The Pursuit of Something Better

I need to be upfront: this article is going to be different from what I usually write. I’ve laid the foundation on the marketing side and I’ll keep delivering there, but something about this section of the site is resonating in a way I didn’t expect, and I think it’s because people are tired of polished. They want real. So here’s real.

The Lie Nobody Corrects

There’s a narrative that gets sold constantly, in podcasts, in interviews, in every “how I made it” story you’ve ever heard. It goes like this: things were bad, then something happened, and now things are great.

The “something happened” part is always dramatic. A chance encounter. A single decision. A moment of clarity at 3 AM that rewired everything. And it makes for a great story. But it’s a lie. Not intentionally — most people genuinely believe their own turning point narrative. But when you actually break it down, the “moment” they point to was just the first time they noticed something that had been building for months.

Nobody gets saved by a moment. You get saved by a pattern.

I know this because I lived the opposite of that narrative. And I want to tell you about it honestly, not because my story is special, but because I think the honest version is more useful than the cinematic one.

Two Summers Ago

I’ve written before about the COVID season — the period where I was doing nothing with my life and had to claw my way out. But here’s the thing nobody tells you about clawing your way out: it doesn’t mean you stay out.

Two summers ago, I was back in a version of that place. Different circumstances, same weight. School wasn’t going well. Not the kind of “not well” where you fail a class and figure it out — the kind where you sit in a lecture and genuinely cannot connect what you’re doing to anything that matters to you. The kind where you start to wonder if the problem isn’t the situation but you.

And maybe worse than feeling it myself, I could tell the people around me felt the exact same way about me. That’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough. When the people who love you start looking at you like they’re worried — that changes the way you see yourself. You start viewing yourself through their concern. And that concern becomes a mirror you can’t stop looking into.

There was one song I played on repeat during that time. The whole message was just “it gets better.” Over and over. I wanted so badly to believe it. But I can vividly remember sitting in one of our campus library basements, headphones in, trying to let those words land — and they just wouldn’t. The gap between hearing “it gets better” and actually feeling it was the widest distance I’ve ever experienced.

Why “It Gets Better” Isn’t Enough

Here’s my issue with that phrase, and with most of the advice people give when you’re in a hard season: it’s passive. “It gets better” implies that you wait, and eventually the weather changes. Like you’re standing in the rain and someone tells you the sun is coming.

That’s not how it works. It doesn’t just “get” better. You make it better. In increments so small they feel like nothing.

And I know — I know — that’s not the answer you want when you’re sitting in the basement. You want the lightning bolt. You want the one conversation, the one realization, the one decision that flips everything. I wanted that too. It didn’t come.

What came instead was a Tuesday where I studied for 20 more minutes than the day before. A Wednesday where I went to the gym instead of staying in bed. A Thursday where I had an honest conversation I’d been avoiding for weeks. None of those things felt significant. None of them felt like progress. They felt like survival.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand, and this is the thing I wish someone had told me when I was in it: survival IS the progress. The days where all you did was not quit? Those are the days that built the foundation for everything that came after. You just can’t see the foundation while you’re still pouring it.

The Compound Effect Nobody Talks About

People love talking about compound interest when it comes to money or business. Small investments, consistent deposits, exponential growth over time. Everyone gets that.

But nobody applies the same logic to their own life when they’re struggling.

Every day you choose to keep going — even poorly, even slowly, even when it feels pointless — you’re making a deposit. And just like compound interest, the early deposits feel worthless. You put in effort and see nothing. You make a change and feel no different. You push through a hard day and wake up the next morning to the same problems.

That’s not failure. That’s the accumulation phase. And the accumulation phase is where most people quit, because the returns are invisible.

I almost quit. More than once. Not in the dramatic way — I wasn’t going to do anything drastic. In the quiet way, where you just slowly stop trying and convince yourself that coasting is fine. That mediocrity is acceptable. That “good enough” is good enough.

It’s not. And deep down, if you’re reading this, you know it’s not. The fact that the gap between where you are and where you want to be bothers you is the single greatest indicator that you’re not done. Apathy is the real enemy. Not struggle. If you still care, you still have everything you need.

What Actually Pulled Me Through

I want to be honest about something that I know not everyone will relate to, but I’d be dishonest if I left it out.

My faith carried me through the parts that discipline couldn’t. There were mornings where the only reason I got up was a conviction that I was put here to do something that I hadn’t done yet. Not a feeling — feelings were unreliable during that season. A conviction. The kind that sits underneath your emotions, quieter than them, but stronger.

I’m not going to tell you what to believe. That’s not what this is. But I will tell you that every person I’ve ever met who made it through a genuinely dark season had something anchoring them that went deeper than logic. For me, it was God. For you, it might be family, or a promise you made to yourself, or a version of your future that you refuse to let go of.

Whatever it is — hold onto it with everything you have. Because the world will give you a thousand rational reasons to quit. You need at least one irrational reason to keep going.

The Thing Nobody Tells You About the Other Side

Here’s what I want you to know, from someone who’s standing on the other side of the season you might be in right now.

When you get through it — and you will — you won’t just feel relief. You’ll feel something deeper than that. You’ll feel a quiet, unshakeable confidence that comes from knowing you’ve already survived the thing you were most afraid of. And that confidence doesn’t go away. It becomes the foundation for everything you build next.

The company I’m building, the work I’m doing with startups, the fact that I can sit here and write this at all — none of it exists without that library basement. Not because the suffering was some romantic prerequisite. But because the decision to keep going inside the suffering is what built the person capable of doing all of this.

You don’t become who you’re meant to be by avoiding the hard seasons. You become that person by refusing to stop moving through them.

If You’re in It Right Now

I’m not going to give you a five-step framework. I’m not going to tell you to journal or meditate or “reframe your mindset.” You’ve heard all of that. Here’s what I’ll actually say:

Do one thing today that your future self will thank you for. Just one. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to feel meaningful. It just has to be slightly better than doing nothing.

And then do it again tomorrow.

That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. It’s not viral. It doesn’t fit on a motivational poster. But it’s the truth. And it’s the thing that actually works when nothing else does.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are in the accumulation phase of a life that hasn’t shown its returns yet. Keep depositing.

You are loved. And the fact that you’re still here, still reading, still caring — that tells me everything I need to know about where you’re headed.

- MM