“Success
is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You
quit when the gorilla is tired.”
Robert
Strauss
“Why,” someone once asked me, “Do you like
doing so many things that you are no good at?”
He
was referring to my love for (and slowness in) distance running, but as I
lifted another bag of cement mix off my driveway where the Home Depot truck had dumped
it, I remembered the question. I was covered in powdered cement dust, which clouded
into my mouth and eyes. My arms and back were a symphony of muscle pain. Each
bag weighed 66 pounds; I was on my 17th bag, and there were 52 of
them. It was like Mile 18 of the Ironman marathon.
I
wondered if this time I really was in over my head. Here I was, at the
beginning of another project for which I had absolutely no discernible talent:
to build a deck all by myself in my backyard.
Once
begun however, I knew that this project was going to get finished no matter how
hard it was or how long it took me. The deck is part of a larger backyard improvement
initiative that we hope to get finished before the snow files. More important, I
need to finish what I start, even if finishing involves a lot of work or
discomfort, or spending a long time without being able to touch bottom or see
the finish line.
I ended
up taking time off from running and other athletics to do this project. The sabbatical
wasn’t planned, but I found that at the end of each day’s labour I was ready to
do one of several activities: collapse, sleep, ice my sore muscles, or stare catatonically at America's Got Talent—anything but
work out. It is no exaggeration to say that every day was a marathon of effort.
Lifting, sawing and hammering I lost ten pounds and gained unprecedented upper
body strength.
I am a slow, plodding construction worker, mostly
because I don’t know what I’m doing. In my life, I have been an opera singer
and a financial analyst, and I am now a writer; nowhere in my CV is carpentry
mentioned. I therefore have to learn as I go, by trial and error. Second, I
like to work alone, with no help or advice from anyone else. I get nervous when
I feel someone looking over my shoulder, especially if there is the likelihood
that they know more than I do.
Not that there was much assistance being offered
anyway. “Just give me a holler anytime you want a hand,” said my neighbour
Bill, immediately before heading off to his cottage for two months. The
only real help I had was from a man with a machine that looked like a ride-em
lawnmower with a giant corkscrew attached, who came and drilled the holes for
my cement footings. He seemed to think I had a lot of them. “You could build a
whole damn house on this foundation,” he said. I admit that, like the guy who
wears both suspenders and a belt, I was nervous about everything staying up.
The
only time I really missed having an assistant was when I needed someone to hold
one end of my measuring tape. I used nails, rocks, or pure will to hold one end
the tape in place while I tried to measure something. As often as not, the far end
of the tape would let go of its mooring and hiss and snap toward me like a python
after a swamp rat, and I would have to start over again.
Every
morning for a month, I went out alone to my yard with very little notion of what
I was going to do that day, or how to do it. But I loved the smell of fresh-cut
lumber; the heavy usefulness of the tools; the sharpness of screws as they
burrowed into the wood; the strength of heavy, straight boards laid side by
side that made me think of the self-sustaining synergy of a choir.
 |
| The finished product - mostly straight and level |
I
took extra care to make sure the whole structure was exactly 24 inches above the ground and completely level. I was haunted by
the vision of that scene in Titanic, where
people and string quartets are sliding off the end of that deck into the ocean; especially that one guy who bounced off
the propeller on the way down. I spent more time fussing with my level than
making sure the boards were the right length.
From
the get-go, I knew I was in over my head trying to do this all project by
myself. I had recurring muscle spasms in my back from holding boards in place
with one foot while lying upside down to join them together. I had to stop
after each step and figure out what I was supposed to do next.
Yet,
there was not one moment when I wished I were somewhere else. There was never a
time when I considered that I could have paid someone else to build the deck
for me.
I
realized many years ago that when I am in over my head is when I feel most
alive. I have always cherished the adventure of starting a journey without knowing
exactly how I am going to get to the end.
As
I treaded water with 1800 other triathletes at the starting line of my first
Ironman in Wisconsin in 2002, I was quite literally in over my head. Somewhere
in my brain was a question: “What in Heaven’s name am I doing?” The answer came
back from somewhere inside me: I haven’t a clue; let’s see what happens.
 |
| A place to have coffee 24 inches above the ground. |
I’ve started running again and have entered a small
half-marathon in November to help motivate me. I have also entered both the
70.3 and the full Ironman in Muskoka next summer. I wonder if my newfound upper
body strength will last that long.
The deck is beautiful; it is solid and welcoming
and is a joy to sit on. It is held together by a month’s worth of imagination, labour,
and perseverance, and by my constant desire to head
for the deep end of the pool, to go somewhere I have never been, and to see
what things are like when I get there.
