Rain, Writing, Management and Health

Another week of rain.  Sure, we had a sunny day, then an overcast day without downpour, but for the most part, that last 5 days have been raining. It has been raining since September of 2023 - not hyperbolic raining - but real life raining 4-5 days a week.  Hard rain, torrential downpours, heavy rain, then even heavier rain.   It’s depressing, it takes all the fun out of construction entirely.  People can’t do their jobs right, materials suffer, everyday is a strategic plan of how move forward with wet, saturated ground you can’t drive on.  But more than that, it’s just well past getting old.  To make up for it, we literally need a month of sunshine.  And I’m going to keep complaining about it till it changes, since I grinned and beared it for too long now.

Interesting aside, as I was wondering if ‘grin and bear’ or ‘grin and bare’ I did a quick search and came up with this timely and appropriate result - 

Where does grin and bear it come from?

“Hickey used the phrase is his Memoirs from 1775: I recommend you to grin and bear it (an expression used by sailors after a long continuance of bad weather).”  So, killed two birds with one stone: verifying ‘bear’ was used correctly, and inadvertently using a phrase first attributed to someone complaining about the weather.

The good thing about writing, as with any muscle flex, is that you get better at it - in this regard, I find myself able to retrieve the word I’m looking forward with more ease, describe a situation with a bit more precision, be patient in the craft of a sentence.  This gets easier, just as running that first mile, reaching that deeper stretch, displaying emotional intelligence.

With the team back in place for the moment, I’m able to let go a little of the 7 additional jobs I was performing in the first quarter of 2024.  As I mentioned, I wanted and needed a stable start to 2024, was all set to have it, and then literally was served everything but.  Luckily, the profit incentive of keeping things on track superseded the stressful drudgery of ordering people around and actively seeking out and solving job site and office problems.

So with the space and freedom of time, I quickly pivoted and began planning my new modular pool company and planned an 8 day trip to the French Riviera with my 26 year old traveling wingman nephew.

Even with the weather, we push ahead at breakneck speed, with oversight offered at every stage by the tradesmen themselves, my project manager, me and oftentimes the client as well.  It’s redundant and effective.

Just finished my biannual - every other year, soup to nuts, inside and out, physical on the 70th Floor of the Freedom Tower in downtown Manhattan at the Princeton Longevity Center (PLC).  I’ve been staying a lot downtown, way downtown, like Battery Park/Southport Seaport area for half a year now and I like it a lot down there.

PLC offers these ‘executive physicals’ that scan you, evaluate you, measure you, test you, in every subjective and objective, every surface and subsurface test known, to use a comprehensive approach to preventative care.  With an approach like this, the odds of something sneaking up on you - plaque buildup in important arteries that lead to a widow-making out-of-nowhere heart attack, cancers, diabetes, colon cancer and dozens of other identifiable creeping issues.  At 54, I’m in extremely good health and I guess a lot of it is the effort I make in that regards, but let’s be honest, a fair portion of it is genetics and genes and nature, not nurture.  But whatever the cause, I checked out again pretty well, and all the stress of the last 16 months hasn’t (damn, can’t think of the word I need) hasn’t (damn Im so close to getting it) exhibited itself with any measurable physical impacts such as drug/alcohol overuse, weight gain, raised blood pressure, or other common maladies that go with high stress loads.  Harder to directly measure mental health, fortunately, since I’d hate to see that graph as of late.

So, off to fight another day or two.

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