There’s a battle going on inside me that I’m only now learning to talk about.

On one side is the craftsman. He wants systems. Structure. Reps. He wants to know the plan, follow the plan, and measure the results. He’s the one who built a 280-day challenge with assessment weeks and daily checklists. He’s the one who taught himself SQL by sitting with select statements until they made sense. He’s the one who revised a 105-chapter novel down to 59 chapters because the story needed it, not because it was fun.

On the other side is the free spirit. He’s the one who picks up a guitar and writes a song he’ll never share. The one who starts a story because the idea is electric and stops when the electricity fades. He’s the one who connects data management to Sherlock Holmes in the middle of a conference speech and thinks, where did that come from? He’s the one who has filled notebooks for twenty years with dreams that never became anything — not because they weren’t good, but because he got bored before the boring part was over.

The free spirit loves the spark. The craftsman loves the grind. And for most of my life, they haven’t been on speaking terms.

The free spirit would start something — a song, a story, a challenge — and ride the wave until the wave broke. Then the craftsman would show up too late, look at the wreckage, and say, “If you’d just stuck with it.” And the free spirit would shrug and say, “But it stopped being fun.”

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last hundred days.

The free spirit isn’t the enemy. And the craftsman isn’t the hero. They need each other in ways I spent twenty years refusing to admit. The problem was never that one of them was wrong. The problem was that I kept letting them take turns instead of making them work together.

The truce I’ve found — and it is a truce, not a peace treaty — is this: the craftsman builds the system, and the free spirit works inside it. The system gives the free spirit a container. The free spirit gives the system a soul.

Some days the free spirit fights the plan. He doesn’t want to do the boring part. He doesn’t want to sit at the edge of what he knows and push into what he doesn’t. He wants to go back to the imaginative part where everything is new and nothing is hard.

But he’s gotten older. And a whole lot more cooperative. Because the books are getting written, the framework is taking shape, and for the first time in his life, the notebooks are turning into something real.

So I let them fight. And then I make them both show up tomorrow.

Day 52 — The 7-40 Challenge

February 26, 2026

I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and I either wasn’t paying attention the first time I read this book, or I just wasn’t ready for it.

Godin shares what he calls his favorite bad review — someone critiquing his book Tribes. The reviewer said Godin spent all this time talking about people with good ideas and how they could spread those ideas and made it sound so easy. But then the reviewer complained that Godin never provides a how-to. No step-by-step guide. No blueprint for becoming this kind of leader.

Godin’s response? That’s the point. There is no map.

When I heard that, I felt something click that I’ve been circling for years. Because I have been that reviewer. I’ve read Godin’s work and felt simultaneously inspired and annoyed. I could feel the grind between wanting to be what he described and having absolutely no idea how to get there.

But here’s what I’m realizing at Day 52 that I couldn’t see before: it’s not completely true that I didn’t know how. I just didn’t realize that the principles I was applying at work — the ones I was crushing with — were the same principles I should have been applying to my own life and my own projects.

Let me explain.

Back in the DFW area, I was working as a data governance specialist. I was doing good work. Gaining customer trust. Improving data flow. Making initiatives succeed. But the people around me were getting promoted, and I wasn’t. So I asked my manager the question: how do I get promoted?

His answer was ambiguous at best. Something about being involved in a larger project. Contributing at a higher level. And in my mind, I was contributing. But not on anything high-profile enough to get noticed.

I had two options. Whine about it and stay put, or lift my gaze and figure out how to get to that bigger project. There was no map for that. Nobody handed me a flowchart that said “do these six things and you’ll be promoted in eighteen months.” But when the opportunity for a bigger project came, I recognized it. I grabbed it with both hands. And by the time I was done, I’d gone from data governance specialist to data management advisor for the company.

Looking back, that’s the whole lesson. There was no map. But there was a framework — a set of principles I was already living by at work. Solve the problem. Own the outcome. Show up consistently. Build trust through character, not credentials. I just hadn’t translated those principles to the rest of my life yet.

That’s where the frustration lives for most of us. We want a map. We want someone to hand us a set of directions and promise that if we follow them, everything works out. But that’s not how any of this works. It’s not cartography. It’s a series of decisions made over time in response to things nobody else has encountered in exactly the way you have.

So it’s not that we want a map. It’s that we want a framework — a way to process the information that gets thrown at us. We want a set of habits. We want to name the things that matter and start pursuing them.

That’s what the 7-40 Challenge is. It’s not a map. It’s a compass. Seven habits aren’t directions to a destination. They’re tools for navigating whatever wilderness you’re in.

And I think this is why the Bible says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It’s not that you haven’t accepted what God has offered. It’s that your journey with Him is different from anyone else’s. Your response to Him will be different. The principles are universal, but the path is individual. That’s true in faith. It’s true in business. It’s true in transformation.

I’ve had mentors who wandered through similar wilderness. Dave Ramsey taught me to handle money. Dan Miller — who wrote 48 Days to the Work You Love before he passed away — helped me see that passion and entrepreneurship could coexist. Godin has been pushing me to think differently for over a decade. But none of them walked through my wilderness. They gave me enough to start cutting my own trail.

Twenty years ago, the teacher was there. The student wasn’t ready. Now, having been through two cancer battles, corporate environments that tested every skill I had, a marriage that’s lasted 27 years, and a productivity explosion over the last 52 days — I can’t imagine going back to where I was. I see the man I’ve come from. I see where I’m going. And I realize that what felt like delay was actually foundation. Character. Work ethic. Know-how built across a lot of different areas.

The foundation is firm now. And because of that, I can finally hear what Godin’s been saying all along.

There is no map. There never was. But there’s a compass, a set of habits, and a God who’s been with me the whole time.

Day 52. Still cutting trail.