And a recent 'wear away the stone' project was to earn X$ per month writing about AI, which took five years, beginning from some very humble pay checks.
But these are not 'vanity' projects: the latter was obviously pivotal to my survival, as I'm not independently wealthy, and had no job when I migrated; my motivation for the gym is that I have suffered from depression for forty years, and pushing myself physically and engaging with my body is the most effective treatment (albeit found late in life) I have ever come across to massively alleviate this (hence looking better, muscles, etc. is just collateral benefit); and the need to speak the language of my adopted country is obvious.
Sure, there are other things I have persisted in and improved in because they massively accord with my interests and enthusiasm, but those three projects are my demonstration to myself that persistence, while not a magic bullet (some people are never going to make it in Hollywood, for instance), is as near to a magic bullet for personal transformation as most of us are ever likely to have access to.
The gym is the one that fascinates me most at the moment; I look around me, as a relative newcomer, and wonder at the motivation behind the incredible bodies you see there. Are they all sprouting out from some deep psychological need? Even if it's 'just' vanity, it would have to qualify as pathological - as my own reason for being there is.
So I am interested in people who will go through these kind of pain and boredom barriers for less intense reasons, if indeed they exist.