Missing What Never Was

It was January in Murtaugh, Idaho. The cornfield beside me had surrendered its crop months earlier; frost took what remained. The ground was hard, and the air hurt if I breathed too deeply. The sky was stripped of color, a gray blanket pressed against everything.

I was trying to configure a set of dual-axis solar tracker controller boards. The wires were too small to manage with gloves on, but the cold made bare hands useless. I kept shuttling between the delicate work and the car, thawing my fingers against the heater, then stepping back into the wind. I was grateful for that car. It kept me from giving up.

During one of those breaks, my phone rang. It was the only client I had in a small business I was piecing together. That call would matter later more than I could have understood then. I spoke about a future that didn’t exist yet. I talked as if the thing I was building late at night in my hotel room already had structure and shape. Hope tends to run ahead of reality.

Three years passed before the company I described that cold morning took form. In that gap, I overpromised and fell behind again and again. I didn’t have the time or the money to keep pace, and the technical side was far beyond what I knew. I kept trying to make effort cover the lack of skill. It never did. What changed everything wasn’t my own force of will. It was the right people joining in.

When I look back on that season now, what I feel isn’t regret. It’s harder to name. I sometimes miss the person who believed faith and grit were enough, who treated conviction like capability. That illusion kept me moving, and the heat of my anger kept me standing in those fields while I was building something else. All of it served its purpose. Belief, even when misplaced, starts motion. Those years weren’t wasted. They were preparing the ground.

Still, I find myself wrestling with the idea that I missed the perfect version of my company by waiting as long as I did. I imagined it fifteen years before it existed: clean systems, easy momentum, and, of course, no friction. I also know that version was fantasy. The real world refuses to stay that smooth.

I hesitate to call the early belief misguided. It carried me far enough to see what was real, and what’s real moves slowly. It asks for patience. More than that, it teaches you to stop equating progress with speed.

Now I have a team that knows how to build what I used to describe. We still move slowly because it takes time for me to explain and time for them to construct, but this is the most settled I’ve felt in years.

Even with that, I still miss what never existed. The company I dreamed of when I had more stamina and a different kind of fire. Missing it doesn’t mean I want to go back.

Fifteen years later, the thing that gets me through rough days is the same thing that got me through back then. I remember what that early belief gave me. Those memories mix with the work we’re doing now and keep everything grounded. My hope didn’t disappear. It changed shape. Three years ago that hope carried rage I couldn’t contain. Now it just breathes without anger.

It isn’t hard to return to that January day. I can still see the cracked earth, hear the heater rattling in the rented Jeep, feel the short pause before grabbing the handle and stepping into another round of cold. I didn’t realize it then, but I was learning what faith looks like after the shine wears off. There was no glamour in it. The glamour had been confidence mixed with hubris and a touch of anger. Maybe a lot of anger. Faith now looks like returning to the work after failure, touching the frozen metal again, and staying close to the thing that hasn’t quite come alive.

Maybe that’s enough. To keep believing in what’s unfinished. To keep showing up long after the dream stops being easy.