Sisyphus

Okay, prepare yourself to go places today that you would never expect to go with me ... off into mythology.  In the last couple of weeks I had someone tell me they felt like the guy who pushed the rock up the hill every day.  This guy was Sisyphus.  Yes, I had to look it up.  Sisyphus was sentenced by the gods to push a rock up a mountain all day, only to have the rock roll back down the mountain at night.  Then he would start over again the next day.  The article I read also talked about this being a metaphor for working in futile jobs in factories and offices.  Hum, there is something to think about.

As I rolled (no pun intended) this idea around in my head, I had several thoughts.  First, I understand that it could feel like any of us were pushing a rock uphill all day long.  The person I work most closely with, Carolyn, would tell you that just this week I melted down about having to repeat the same thing over and over.  The context was something we had dealt with in the past, I had counted as finished, and the issue was coming up AGAIN.  My rock.  As I think about this in hindsight, without the emotion of the moment, I realize that if we only had to do things one time, we would quickly come to a point when we were no longer necessary.  I never want that time to come.

The second thing that I think about is the idea of "futile jobs in factories and offices."  I just can't make sense of this.  I have been in and out of factories and distribution facilities for the better part of my adult life, and without doubt, I have not seen any jobs I consider to be futile.  I have seen jobs that I wouldn't want to do, but I've always been amazed that the people doing the jobs were happy and felt as though they added value to the overall enterprise.  After all, isn't that what we are all looking for?  I know that at the end of the day when I am asked how my day went, I want to be able to say that I had a good day, and that I actually accomplished something that helped the company. The other important thing is that on the day that I help my company, I also typically help myself because I personally am seen as having value.

A final thought in all of this is around the rock itself.  If you can embrace the idea of pushing a rock uphill all day, I might ask you to consider whether the rock is always the same.  I think that the day the person talked to me about this, their rock had been pretty big for several days.  But in my case, that isn't always true.  There are days the rock is smaller or lighter, and there are even days when the mountain is not as steep.  There are days when I go home from work and don't feel that I accomplished much at all and there are days that I feel like I got a lot done.  That is just the way that it works for me.  When I worked in retail, one of the people I worked for used to ask at the end of the day if we served more customers or angered more that day.  How big was the rock?

I know that it is different for all of us, but I always think about the fact that I get to fight another day. I got through even the worst days and get to play again.  This is a pretty big deal for me.  There are times that I get home and all Sara wants to do is to stay away from me for a while, but, I get to start over again the next day. Each day starts fresh as I have made no mistakes and all that lays in front of me is what the day will bring.  I know that I will deal with the 'rock' for the day, but I still have the potential for a good day.

Ok, just to finish today, this was a good week.  I finally got to my lumber supplier and picked up some alder hardwood and matching sheet goods.  This will let me start on a roll top desk that I have been wanting to build for my office at the Toybox and maybe a set of shelves that will go in Andrew's room in the basement.  I'm kind of excited as I have spent almost no time at the Toybox in the last several weeks.  This is totally unacceptable and needs to be rectified NOW.

Have a great weekend.

Interest in the Ditch

Last week I was driving to the Toybox when I saw a child's swimming pool laying in the ditch.  It was wrecked, folded in half, basically destroyed.  Even with all of that, I found myself thinking about what I could do with this.  Now, why would my mind go there?  It struck me that I have been trained this way all of my life.

One of the earliest memories that I have of my father is driving through the country looking for corn.  Yes, in Iowa.  This was a time when corn was picked and stored still on the cob rather than shelled the way that it is now and corn was moved in much smaller wagons than today as well.  Because of this, and because most farmers wanted to maximize the amount that they hauled, many times you would find ears of corn that had spilled off the top of wagons.  We would drive around the back roads during harvest time looking for these "finds."  When we came upon some, dad would stop the car and I would jump out and recover the ears of corn.  We would then take them home, shell them by hand and put the corn in a barrel that we kept in the shop.  We used this to feed the birds through the winter.  This worked great since whole corn is really well liked by Cardinals and these were the birds that dad liked to see the most.  Fast forward thirty plus years and these are some of Sara's favorite birds as well.  Anyway, this was my first experience with looking for things that had been lost along the road.  I still remember the excitement of jumping out to get those ears of corn, feeling the exhilaration of getting something in that manner.

What dad and I did though was nothing compared to years later with my grandfather.  Grandpa Art was the rock foreman for Keokuk County here in Iowa and he drove all of the back roads of the county all of the time.  Doing this, and keeping his eyes open, allowed him to see many things that had either been lost, or cast off into the grader ditches around the county.  Over the years that I rode with him in the truck, there were several times I remember jumping out to reclaim something that had found its way to the side of the road, but there was one time that was beyond belief.  One Saturday morning, Grandpa told me to grab a handsaw and jump in the pickup with him.  I thought nothing of it.  We drove out of town and after some time, we stopped on the side of the road.  In the ditch was an old horse-drawn dirt slip.  This was a piece of equipment used to move dirt on construction projects before there were bulldozers. 

Although all of this is interesting, the most amazing part was that there was a tree growing up through the handle of the slip.  This was no obstacle for my grandfather.  After all, that's why we brought the saw. So, down into the ditch I went, saw in hand to cut the tree out. This was accomplished in short order and we pulled the slip out of the ditch, loaded it into the pickup, and took it home. This was reclaiming or picking, depending on what word you want to use, long before it became popular.  Of course there was a plan with what we were going for it.  We planned to repaint it, put it in the front yard, fill it with dirt and Grandma would plant flowers in it.

I am not sure what year this was, but my feeling was that I was in my early teens.  Let's call that 1970, just for argument's sake.  Thirty years later, when we cleaned up the place after my grandmother passed away; there behind the garage, right where Grandpa and I had put it, was the highway dirt slip.  It was amazing to me then, and it continues to be to me today, how quickly three decades can pass.  I think the other thing that it really helped to teach me, was that at any point in time you need to have some "starter" projects.  You should always have several things around that you intend to get to, so that on any given day, depending on the way you feel, there is a project to work on.  If you don't have some extra projects and you don't want to work on the one you have, you will never get anything done.

Well, all in all, at the time it was a great plan, even though it never happened.  It is interesting, though, as I look around my Toybox I see several items that came from the ditches.  The first you would see if you visit is the heavy yellow drop cords I use.  These started as a 100' cord in the back of someone's pickup, but when Andrew and I found it in the middle of the highway it was in several pieces.  We cut the pieces to length, put new ends on and they now serve me throughout the shop.  Needless to say, I continue to drive and watch my surroundings, because you never know what you will find. 

As I think back, I guess I can thank both my father and my grandfather for teaching me this skill.  For this, I am thankful.  You should try it too.