It's taken me a while to learn this reality, and I often forget it, but it's something that helps bring me back to center when I feel like I'm dealing with something that's more difficult than it ought to be.

Everything is hard.

I don't mean 'everything' obviously (it's pretty easy to take a nap), I mean anything we work on. Anything we're trying to improve, any thing of value that we're trying to preserve, any meaningful gift we want to impart to the world...it's all hard.

Writing one blog post is easy, building an audience of millions is hard. Going to startup weekend is easy, building a SaaS product that can sustain a team of people is hard. Kissing a baby is easy, being a parent is hard.

The trick of course is figuring out when something hard and worthwhile, or whether it is in fact being harder than it should be - and listening to what that is telling you.

But that's hard.

Because everything is hard.