Journalled on Monday, 22 April 2024 | Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 28 degrees, hot, sunny, but slightly overcast.

It is Monday, the start of the working week, and my goal for this week is to monetise the ‘the long gringo’ blog.

It has been my goal for two or three weeks. I contracted with Alex for this, but he has not been able to do it yet. There are major fundamental problems with the blog’s setup that I obviously created when I began it a year ago.

At that time, I set it up without technical knowledge. Although it has been working all this time and the content has improved exponentially, the blog’s basic foundations need to be changed, and that is what I think he’s doing.

Many times, probably always, what we imagine will resolve, improve, or even change something requires far more work and logistics than was first envisaged.

It is like when you decide to build or remodel your house: you spend a great deal of time planning and accounting for costs and labour, meticulously considering every part and cost, and eventually arrive at X for the total cost and the time it will take to do the work.

For sure, when it comes to the real execution and realisation of the work, X will turn out to be at least 2x, three, or even 4x. The same is true for life. What we imagine and what actually turns out are always different, and the journey is very often not what was initially expected.

We are discussing projects, new projects, problems to be solved, things to be repaired, solutions to be found and implemented, literally and metaphorically, everything in our lives and in our timeline that is there and needs to be done to, in some way, improve and make better our lives.

This also includes business ventures, business and leisure trips, and both professional and personal relationships. What we imagine it will be before setting out on the challenge and what it turns out to be at the end can be a difference of 1,000,000 miles between the two realities.

Again, we are going back to the journey, not the final destination. The final stop is the consequences of the whole journey, through sun, rain, sleet and snow, and how can we really enjoy the final stop if we do not know how to enjoy the journey and sometimes the pain it puts us through?

From the old Californian saying, “no pain, no gain”, it follows that if you do not force yourself to work out to the maximum at the gym, the results will be minimal, if anything. The same applies to life and probably to whatever we do.

Perhaps we can conclude that, at all levels and scales of life, in our self-improvement and the external search for self-improvement and a better life, if there is not a certain amount of pain and suffering, then something is wrong. Perhaps if there is no pain in our lives, we are not improving or evolving?

I know I’m feeling an inevitable pain from the constant frustration of thinking that ‘the long gringo’ is now ready to be monetised, even though it isn’t. Every time we think it will happen now, Google finds something else for us to fix.

Fortunately for me, the task is to organise and tidy up the blog, putting its house and garden in order. If we manage to complete this this week, great! If not, we will continue working on it until it’s finished. That’s just how life goes.

Giving up is easy, and anybody can do it. What we’re talking about is enduring the pain until the end. Resilience is about that, and only a few can do it. It is hard, yes, it is, but it is part of the process.

The goal is to monetise my blog this week. If we do it, great; if not, at least we are getting closer to the goal. At the same time, because of the journey and its process, the site is improving and is better than it was a week, a month, or six months ago.

No pain, no game. With resilience, we eventually reach where we want to be!

Exercise in the morning, a few classes for the rest of the day because of the mid-year holidays, and a lot of thinking about both my professional and personal life.