This dream you are chasing is a marathon.

Did you know that? It may not even take years. It may take decades.

Are you ready? Do you have what it takes to persist without exception?

Starting this blog was like this.

You write a few posts and people love it, right? Traffic doubles every 6 months. Advertising revenue rolls in. And in a year or two someone is offering you money to write a book.

Hahahahaa….

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. And if you are starting out after a major goal, you probably don’t either. That’s ok though.

Because the secret is that the journey is where the joy is found.

Let’s just keep encouraging each other to keep going, shall we?

Those steps down the stairs to rejoin my family in the kitchen were the first steps of a marathon I was woefully unprepared to run. I wasn’t starting on a journey that would be solved over the next days, weeks, months, or even years. I didn’t even know I’d begun a marathon. But I did start. I was going to run down this dream or collapse in its pursuit. And if I collapsed, I’d get up, rest and then get back out there again. And boy would I collapse. A lot. In my future was a personal mental breakdown, a sheriff showing up at my house with a subpoena from the IRS, a marriage that teetered toward divorce, and too many other descents into darkness to count. But also in my future was becoming one of the most successful marketing professionals in my industry, publishing a book that sold tens of thousands of copies, working with my heroes, speaking in front of thousands of people, and making more money off my creativity than I ever thought possible. It culminated into a moment when I found myself at a rooftop bar in downtown Portland and realized I had done it. I had caught that dream I had decided to run down so many years before.

-Tim Grahl, Running Down A Dream