Piloting the plane

That landing on the sale of the last two homes was definitely harder than it needed to be - I just watched Aviator again, DiCaprio starring as Howard Hughes (and the creepy mother scene) - so the hard landings in that movie are pretty apt to the sale of Farm 74 and Barn 54 last week in Olivebridge.  Not the hardest for the passenger (buyers) but for the pilot (me), jeez, wow, just when you thought you could get out, the house pulls you back in with a bunch of last minute needs.

And I was pretty beat up to begin with, and the lift here in Olivebridge has been a bit brutal, needing my constant intervention, guidance and instruction.  I guess what is true is that is could be less of an ordeal if I’d slow the whole production machine down a bit, but I’m just wired to keep it going - and any new factor of production that enables us to be better, well, we don’t just do better at the same speed, we do better at a new faster speed.

I mean, just in the last 6-8 weeks, we put in 6 foundations, with the framer right up our ass ready to go, with the windows being ordered 8 weeks prior and ready to install when the last nail was hit, the roofer right behind, and siding being trucked in right after.   I mean, we are moving.

Which makes me realize how even after 20 years, I never shirk my duty of being where I need to be, when I need to be there.  I might not want to drive 1.5 hrs on a Saturday, or Sunday, or a Monday at 6 am, or to Narrowsburg at the end of the day and foundation mason is forming his walls, but if there is a piece of oversight to be done, a problem learned before that I don’t want repeated, a quick personal eye on something before it’s too late to be undone, I’m there - regardless of the convenience or timing, regardless of my energy or enthusiasm, I never shirk that duty to my client, and even if it’s a spec home, I never shirk the duty of putting out the best homes we can.

I think I was deceiving myself thinking that all the balls in the air and the prolonged ROI on the Ashokan project was not causing some serious stress, and all the related and unrelated issues - some expected, some unexpected, some par for the course, some completely out of left field, some about people, others about process - just a lot.

So I piloted two new homes to a successful landing, and we have 1 a month predicted for the rest of the year.  That's serious cha ching.

I’ve been fighting a case of the blues for months now, and it’s pretty understandable- 1, it’s rained everyday, literally, since September.  That’s hard on the mood but it makes my job nearly impossible.  It also adds a lot of new managerial tasks, none fun and none easy, like patrolling muddy shoes, and taking mud into consideration any time you have anyone enter a home, since you know they won’t.  Plus, I’m not the first one to say that sun is important to general well-being.   We’ve had periods of rain over the last 23 years that have caused me to have to navigate it, and change my plans daily, but this is the first time that no matter how I rearrange the sequencing, the time arrived where we just couldn’t move forward and actually got delayed.  Now that’s a big deal when you don’t get paid at all on 90% of your projects until you can turn over a completely finished home.  It’s just hard to get up and hear the prattle of the hard rain on my home’s metal roof and soldier on another day.  It's hard to drive 3 hr a day in the rain. Visit jobs in the rain. Can't get pictures, etc... And we are talking rain, and then intermixed in the rain are periods where the downpours are insane.  If this is climate change, this will be no fun indeed.

Ever since Amanda left - you remember Amanda, the most talented hardworking woman in Hudson Valley who Corby Baumann dismissed as an administrative assistant of sorts in her deposition after Amanda worked on her behalf for 6 months (a standard practice of Baumann it appears to diminish the efforts of those who work on her behalf), who left the company February of 2023 - it’s been a rebuilding effort, and that effort was hard.  There is no other way to say it.  It’s not been straight-forward, it has not been linear.  It’s taken a ton of my time and energy.    We are building faster and better than ever before but it’s been hard, and more than hard, it’s been a rotating cast of professionals, meaning the need for fingers to be in every pot is unending.  Without exaggeration, I lost a year of my life, just out of the blue, gone, keeping the plane in the air.

Another subtle drag is the damn rotator cuff surgery recovery.  That’s 7 months and counting now.  With baseball season (men’s league, 45+, can’t pitch unless your 48+) starts today and for the first time since last July I was throwing a ball.  But the 7 months of rehab was pretty rough, largely unexpected, a full-time job filled with of PT, fear, and pain.  I ran this company when I was supposed to be on a couch.  The process was such a bear that you can forget or downplay the reason you did it in the first place since that lack of mobility in some movements seems like a small price to pay in lieu of having your life turned upside down for 7 months as you work your way through the recovery.  But here I am, spring of 2024, throwing a baseball.  It’s not the most accurate throw since the whole shoulder is restrung now and is still a bit tight, but no pain, and a lot of strength.

Then there’s the whole idea I’ve been doing this gig now for 23 years, and it can seem a bit a like a hamster wheel process, where the gigantic achievement of building a good looking home at a fair value in a respectable timeframe is mostly lost as we just cue up another where the groundhog day of predictable hurdles pop up like a whack a mole game right on cue (interestingly, I used ‘cue’ twice there, I’m wondering if both are correct, but it’s early and I don’t care enough to figure it out, since it seems right.)

And then there's the knowledge of knowing you just aren't getting to half the things you need to - that you are stuck in operations, when marketing and strategy and planning are needed now, and since most results of that planning takes months if not a year +, everyday it's not done, is a day where someone's job may be at risk since if you can't keep the work in front of the men, then there is little use for all the help- and we have a ton of seasoned professionals working on our behalf right now, so that would be a depressing day indeed to not be able to utilize their skills to the fullest.

It’s sunny today.  That’s 2 days in a row.  And literally, that’s cause for celebration for a host of reasons. Maybe I'll even be able to get some photos tomorrow.