Today I am struggling to write because I am thinking about my problems.—I should rebrand that. I am thinking about my opportunities. Immediately, I feel more inspired.
In a few months, my eighty-one year old mother-in-law, a widow with no assets and no savings, will also have no home.
Of course she will have a home! But will that home be my home? Or will that home be a house close by that we will for buy her? An investment that we can just barely afford. (Not to mention the nauseating twist of seven percent interest.)
I love Joy. But that doesn’t mean I want to live with her. This is a problem.
This is an opportunity…?
This is an opportunity to— …Well, there’s the obvious—to get to know Joy better. And I’m sure that will be lovely. But it would be just as nice if she were living in her own house, not ten minutes away instead of in my backyard.
This is an opportunity to— …
Someone tell Brand that Marketing is struggling to sell this one!
This is a problem.—Instead of writing, I drop the beat to brainstorm how to cope with Joy. I am lost for twenty minutes in a tornado of to-do’s.—The studio needs a kitchen. Get Ikea on the line! I book an appointment for measurements next week. It will be at least a month before we are ready to build.
What about the laundry? We need to get Joy her own washer and dryer. We’ll have to install it outside the studio. Do we need to build another shed for that?
Also, the walkway around the side of the house is narrow and slightly sloping. Not safe for a woman pushing eighty-two. We’ll need to jackhammer that entire path, poured without precisioun in 1997.—Mike ’97 is vandaled into one of the slabs. Justin’s brother.)
We’ll need to pour or pave a new, wider path. And install motion sensor lights.
And Justin needs to move his equipment so Joy doesn’t trip. Where is all that stuff gonna go?
What if we bought that other house? Can we really afford it? Is it even still available?
The beat is slowed by the weight of Time and Money. Nothing I write can lessen their restraints. I realize that continuting to think about this problem is useless.
I know what we need to do. I’m not sure how we’re going to do it all in time. But maybe we will.
This is an opportunity…