It was midnight and Lance Winslow was watching the clock, perhaps a bad habit from his past. In High School and later in College Lance was a trackstar; he finally accomplished his goal, to run a 4-minute mile.
Since that day Lance has always lived by the second not the minute and sometimes a day seems like and eternity, as at those times in competitive track, you race against world-class athletes all of which are headed for the Olympics or at least that is their goal. It is all about precision, pace and beating your body in to submission.
To compete at that level you must live without limits and believe you will. He still remembers those days, the workouts, the food, the long runs, blisters, tight muscles, hours and hours a day beating himself up for the next race, but not peaking too soon in the year otherwise there would be no chance at winning the championship.
Tonight was another of those intense personal competitions, what drives this guy, many asked, even Lance couldn't tell you anymore, that is all he knew, it had become a habit in everything he did. Running a business, running in an election, giving a speech or doing non-profit work. He competed, generally against himself, for there were no others willing to go the distance. Often criticized or called into question by seemingly impossible record setting accomplishments, somehow people just assumed he was cheating. Not so, never a steroid, skipped practice, missed class or forgoing a promise in a handshake.
When Lance retired at age 40 from a franchise business he created which set up businesses in 22 states, he decided to help fix some things he had observed in the world. He decided to write about his ideas, concepts, innovations, experiences, observations, but he could find no real good place to post these articles, where many people would see them and he would not be forced to write anything he was not passionate about.
Lance discovered a really cool Internet site called; EzineArticles.com, which worked out really nice and Lance set out to write the most articles. Within a month and a half he surpassed all the others, but he knew if this was going to be something he was going to do in his spare time, then he would just have to compete against himself and Lance's most competitive adversary was; time. Lance knew a lot about time, in fact he had been competing against it his whole life.
But on this night he watched the clock; his goal was to reach 600,000 article views by midnight having only written 2525 articles many were quite new and although they were gaining views from Internet Surfers to read they were not going to get him to that kind of number right away. He tried every possible way to increase his article views, just like in business or running, trying new strategies, new food, different workouts, better shoes or more efficient machinery; he knew he had to continue to work harder; knowing the old statement; ?it is surprising how lucky your are getting when you are working hard.? He had done all that and now he waited to see if he could make the grade of 600,000 hits by Midnight.
It was 11:59.59 and he hit the refresh button to see how he had done. It had taken hard work and it took him ?time,? to come this far, but the time had come, the time of truth. He looked down at the number; 599,996; ?oh,? he sighed, he had felt like this before but it was so many years ago, once in politics having run and lost in an election, that was so very close and then there were all those times in track, when he had worked and trained much harder than what he saw in the movie; ?Rocky? only to come up short by a few seconds, although he rarely ever lost a race, Lance was always racing against time.
Now with 2525 articles and over 111,500 words in seven months and all that hard work, he once again missed by his goal; he was so very close. Almost tasting victory and only missing by a mere 4 clicks from web surfers looking to read his latest titles and articles. Some ask why he does it, but some also ask mountain climbers why they do. In the 20 days leading up to the midnight self-induced contest and somewhat unrealistic goal Lance received 100,000 hits minus the four article views he needed to beat the clock, to defeat time.
He then thought of his next goal; Three Quarters of a million hits, could he make it by New Years? Hard to say that is 150,000 article views through the holidays, often sprinkled with less internet surfers especially around the bigger holidays. The goal has been set, he knows what he has to do, he has to write more articles, while allowing the ones in circulation to press on, it is a numbers game as he races against time and only time will tell. Whether he gets that lofty seemingly impossible goal or not, the next goal after that will most likely be 1-million article views.
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