Recently I joined a gym. Well, I say a gym. It’s actually a nearby high school’s fitness center that’s much cheaper than other gyms and is just 7 minutes from my house.

I joined because I want to train for my first Olympic-distance triathlon, and I need a place both to swim and to cycle during the winter months here in West Michigan.

My official training starts in a few days so yesterday I dropped in to get a tour of the place and get a cycling workout in.

If up to this point you’ve been hearing gentle music playing in the background of this story, now is when you’d hear a loud scraaatch and a beat of silence.

Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

Because when I went in, I learned the only exercise bikes this fitness center has require an extra $5 per use and have very restricted availability.

I’m embarrassed by how rattled I was by this. I was frustrated, afraid, and angry all at the same time.

And so goes the writing life. We get to work on a project and we encounter an obstacle.

• All the agents and publishers reject our proposal.
• Our lead magnet doesn’t work.
• Nobody commented on our blog post.
• Something happens in our family that upends everything.
• We wake up one morning and realize it’s been two months since we made any progress on our manuscript.
• The list goes on and on.

But here’s the thing. As long as I stick with my goal of completing this triathlon, I’ll figure out how to do my training. As I write this I don’t know how, really, though I have some ideas to try.

The key is not to give up and to remember that encountering obstacles means you’re doing something! You’re on your way.

We have only to look back to remind ourselves nothing has ever happened that we haven’t been able to figure out. No problem has been so difficult we weren’t able to solve it.

That’s the case with this obstacle too, whatever it is.

Hang in there. Remember how far you’ve come. And don’t give up.

You’re going to figure this out.