When it Pours

I'm seeing red. And it's a beautiful sight.

It's not the means to the end. The means is hard work, focused activity. Centered on staying out of my comfort zone with cold, hard, long hours of desperation. The activities that drain my energies.

Entrepreneurship is a glorious enterprise. Freedom to create, freedom to decide, freedom to structure, to plan, to witness the rewards firsthand. But it's not all that. It takes having a focus when you're on a mission, inspired. It takes trial and error and error and error and error and error and more trial and error. The error rains hard, rains often and comes down on you like relentless thunder. And just when you're looking for the rainbow, for signs of potential, hidden next to the weeds and the beaten-down path a bud peeks through.

It takes only one bud to turn my hurt from muddy relentless downpours to an upswing of a smile. Simple possibility. And I'm on my way, back to the means. Awaiting the day that my focused activity, activity that is meaningful, productive and desired pours forth and in response the prairie turns green. The day when I will really know what it means to work hard.