Four Months of Showing Up for One Egg

My daughter has been feeding these chickens every morning since her birthday in March. A few weeks ago she finally started getting paid.

Eleanor found the first egg (see video below... you can't engineer this kind of magic!). After a lot of exclaiming "Oh my gosh!", she headed straight to the kitchen to cook up her egg. She did not blink for what felt like a full minute.

Nobody warned me how long the boring part would last. Feed every morning. Fresh water. Cleaning a coop for eight birds (hint: it's more poop than you would think). Chasing them back in before dark. Four months of a two-year-old showing up for something that gave nothing back.

Then one morning it did.

This is the exact lesson I wanted her to learn when we got this flock for her second birthday. I did not expect to learn it again myself, in real time, watching her face. The showing up was never separate from the result. It was the only reason the result exists.

We have talked about this before with a business lens. Underwriting a deal you will not see returns on for years. Watering a vine that looks the same for weeks and then suddenly isn't. This one didn't need the metaphor. It was just an egg in a two-year-old's hands, and four months of unglamorous mornings behind it.

Now she looks forward to collecting her breakfast every morning and it's just the best thing ever.

What is the first thing you worked toward as a kid that actually paid off, and do you remember the moment it did?