[Fox]

Bill,

When I look at my life right now, I have it pretty good, health, family and profession. It has not always been that way. I have had a few stumbling blocks that some might say were major but in the end it always worked out. Not as I had imagined or dreamed...but better.

This was passed on to me during some of those hard times. I find that it kind of sums things up, maybe you will too. It is from a book by Todd Skinner, accounting the first free ascent (his) of Salathe Wall of El Capitan in 1988.

"Our lives are stacked with dreams and almost everybody prefers them to stay that way, which is why the first steps are critical. You have to leave the ground.
The key is to suffer and fail, and fail, and fail. It is a game of who can suffer the most, gets the most. Each moment you have the choice to go up or down. Your tired. Too tired to say yes to the whole route, because that would be too big a bite. So you say yes to the next rope length, and later you can't even go that far because you are too beat up. So it becomes yes to the next ten feet, then the next move, the next hand shift, because you can always suffer just a little bit more.
We made it finally not because of our great skill but because we were more tenacious. If you refuse to fail, you eventually succeed."

You are successful even at times like these, and you will be rewarded. Unfortunately it will be in hindsight. Keep your chin up.

-John