I am not trying to be a downer. Yet awareness is important.

Hope can be a hinderance.
Not always. But be aware.

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps at times bring about its opposite. As you get used to this, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness and the truth of the work itself.”

~ Thomas Merton