What It Costs That No One Sees
I wake up most mornings already tired.
Not from sleep—though that’s hit or miss—but from the weight.
The weight of building something I believe in, while wondering if anyone else ever truly will.
Golf Ball Wisdom isn’t just an idea. It’s my lifeline. It’s every hard-earned lesson from the years I spent lost—struggling with addiction, guilt, shame, and self-doubt. It’s fatherhood on my worst days. It’s a swing on the driving range when everything else feels out of control.
But here’s the thing no one tells you about chasing purpose:
It can break your heart a hundred times before it ever builds anything.
What the world doesn’t see is this:
That some days, I pour three hours into designing a hoodie that might never sell.
That I write blog posts no one comments on.
That I offer free coaching sessions and hear nothing but silence in return.
There are days when I feel like I’m yelling into a canyon, hoping that one echo comes back saying, “This helped me.”
Instead, I get notifications for bounced emails and abandoned carts.
And it hurts.
Because I’m not just selling shirts—I’m offering pieces of my story.
I’m not just coaching—I’m reaching into the dark and trying to pull someone else into the light.
But when no hand reaches back, when nothing moves, you start to ask:
“Am I crazy for still believing in this?”
“What if this mission—this thing I’ve bet so much of myself on—isn’t enough?”
“What if I’m not enough?”
What it costs is It gets lonely.
There’s no paycheck waiting on the other side of a long day.
No metrics that measure how much soul I’ve poured into an idea.
No applause for the hours I spend crafting something that may never get seen.
Even the people closest to me—who love me, support me—can’t always understand this kind of exhaustion.
Because it’s not just physical.
It’s soul fatigue.
It’s what happens when you keep giving from a well that never seems to refill.
And yet—I keep going.
Not because I’m some kind of hero. Not because I have boundless optimism.
I keep going because of something simpler—and heavier:
I’ve already been through the darkness.
I know what it’s like to lose myself completely.
And I promised that if I ever found a way out—I’d build a light for someone else to follow.
Golf Ball Wisdom is that light. Flickering, maybe. Small, maybe. But it’s real.
And I hold onto that, even when everything else feels like it’s slipping.
If you were me today, here’s what you’d feel:
- The ache in your chest when you check for sales and see zero.
- The sting of self-doubt when no one signs up for the program you built with your heart.
- The guilt when you think about how much time you’re spending on something that hasn’t yet “worked.”
But you’d also feel this quiet thing underneath all of it:
Resolve.
Because I won’t quit unless it starts hurting the people I love.
And right now, they’re still cheering me on—even if they don’t always see how much it takes.
So I’ll take another breath.
Swing again.
Write another post.
Ship another shirt.
Hold the line.
If you’ve ever felt this way—torn between purpose and pain, mission and fatigue—I see you.
And I hope this helps you feel a little less alone in the work no one sees.
