I Almost Quit This. Here's What Changed My Mind.
How I'm learning to hold the gritty facts and the gritty faith at the same time.
It was a random Tuesday, and I was doing what all writers do best: avoiding writing. My distraction of choice that afternoon was Instagram.
I’ve made a kind of peace with social media. I’m never going to love it, but I’ve stopped fighting it quite so much. What I’ve learned is that when I go in without intention, I come out feeling vaguely worse.
So lately I’ve been trying something different: before I open the app (or maybe sometimes after), I ask myself a question. What do you have for me today?
Think of it as a tarot of Instagram.
I scroll and stop on what resonates, and I try to pay attention to what the stopping is telling me. In other words, I used my intuition to see what Instagram has for me.
On this particular Tuesday, it had a lot to say.
At first, I landed on a clip from the Curiosity Shop podcast with Brene Brown and Adam Grant. It was an episode about paradoxes, why they’re hard and why they’re important.
Brene Brown quotes Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a POW from 1965-73, in an interview with Jim Collins. In the interview, Collins asks Stockdale who didn’t make it out, and he said, "That’s easy - the optimists.”
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current existence.
Brown goes on to say she uses this paradox in her business and asks her team to give her both the gritty facts and the gritty faith when working through problems and opportunities.
And I just loved that so much…
I’m facing some gritty facts right now, and balancing them with faith can be challenging. Most of these center around my creative work and this business. I’ve been pouring my blood, sweat, and tears and money into this thing for a couple of years now without much growth and almost no revenue (if you are a paid subscriber - thank you!)
As I was sifting through our budget yesterday (budgets are filled with gritty facts!), I became keenly aware of just how much money I’d poured in, which left me with that queasy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when faced with the brutal facts.
I wondered how smart it was to spend so much money on something that may never see much of a return. If you know my story, you know there is a history there as well.
And that’s just the physical part of it. There is also an emotional component of doing what I do that cannot be measured, in terms of relational impact. This work has cost me a lot relationally. It turns out some people aren’t as comfortable with me speaking my truth as I am.
My book launch has been delayed yet again, now Q1 2027, and I’ve wondered more than once if I should just stop writing and call it a day. Maybe this whole thing just isn’t going to work out, and perhaps I am crazy to even think it will. I’m not sure if it’s all worth it.
Those are my gritty facts…
But then I moved on to Allison Ziggy who was discussing the idea that ‘Maybe crazy is just being right too soon’. And I thought, hmmmm, maybe Allison has a point. I mean, she does seem to be right about a lot of other things, soooo.
Could it be that maybe I just need more time or tweaking, and perhaps defining what ‘working’ actually would look like?
Perhaps this is all right, but just a little too soon.
That is my gritty faith…
I stopped scrolling at Jenna Bush Hager where she was talking about her start on The Today Show. She was teaching (school I guess?) at the time, and producers for the show had reached out to ask for a meeting, which she declined for two years until one day, she was with her grandparents and the subject came up.
Her grandmother (Barbra) encouraged her to take the meeting because ‘you always take the meeting.’ Jenna took the meeting, obviously.
Always take the meeting
I wondered if somehow these were my marching orders. I took it to mean being open to exploring new paths and opportunities, not getting pigeon-holed into this project or my future, one way or another.
Be open. Listen. Place the brutal facts with the infinite possibilities on the palm of my hand without fear. And don’t grip tightly; rather, hold them openly.
Taking the meeting is what it looks like to hold both at once. You don’t get to know the outcome before you say yes. That’s the paradox made practical.
This is how you live in a paradox, and this is how you handle uncertainty.
If you’re facing uncertainty right now, what are the gritty facts?
What is your gritty faith? How about your marching orders?
I love this and have been there many times 🩷