Four months ago, we took our cat into the vet’s office to be put down.
This was a very, very difficult decision.
Our cat was healthy, he was young, but he was also becoming increasingly aggressive and unmanageable. We had put up with and tried to train him out of attacking me, but when it seemed that he increasingly disliked our curious three-year-old, the decision to give him up was made.
Months of calls to shelters later and after sending dozens of emails to every single person we could think of who might help in rehoming him, we still had no leads. Then one day, while my back was turned, he tried to attack my three year old, but our (amazing) dog jumped up to protect my son and took the hit instead.
So, while I sobbed and prayed for a miracle, my husband drove him to the vet.
Then something amazing happened. We got our miracle.
Our vet knew someone who had experience dealing with violent cats, and she in turn, fell in love with our aggressive (but super affectionate) cat and decided to keep him.
These days, he runs around on a farm, terrorizing dogs, horses, and other animals three times his size.
He’s happy. We’re happy. The woman who kept him is beyond happy. In the end, things worked out great.
The process of getting here, however, was anything but.
That’s the thing, though. The process of getting here—anywhere—is never easy or simple. I tell you now that things worked out and it sounds like such a simple deal, but it wasn’t. There were months of frustration, of bruises on my arm, of worrying about my child, of worrying about my cat, of wanting to do the right thing, of having doors closed every way we turned.
My career is much the same.
From the outside, it’s easy to think that I’ve got all these magazine credits, and now all the content marketing, and oh, The International Freelancer on top of it all.
None of it came easy. Not a single bit of it.
It took pain and blood and sweat and tears to come to this point and I know there’s a whole lot more where that came from to get to where we eventually want to go. The process looks different for everyone, but I can tell you right now—it was messy and heartbreaking and ugly for us. It sometimes still is.
And now, with hindsight, I can pretty it up. I can make it seem like we fought through in the face of uncertainty and lack of progress and setbacks. But the truth is that for us, like most people, reality looks a lot different.
Reality isn’t about punching fear in the face or braving the high seas or any other images of passionate fighting that we conjure when we think of people getting through hard times.
Reality looks more like keeping your head down and somehow trying to find a way to not lose your will, your confidence, and your vision.
Reality looks like a person slowly and silently doing the work and tuning out everything else.
Reality looks like putting one foot in front of the other and believing that it will lead somewhere.
We see the win. The person holding the flag at the top of the summit. What we don’t see are the bruises, the heartache, the training, the years, and the shattered dreams. We don’t see the failures, the setbacks, the self-doubt.
Thomas Edison once said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
You have to put in the hours. You have to brave the winds. You have to keep going through the painful slog, that bit in the middle when you wonder why you’re doing this, why everyone else is succeeding and you aren’t, or why you even bothered in the first place.
You stay at it. You make daily progress even when it feels like all you’re doing is putting in the work for no reward.
I experienced this when I started dipping my toes into content marketing waters. For six months, I couldn’t figure out why other people were getting high paying content marketing and blogging work, and try as I might, I couldn’t quite tap into the market. I kept reading, I kept learning, I kept following the career paths of people who were doing it right, and over a period of time, the transition happened. I don’t know what changed, but I went, in what seemed weeks, from having no content marketing work to being able to charge $400 an hour and matching my journalism income.
I still can’t tell you what changed, except that I went from being, in Steven Pressfield’s words, from an amateur to a professional.
You will experience a similar trajectory. Learning, learning, learning, wondering if you’re ever going to succeed.
It won’t be easy. The process of getting there never is.
But when you reach the summit, it will all have been worth it.