Live without excuses

Photo by Umut Sarıalan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/display-of-old-fashioned-clocks-and-alarm-clocks-17589784/

I spent another day getting the paving in place. It will be the best ever feeling when it's done. There is something about looking at a finished piece of work you put your best efforts into. It's a kind of feel you don't get from just bouncing around ideas.

Maybe I'm getting old but I find value in doing.

The greatest idea, the grandest plan the best opportunity; all becomes nothing if you don't do something. I know, I spent my life having great ideas and having nothing come of it. If ideas were money, I would have been very rich.

Rolling up your sleeves and get doing. It doesn't happen by itself. Strangely, excuses seem to happen by themselves though. Sometimes the excuses even sounds like reasons.

It's just like with this piece of paving I'm doing in the back yard. My son got some broken bricks from a friend and left it in a big pile in the back yard. Then for about two months the heap sat there just staring at me. Every few days I would hear about him organising so sand to even out the yard. Once he has the sand, he'll start packing the bricks.

About two months in my wife said something had better happen today. The emphasis on the 'today' part made me think of my mom saying "I'm counting to three" when we were kids. You were very sure something bad is going to happen to your behind if she got to three and you weren't doing what she told you to do.

I started stacking the broken bricks in a little wall seperating the pavers from the broken bricks while selecting some good bricks to start. Then I took a spade and started a small hole behind the wall. Just a spade or two to be able to start packing the bricks at the front door.

That kept me packing from the entire weekend but the hole were getting too big. Then I remembered a spot around the corner where the council worked eight years ago and never removed the soil they dug up. It's clay soil so it compacted and neither wind or rain could move it.

Nobody complained when I moved it.

The point to it all. Instead of worrying about a reasonable sounding excuse, with a bit of motivation I dug in and found a way to get it done.

Nothing gets done if you don't do it.

Life is like that. You have to do in order to create change.