Two days ago I found myself in what seemed like an impossible situation. I had 19 hours to complete something that normally takes me up to 4 days. To top it off, this PC was starting to show possible configuration issues. I’ve been trying different things to see if it will work better, but that day with 19hrs to go, I didn’t have time to mess around.
Finishing this project was important because it’s going to be my only source of income for most of the month. I’m not even 100% sure I’ll make it into my biggest event at the end of the month due to their selection process. So at 10am, I got to work. By 2:30am I was all set up and as expected, totally ready for bed.
It wasn’t without its ups and downs. My original idea would have been impossible to finish in time. The back up file was 2 days older than my last edit. I had been trying something new and it was taking me extra time to learn and develop good techniques. Had I had the right file, I definitely could have finished it.
Unfortunately, it looked like I was going to need to start from scratch. My worst fear. I’ve created other things in one day before the but that was years ago and not at the quality I can, and have to if I want to make any money, create today. I had to choose something that I knew I’d be able to finish quickly, while also minimizing the use of features that could give me fits when uploading, if I was going to be able to finish.
On top of that, my computer would go through crashing “cycles”. It would constantly crash several times and then be okay for a length of time. Then it would start right back up again. Sometimes the program I was working in would crash and I couldn’t reopen it until I restarted. Then I would be exporting a file and suddenly that would stop working. Basically, if it could go wrong, it did.
Despite all these issues, I successfully completed something I thought I would never be able to do. And I even had nearly 2hrs to spare.
So what does this story have to do with anything? I wanted to share an example of what people can do when they put their mind to it, even and perhaps especially in tight situations. Don’t get discouraged if you find yourself having to shift focus at the last minute. If you’re determined enough, you may be able to accomplish things that you thought you couldn’t. You can always go back to your original idea later.