Sitting on a bench overlooking the South Beach marina, I asked an entrepreneur how he had been since he founded his company. He replied with a conundrum:

Looking back I can’t believe it’s only been a year but if I think about every day, it’s taken forever.

That’s a really succinct way of communicating how it feels to grind. Cementing each brick, each hire, each line of code, each product feature seems like just an incremental step, just another day. But taking a step back and looking at the structure you’ve built as an entrepreneur, it seems to just fly by.

Whenever I have a second thought about picking up today’s brick, I think of Thomas Edison who said “most people miss opportunity because it’s dressed up like hard work.”

Here’s to the grinders.