“WHO IS ALL THIS FOR?

In the end, the enterprise and the sacrifice are all about the audience.

They’re about readers, the movie goers, the site visitors, the listeners, the concergoers, the gamers, the gallery goers – a group which, by the way, includes you and me.

We’re the audience.

In the hero’s journey, the wanderer returns home after years of exile, struggle and suffering. He brings a gift for the people. That gift arises from what the hero has seen, what he has endured, what he has learned.  But he girt is not that raw material alone. It is the ore refined into gold by the hero/wanderer/artist’s skilled and loving hands.

You are that artist.

I will gladly shell out $24.95 or $9.99 or .99 cents on iTunes to read or see or listen to the 24-karat treasure that you have refined from your pain and your vision and your imagination. I need it. We all do. We’re struggling here in the trenches. That beauty, the wisdom, those thrills and chills, even that mindless escape on a rainy October afternoon – I want it.

Put me down for it.

The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns.

You are that hero.”

~Steven Pressfield, from his book, ‘Turning Pro’