Have you ever felt like no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, it will never be good enough?

Seven years ago, when I first joined the world of authors and professional speakers, I naively expected to encounter a group of marketing-savvy, financially independent entrepreneurs who had their lives and careers completely figured out. Boy was I wrong. I hope they forgive me for shattering the sometimes well-crafted illusion, but most authors and professional speakers struggle to make a living. Many have full-time or at least part-time "day jobs" to help pay the bills while they pursue a career in writing and/or speaking.

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, put it best when he said, "Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar." My friend Eric Wilson is a New York Times best-selling novelist with ten titles (so far) to his credit. Only recently was he able to retire from his daytime job to focus on writing full-time. I look forward to the day that I am able to do the same. Until then, I too work at a day job to support my family while I write and speak strictly as a labor of love.

This past Thursday was a particularly discouraging day for me, both at my job and at home. At my office, each employee had a scheduled quarterly meeting with the Branch Manager to discuss career goals and past performance. While I have been a very competent and conscientious employee for several years, the only feedback I received in the meeting was that I had arrived six minutes late for work on March 8, and needed to "work on" my "tardiness". No mention was given to the times that I had arrived early, stayed late, worked through breaks, covered for other employees, provided creative solutions for difficult and unusual problems, done my own job exceptionally well or gone above and beyond my job description. All that was noted was my six minutes of tardiness.

That evening I went home, helped clean up the kitchen, fed the cats, made dinner, balanced our checkbook, paid some bills, read all my emails and mail, helped load up the dishwasher, ran the dishwasher, dried and put away several dishes that had been washed by hand, baked a loaf of bread, reviewed a new blog that I had discovered, updated the Top Ten Links section of my website and promptly went to bed. When my wife came to bed a while later, she informed me that she was mad at me for forgetting to dry two large baking trays and put them away as she had asked.