7-40 Challenge | Rest Week
I wrote a song this week. It’s called “The Only Way Out Is Through,” and I didn’t set out to write a midpoint reflection on the year — but that’s what came out.
The verses are claustrophobic on purpose. Same four walls. Weight on the chest. A voice saying you’re not enough. That’s not a metaphor I had to reach for. That’s the inside of a lot of days this year — the ones where six out of seven habits was all I had, the deadlines I missed, the promotion I keep circling without walking into.
The chorus is the thing I keep relearning: there’s no way over it, no way around it. You can’t skip the hard middle of anything worth doing. You go through, or you don’t go.
I’m 175 days into this year. Halfway. And if I’m honest, the first half was mostly the verses — head down, knuckling up, counting to one and getting up again. Proving I could show up. Proving the engine runs.
But the bridge is where the song surprised me. I’d planned a song about endurance — hold the line, keep the grip, outlast the hard part. What came out instead was a moment where the hands give out and the rope goes slack, and the fall never comes. Where you stop holding and discover you didn’t have to.
That’s the part I didn’t plan. Halfway through this year, I’m starting to understand that “the only way out is through” was never just about gritting my teeth harder. Most of the getting-through hasn’t been me at all. The days I thought I was holding the rope, Someone has been holding me.
Here is the song:
David Willis 