The Hard Part

Almost by the hand of fate, I launched The Meteor Chef 2.0 on Tuesday of this week, a day later than planned. I laughed reading what I wrote last week as it was more-or-less an exact prediction of what would happen. The good news: the extra day of fixing and preparing paid off, and the reaction to the work has been great.

Now, I get to the hard part. Along with the launch of the new design and content, I also made a commitment to a more regular publishing schedule. Each week I’ll be releasing a blog post and two snippets, and every other week a new recipe. So, each month I need to write at least 14 new things a month. Holy cow. That’s a lot. Why in the hell would I do that?

Because it’s difficult.

Purposefully making something difficult means having no choice but to do it. Placing that expectation on myself means I can’t say “I’ll get to it later” because it’s far too much to procrastinate on. The possible outcome is binary: I’ll either do it or I won’t. Fortunately, it’s entirely possible to do this.

This is all hinged on something that I wrote about recently—focus. In order to write at this pace, I need to put all of my effort into this one thing. In the past, I’ve always tried to juggle multiple things: freelance work and at least 2-3 “side projects.” Now, and purely out of circumstance (homeboy’s gotta eat), that’s being whittled down to freelancing and work on The Meteor Chef. The ultimate goal being to get The Meteor Chef to be self-sufficient.

Where I got stuck in the past was being caught up in two types of fear: succeeding and missing out. Fear of success, because if what I was working on actually caught on, I was afraid of having to commit to the work. And on that same wavelength, fear of missing out on other opportunities because I was focused on this one thing. In order to do anything of substance, we need to drop these fears, commit, and just see what happens.

I have little to no idea if Meteor will succeed in the long term. I personally believe that it will, but it’s not in my control. Betting on that belief means dedicating a chunk of my life to working with it and trying to build something on top of it. There’s a reality, though, that’s helping me think differently about this: Meteor will go away one day. Everything will go away one day. I will go away one day. Wasting time worrying about when, if, and how that happens is a waste of life. Instead, I’ll just do the best I can right now and play it all by ear.

That’s all any of us can ever really do: guess.