The ultimate threshold beyond the dreaded day job

There are two major phases after you ditch a dreaded day job. The first is the honeymoon. The second is the infamous grind.

Alex Hormozi is one of the best influencers in the world. I recently saw on Instagram—under my real name—his post that said, “Most people think the hard part is getting started. The hard part is continuing to do the work when the excitement wears off and the grind feels hopeless.”

Every time I decided to climb up another rung, that was the exact same feeling I’ve always gotten.

It goes back to 2018, when I up and quit my job as a personal trainer in early July to pursue freelance writing. I had $5,500 in my bank account, and was looking forward to surviving and grinding.

After four months, it all went up in smoke and I had gotten nowhere. I didn’t land a single client, my income tanked, and doubt was the only thing I accumulated. If you’ve ever stared at your bank account at midnight, then you know the feeling.

So, with $440 in that same account, I took a seasonal job at a local FedEx before heading into that infamous steel warehouse in Jan. 2019—and if you feel like you’ve read this story before, chances are, you have, since it mirrors my main character’s backstory in Beyond the Lost.

Anyway, I stuck around for five months, bailed in Jun. 2019, again tried to make leeway, failed again for the same reasons, and by August, I found myself filling orders at a Wal-Mart Distribution Center.

The moment of near-defeat nearly broke me

The upside? I only worked three days a week, often 12 hours a shift. The downside? I felt like an abject failure. How could someone putting so much time and effort into something fail so spectacularly?

If you’ve ever felt like you were the only one failing, it’s the most hopeless sensation in the world.

Little did I know my first taste of success coincided with the COVID pandemic. It was Feb. 2020. I admitted defeat, and decided to just go back into personal training. I took a job nearly three hours away from the Northern Panhandle, got a room in an Extended Stay while searching for a place to live, then the world ended, and I ventured back home—so pissed off and bitter that I hated everyone and everything I laid eyes on.

Enjoying reading about my past misfortune? Catch the rest of this post at my Substack, The Rogue Scribe. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Scribe!