The Dream Comes Gradually

by Crazy Ivan

The thing about gradual change is that it's hard to see.  If you see your little brother every day you don't really notice him getting bigger.  If you see your cousin once a year you notice the change every time he shows up.  He and your little brother have gained the same amount of size in the same amount of time but you never notice the one because it happens so slowly.

The same is true with Myachi.  I can only really see our success in snapshots.  If I think about how good things are today compared with how good they were yesterday, I don't see much difference (except I have the day off today, which is good).  But if I grab a snap shot from the past, I can see the changes clearly.

So let me take you for a ride in my Delorian (that's a Back to the Future reference to people who are young and/or have no taste in sci-fi comedies) back to Spring of 2005.

I had just joined Myachi about 9 months earlier and I was earning my stripes heading up the road team.  The road team I was heading up essentially consisted of myself and Pinky (my wife) so it was more like I was just living in an RV and slinging Myachis at a lot of stores.

Back then one of our biggest accounts was Ron Jon's Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  We had Myachis in all the Ron Jon's stores, but the Cocoa Beach one is an epic testimony to beach going so we spent more time there than anywhere else.  It also helped that they had RV parking and would let us park there and stay overnight.

RV parking not shown.

At first, this was the height of awesome.  I was living in this crazy RV within fifty yards of the beach and 50 yards of a 24 hour surfing mecca that looks like a day-glo castle.  Of course, we didn't make any real money back then so I was essentially living off of 7 Eleven food.  Eventually I started longing for a normal bed and a house that didn't encourage so many drunken frat boys to knock on the door at 3 in the morning to see if anyone is actually asleep in there.

But when I hung out in that RV at night and thought about the future of the Myachi movement.  I envisioned my dream scenario and it looked a lot like the movement looks today.  Back then there were only 3 full time Masters and the movement itself was really small.  There were a few scattered pockets of die hard maniacs but that was about it.

Me and Kid used to talk about the "House of Skills" we would eventually rent where we could have a whole bunch of Myachi Masters all staying together.  We used to talk about a time when there would be rare Myachi collectors and stores all over the world carrying our product.  We dreamed about a day when companies would fly us all over the world to teach the game.  We talked about what our TV commercial would be like and which major sports license we would spring for first.

Now when I look back on those conversations, I see it like a checklist in my mind:

• House of Skills: Check.  At last count there were 7 Myachi Masters living under the roof.  We have a lot more that we'd like to bring in, but we'd have to get a house that looks like that Ron Jon's in the picture for that.
• Rare Myachi Collectors: Check.  I'm kind of embarrassed sometimes when I see old Myachis on EBay going for exorbitant prices, but there's no denying that it happens.  At the moment we believe that $380 is the most anyone ever spent on a single Myachi but there are rumors of bricks and mortar sales that went higher.
• Flying Us All Over the World: Check.  I'd get Kid Myach to hop on and say a few words about that if it wasn't for the fact that some company just flew him to Australia to teach the game.
• Our TV Commercial: Check.  Our second commercial is slated to hit the airwaves late March or early April.  Further details on this are coming soon including our collective review but there is a palpable excitement at the house over this one.
• Sports License: Turned out to be NBA.  I'm really hoping MLB comes next.

There is a lot more dream yet to realize.  We're about 2,999,000,000 people away from getting a Myachi to everyone in the world so I'll admit that this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The movement will continue to grow in small increments (and occasional giant leaps) and it'll happen gradually enough that I'll only notice it when I look at the snap shots.

Not to get too "motivational speakery" on you, but I suppose that you could draw a really good analogy between that success and success in learning Myachi.  Let's say you're learning the Cold Fusion.  You do it all the time and even though you were alright at it at first, you keep getting better and better.  Eventually you get so fluid that it almost looks like the Myachi is floating.

There was never a day when you went from slow to fast.  There was no one break-through moment when you suddenly learned to go light speed with your Cold Fusions.  It just happened underhand pass after another.  If you looked at a video of you when you first learned it and you when you mastered it, the difference would be obvious.

There's a moral to this story of course.  Since dreams come true really slowly it's hard to judge how far along you are if you're the dreamer.  If there's any single lesson in Myachi Man's story and the story of Myachi, it's not to give up.

It's as though we're driving down a road and we're not sure how far away the destination is.  We don't know how close we are today, but we know we're closer than we were yesterday.  That will remain true as long as we don't turn back.