The middle has no applause.

The beginning gets celebrated — the launch, the announcement, the brave first step. People clap for that.

The finish gets celebrated too. The book in hand, the stage, the ribbon.

But the middle? The middle is silent. It’s the hundredth ordinary morning of doing the work when the novelty is long gone and the finish line is nowhere in sight.

That’s where most things die. Not at the start — almost nobody quits at the start, the start is exciting. They quit in the middle, when the work stopped feeling like a beginning and hadn’t yet become a finish. When no one was watching and nothing felt different and the question crept in: is this even going anywhere? Probably not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what the heck I’m doing.

The truth is that the middle isn’t a sign something’s wrong. The middle is the work. It’s the long, unglamorous stretch where the building actually happens — quietly, without an audience, one ordinary day at a time. Nobody claps for it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t the most important part.

The applause comes back at the end. Your job is to keep going through the part where it doesn’t.

What did you abandon — not because it failed, but because the middle got too quiet?

— Stephanie · She Interrupted · A publication of The ServantEDGE