds of fury when we adopted her in June and I’m so Goddamned proud that she’s up to eight-and-a-half pounds today. Cats come to our house to get fattened up.

And Minnie is eating again while Vito watches her from a chair. Which means she has her appetite back. Which means we’ve made progress if she doesn’t get sick overnight.

Tomorrow the vet will call me with results from her blood work. If anything comes back positive, that means that something is really wrong. If it comes back negative than that means that we don’t know why she is sick, but just was.

As soon as Minnie decides she’s finished with her bland, wet food, Vito jumps in to lick her bowl clean, like every good brother should.

Why do we always need to search for the ‘why’?

We take a break from our usual programming to share a bit of silliness courtesy of the Internet. This video was introduced to me by my partner in crime and is absolutely hilarious because I, too, have a box cat, and I miss the cuddly guy.

You can view this video and Maru’s other adventures on mugumogu’s YouTube page.