You want to quit. I know.
Yet, you try again.
You’re stuck. You’ve tried everything. You keep hitting the same wall. You feel it. Eating at you. Munching piece by piece, grinding each with increasingly finer tools.
You just want this to be over.
But you try again.
You launch your phone at the wall. You instantly feel sorry. You hope it didn’t break.
You come back and try again.
You ask every question you can think of. You still can’t find it. You know the answer is inside of you, yet you can’t wrap your hands around it.
And you try again.
Because it’s too late now. You can’t go back. You’ve invested too much time. Too much mental bandwidth. You care too much for the outcome. You want to solve this. Not just any way. Your way.
And you try yet again.
This time, you let go of what you think this is supposed to be. Of how you think you should find the answer. You throw stuff around. You juggle ideas. You’ve stopped playing it safe.
You get out of your box and just play.
And then, it clicks. Maybe not instantly. Maybe you need to play around a little more to find the right approach, but you know you’ve found the right game to play. It slowly becomes a game of life and death.
And this time, you’re committed to getting out, alive.
This time, it’s for real.
You get closer little by little. You feel it. It’s hidden just around the corner. You know you just have to contort a bit more to get to it. But you can sniff it. And it smells like your favourite day.
You take a breath.
You are focused. You have the clarity of a prey animal between the claws of a predator. You’re still fighting. Every minuscule detail counts. Every chance to solve the puzzle means you get to keep living.
You breathe. Slower and slower.
Everything moves in slow motion.
And then you see it.
The world goes silent.
It’s yours.
–
You don’t trust it, though. You keep looking, trying to find a better version.
But you keep coming back to it.
You exhale.
You blink. You take a huge breath.
Maybe you cry a little.
You can’t believe this fight is over.
And then you get out. You shake with adrenaline. You feel every cell in your body cheering for you. You’ve slain the thing.
You were so close to walking away. Yet you pushed through.
And only you know what it took. And only you know how close you were to being eaten by the monster.
You’re exhausted, yet you’re fired up. You’ve just survived the process.
This has to happen every time. For each project you care for, for each wall you want to get past.
For each moment you almost walk away.
It’s not fun. I know.
You’re not praising frustration here. You use it.
And with each win, you get stronger and tougher and quitting gets harder and harder and you build more things that are true to you.
The only way out is through despair. Try again.