Day 365 is always harder – much harder – than day 1. Day 1 is a joke. Day 1 makes you feel like you can do it forever.

Day 1 is when your heart skips a beat for that cute someone you think you can live with forever.

Day 1 is when your ideas are fresh and so totally possible. Day 1 makes your heart jump with excitement.

Day 1 feels like the first lick of ice-cream before you think about where it goes after that.

Day 1 is impulsive – you jump to conclusions without thinking of consequences.

Day 1 is that brash teenager who runs away from home, thinking she’s on her way to eternal freedom (without realising that, being young, broke and uneducated, means her freedom will not come without struggle).

Day 1 is a lie.

You make promises you can’t and won’t keep on Day 1.

Day 1 is when you say I’ll love you forever (you won’t) and My business will be different from ones around me (it won’t).

Day 730

Day 730 is where the reality sets in.

 

No, you cannot love each other forever. Love feels hard, not easy. Doubt creeps in, beauty fades.

Day 730 is when you find out your business isn’t unique. You won’t love your customers every day (you’ll hate them, sometimes). You won’t be the better boss all the time. Your business won’t always be for the people (at times it will be for you and your team).

Day 730 is when you first think about giving up.

‘Maybe I never loved her.’

‘Maybe I’m not cut out to be an entrepreneur.’

‘I’m a bad boss.’

‘I’m a bad father.’

‘Maybe I should stop writing.’

Day 730 is where you find out the smell of your lover’s breath without mint or that no one is reading your blog. Day 730 is the day of rejection.

Day 730 is what author Seth Godin calls the dip. It’s the same thing, but I call it Day 730.

The dip is where you find yourself in a bad place. A place so bad you would rather quit than go on.

And that’s where you need to make a choice.

Decision

Day 730 is Decision day.

Are you going to continue to be your lover’s lover?

Are you going to continue to write, act, or YouTube?

Or will you pack up and go, to search for another deal that will put you back in Day 1 again?

But

Nobody quits Day 730 only to go back to Day 1 again for no reason.

There are benefits of coming this far.

Unlike Day 1, your life has been transformed at Day 730.

You are no longer a beginner, but someone with experience.

If you wrote everyday for 730 days, you would have written 1 novel’s worth of words.

If you kept a lover for 730 days, you would know her daily routine and the very things that will make her heart jump (or fall).

If you had run a business for 730 days, you would have seen how differently customers reacted when they were angry (at you).

Like Day 1, Day 730 is also a lie.

But told in a different way. Day 730 lies to you about Day 7,300. On Day 730, you will be told, ‘It’s not worth it. Give it up. There’s nothing on Day 7,300.’

Day 730 is the day of despair. It is the day when nothing goes right. Everything is wrong. It’s when you pretend that everything is okay; when you start lying to people you care about because they care too much about you for the truth not to hurt.

This is why so little people make it to Day 7,300. Day 730, 1460 and 2920 are very good liars. They show you the most convincing evidence of your failures.

The ones who are at Day 7,300 always have this to say: Don’t believe in the lies Day 730 tells you. The pain will be worth it.

Epilogue

Life is full of Day 1s and Day 730s. I’m 26 now. I’ve gone through 13 Day 730s. I’ve heard the lies told by Day 1460, 2920 and so on. Sometimes I believe them, sometimes I didn’t.

The times I did, I gave up when I shouldn’t have.

I started writing at 11. It’s the only thing that made it to Day over Day 3,650. And it’s the thing that keeps me happiest when I don’t know what to do with my life.