Inspiration

Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time in about a month. I've been dealing with contractors and sending out work samples to prospects. So I let the gym slip.

I was looking for inspiration or motivation, reasons why I should go to the dreaded gym. One of my facebook friends said simply, "Get your butt down there." That's really all it is. Making the time. And overcoming my fear of swine flu stagnating on the treadmill. Also avoiding the various rush hours from the mommy brigade arriving promptly at 9am to the swingers who start showing up around cocktail hour.

Where to find inspiration? Typically when I wake up, at least these days, my brain starts in immediately. A flurry of bad thoughts about I gotta do this and I gotta do that. What, another load of laundry? Please let the dishwasher be empty. When are the sheetrockers coming? I have to get out before they arrive.

Mainly I have to get out of my house by 8:30 to avoid conversations with my general contractor. In an earlier blog post, I referenced a typical conversation I have with my GC.

Fred: "Yeah I was on this job and the homeowner was like all pissed off because these other guys came in and it's all FUBAR'ed and now I gotta fix it. That's what they all say to me, 'Freddy, make it go away.'"

Me: "Uh-huh."

Every time he saves the day. It's amazing.

Except for that time last week when he dropped his table saw in my garage. Then the saw fell into some metal object that then fell on my scooter and cracked the fender. Here's what my scooter looked like before:

Oh there was also that time when he knocked himself out with our garage door. Still not sure how that happened.

My mom says I should be patient with these guys because they have hard lives and they aren't as fortunate as I am. They drink too much. They're divorced or in some kind of murky relationship with their kid's mom. Fred's got a girl. They've been together 7 years. I think he likes his dog more than he likes his girl. His face lights up when he talks about his dog Deak. His girl, not so much.

But I digress. Inspiration, inspiration, looking for inspiration. I went to Dunkin' Donuts to get my morning coffee and I ran into one of the guys in the klatch. There are two guy klatches at this Dunkin'. I don't know why the image persists of women sitting around gossiping over coffee when all I see are man klatches.

This guy is in the older guy klatch. (He sits with the guy who hoards napkins.) Normally we exchange hellos but he was running late and didn't see me waiting for my coffee. As he was chatting with the Dunkin' lady he asked her how to translate "beautiful but cold day" into Spanish. Something about fria. He repeated the phrase twice with a big smile on his face, happy to be learning something new.

As I pulled out of the Dunkin' parking lot, I saw a group of high school girls running down the street-- a local high school cross country team I am assuming. One girl was about 20 feet behind everyone else. All the other girls were running in a pack in front of her. She was a little bigger than the others, but not much. Normal by most standards. But the other girls were thin and tall with perfect pony tails swinging in the wind as they left her in the dust.

What I noticed about the lone girl running behind was that she didn't look downtrodden. She actually had sort of a grimace on her face, a look of determination. This girl was running her own race.

You actually can learn something new everyday. You can be running dead last and that's okay. Inspiration. I found it at Dunkin' Donuts of all places.