Posts Tagged ‘perfectionist’
Heavy Handed
I haven’t quite mastered the art of using the loader on our tractor yet, but I’m gaining confidence. What that means is, I am able to make more mistakes quicker.
More than once yesterday I was heavy-handed on the lever and scooped too deep beneath the pile of lime screenings. We worked to spread most of the pile before the weather makes a season-long shift to frozen ground.
It’s the kind of thing that drives this perfectionist to major frustration.
One way I get over it is to move on to the next time-sensitive task that needs to happen. Cyndie and I removed the canvas from the gazebo before the first accumulating snow falls.
From up close, I discovered the gory details related to the subtle lean the structure has taken on that has been visible for a few months.
My first inclination was that the soft wet ground had given in on one side, but now I don’t think that was the case.
It’s possible the horses pushed against one side. It’s also possible that an extreme wind gust applied enough torque to bend the frame. Thinking about it, the second scenario would seem to make more sense, because if it was the horses, I believe they would have pushed it even further. Or they would have pushed it again after the fact and compounded the damage.
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With daylight fading, I left the bent frame to be dealt with next spring and switched my attention to moving the deck furniture to our winter storage location on the back side of the house. It was the last thing I wanted to accomplish for the day.
Just as soon as I shed my outdoor gear to settle inside for the evening, Cyndie realized she needed her winter tires for a car appointment today. We store them on a shelf in the shop garage that gets accessed two times a year, so plenty of stuff ends up getting piled in the way.
Back outside I went. On the bright side, I was going to need to get the tires down anyway. I need to swap to winter wheels on the Grizzly and they are stored on that same shelf. Best of all, no additional problems turned up with my last two tasks so, no new added frustrations.
It feels good to have enough done that the impending snowfall brings with it no extra dread. The essentials have now all been handled.
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Decisions Aplenty
By the end of the weekend last night I was mentally exhausted. The chicken coop project was an exercise in repeating waves of cascading decisions. It was giving me a headache. Or maybe that was coming from the muscle fatigue in my neck and shoulders from all the power tool use overhead and at odd angles.
Over and over again I found myself trying to determine precise dimensions, proper positions, ultimate functionality, potential environmental stresses, and likely physical pressures the structure will face.
How high should this be? What support should this have? Will this withstand stormy weather? How will I attach the next board? How will we enclose all the odd openings of our panel roof design?
If all that weren’t complicated enough, by the end of the day yesterday, when I couldn’t get the roof framework equally centered on all the walls, it occurred to me why all my calculations had me constantly confused. Building with scraps of salvaged lumber means working with a lot of warped, bowed, and twisted boards.
It was a great exercise for tempering perfectionistic tendencies.
“Close enough” became a common refrain that grew increasingly easy to accept.
There were so many little steps involved in finalizing the framing of openings in each wall and securely fastening the 4 walls to each other that I ran out of time for the ultimate reward of screwing the panels onto the roof. We got close, but finished just short of that milestone.
Guess what I can’t wait to work on when I get home from work today.
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Relative Something 