It’s that time of day … again. Evening. This part of the day and I stare each other down frequently. I was up at 4:30 this morning with a killer headache, looooong day, and a busy evening. My kiddo is finally zonked out and it’s now 7:28pm.

I couldn’t squeeze out any words earlier in the day. You know, during that time when I was fresh, coherent, and somewhat awake.

So, now it’s 7:29 and time to push some words out. And it’s hard.

A friend shared this iceberg image on Twitter. You know this one. We’ve all seen it before. I looked at this image for a while tonight. I thought a lot about what it takes to make things happen. Dedication. Hard work. Habits. Rejection. Fatigue.

Too often people comment to me about how easy my life is. About how I’m able to write because it’s easy for me. And somehow I magically have more time than them. And it just comes easier.

Um, no it doesn’t. Writing is hard. Very hard. The first draft of anything I write absolutely stinks (including this blog post). And I think we all have the same 24 hours in a day. I do choose to use those 24 hours differently from some of my peers. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to. Who knows. I try hard not to invest too much time into what others think because it makes my head spin.

But the point is, no matter what our dreams are, we have to invest the time. We have to get our hands dirty. We have to push through when it hurts, when we’re tired, and even when we just don’t feel like it and we’d rather curl up and read a book. We have to make sacrifices. We have to fight against the resistance pushing against us, telling us that we’re wasting our time, we’re not good enough, and it’ll never happen for us.

We have to do the work.

So, now it’s 7:55 and time for me to get to work. I hurt, I’m tired, and I’m kinda grouchy … but the craft calls.

What have you pushed through lately? What motivates you to keep moving forward?