The unglamorous middle

There are a lot of accounts of the beginning, when somebody quits and buys the camera. There are more accounts of the end, once it worked and the numbers are worth putting in a headline. Almost nobody writes about the part in between, which is where the actual decision gets made.

The middle is not dramatic. That is exactly what makes it hard.

What it looks like

It looks like being good enough to be busy and not yet good enough to be chosen. It looks like a month with three jobs and a month with none, and no way to tell from the inside which one is the trend. It looks like doing work you are proud of for people who will not remember your name.

There is no signal in the middle. That is the problem. Early on, any client is proof of progress. Later, the record speaks. In between, you have to keep going on evidence you cannot see yet.

The only thing that helped

I stopped judging the year and started judging the week. Did I answer everyone. Was the work better than the last one. Did I keep the promises I made, including the small ones nobody would have chased.

Those are things you can settle by Friday. Whether the company is going to work is not a question you can settle by Friday, and asking it every day is how people talk themselves out of businesses that were four months from turning.

Twenty-eight cities later, none of it came from a decision I could point to. It came from a lot of ordinary weeks where the honest answer to those three questions was yes.