Nights
The beginning of 2024 was a lot like the end of 2023. I continued to work on my book at night, but as the days went on, I didn’t feel like I was making the progress I wanted to. January turned to February, and I found myself engulfed in my other business and life, making it difficult to work on the book. This started to weigh on me as I reread what I was writing and did not think it was at the level of quality it needed to be to really help agents. This meant I would have to go back and rewrite sections, causing more delays. I did get some relief when my partner and I were able to complete the sale of our brokerage, or so I thought.
We closed on the sale on February 29th, and after walking out of the restaurant, after letting our agents know, I remember not feeling the weight lifted off me as I expected to. This was because over the coming months, there was a lot of work to do to make the transition to the new ownership as seamless as possible, especially for all of our agents. Although I knew there would be some overlap with the transition before my responsibilities were taken off my plate and my time freed up, I did not realize how much overlap there was. For the next few months, my workload increased to help with the transition, and by the time I would be ready to write, I would only have a little bit of battery left to do so. This was until I found something that I was not looking for.
March 28th. Every year, my parents and I join my Wife’s family and friends tailgating the Chicago White Sox home opener (full disclosure, my parents and I are Cubs fans, but it is a lot of fun and I’m not gonna turn down a good time!). This year, we were not in our normal spot on the border of the parking lot. Instead, we were stuck in the middle, surrounded by people we did not know. Parked right across from us was a van that had some branding on the side of it, but we never really paid much attention to it as we all ate, drank, and enjoyed each other’s company. Then, about halfway through the tailgate, the doors to the van opened up and the people in it started handing out this energy drink none of us had ever heard of called Bubblr. I never really enjoyed energy drinks because of how fast the caffeine hits you and the awful crash after, so I didn’t think much about taking any of the free cases they were handing out. My brother and sister-in-law had a completely different mindset and started grabbing as much of it as they could! By the time we were ready to head into the game, they had at least a dozen cases piled up in the back of their truck.
A few weeks later, my family and I were at my brother and sister-in-law’s house on a Sunday afternoon for my nephew’s birthday party, and my sister-in-law was drinking one of the Bubblr drinks. I asked her what she thought of it, and she told me how much she loved them. She told me she didn’t feel the crash she normally feels with other energy drinks, and her energy level rose, but it wasn’t some crazy spike. It just remained at a higher level (FYI, this is not a paid advertisement for Bubblr). Seeing the curiosity on my face, she encouraged me to take a few cases and try them out. I left the party with four cases and figured I’d give it a try the next day.
Around 5:00 pm the next day, I started to feel my battery draining. It had been a long day, and I was really getting close to running on fumes at that point. I knew there was no way I would be able to work on the book, so I thought that was as good a time as ever to see if my sister-in-law’s words were true. I drank the tall skinny can (similar in size to a Red Bull, just a little thicker and taller), and not long after, I started to feel my energy level rising, but not to a crazy level. Not wanting to get my hopes up too much, I cautiously went on with my day, but as the time kept ticking, my energy remained good. After I was done with all of my responsibilities that evening, I looked at the clock, and it was just after 10. I did a check on myself and still felt pretty good, so I opened up the Google Doc and started working on the book. Three hours later, it was 1:00 am, and I felt it was the most productive I’ve been since I started up rewriting it again. I had found my secret weapon.
Knowing that around 5:00 pm I would start to feel the weight of the day wearing on me, I made a routine of drinking a Bubblr at 6:00 pm. For the next three months, I worked on the book six nights out of the week until one or two in the morning, taking only Saturday nights off the decompress. I knew I was sacrificing sleep during this time and was essentially relying on caffeine to keep me going, but I loved spending time on the book. Seeing my vision come to reality through my own efforts was so rewarding. Plus, each day got me closer to finishing it.
The progress I was making on the book was tremendous, and by June, I was on the third version of it. I still had a very long way to go until it was published, but while searching online, I came across something that I felt would take my book to the stratosphere.