You are so focused on the finish line you forgot to enjoy the race.

Allow me to have an honest conversation with you before you head into the weekend?

You are moving so fast toward the destination that you are not even tasting the food anymore. You are eating to finish the plate. You are writing to finish the book. You are publishing to hit a number. You are building something and you have completely forgotten to enjoy building it.

I understand. I really do. We are goal oriented people. We make lists. We set timelines. We create vision boards with very specific fonts and color palettes because apparently our dreams need to be aesthetically consistent. We are focused and driven and absolutely terrible at slowing down long enough to appreciate where we actually are.

But here is what nobody tells you about the destination. When you get there, the first thing you are going to wish is that you had enjoyed the journey more.

Every writer who has ever finished a book knows this feeling. You cross the finish line, you hold the finished copy in your hands, and for about forty five seconds it is everything you imagined. Then your brain, being the ambitious little troublemaker that it is, immediately starts asking what is next. The celebration lasts less time than it took to park your car on the way to buy the thing.

Meanwhile the months you spent writing it, the late nights, the bad first drafts, the paragraphs you deleted and rewrote four times, the moment a sentence finally came out exactly right and you sat back in your chair and said out loud to nobody in particular, "Yeah, that’s it." Those moments were it. And they went by so fast because you were too busy trying to get to the end.

The process is not the thing you survive to get to the reward. The process is the reward. Everything else is just evidence that it happened.

Think about why you started writing in the first place. Not the sales goal. Not the platform. Not the Amazon ranking. Before any of that entered the picture, there was just you and an idea and something in your chest that said this needs to exist. That feeling right there is the reason. And that feeling lives in the process, not the product.

So here is a practical question. When is the last time you sat down to write and actually enjoyed it? Not grinded through it. Not checked it off the list. Enjoyed it. Felt the words moving the way they do when you are in the zone and time disappears and you look up and somehow two hours passed and it felt like twenty minutes.

That is the sweet spot. That is what you signed up for.

The goal is worth chasing. But not at the expense of the thing that made you want to chase it.

Give yourself permission this weekend to remember why you love this. Not what you want it to become. Not where you wish it already was. Why you love it right now, in this season, at this exact stage of the journey.

Write something with no agenda this weekend. No word count goal. No chapter target. Just write because it feels good to make something out of nothing. Because that is what you are. A person who makes something out of nothing. That is a rare and remarkable thing and it deserves to be enjoyed.

The finish line will still be there Monday. Today, just write because you love to write.

Have a great weekend.

Marlon Dean, WhiteHause Publishing | The Writerz Block