Planning as we go.

Mark hammering the concrete nails

I look around my place sometimes and think, "if I only had a plan". The reality is that your plans change, things happen, life changes and we must adapt. Recently my sweet tenants who had been with me a year gave notice. I was sad, they were a great young couple and loved living here but they had been given a house of their own and who in their right mind could say no to that. The hardest part of having a little rental here on my property is finding a suitable tenant. I have been pretty lucky over the 8 yrs I have offered the space for rent and have only had a few total duds. When faced with this recent challenge of finding a new tenant I went backwards and approached the person who had first rented from me 8 long years ago. She was interested but the deal was she needed more space, an office for her partner in addition to the large studio for herself. The studio was no problem, the room was there being under utilized as my guest room but the office did not exist. Instead we had a covered breezeway between the living space and studio, the result of another plan conjured long ago.

So between now and October 1st it is our project to make this outdoor space into a functional indoor space. I drew up a plan and then changed it in favor of another plan. We started on the floor yesterday and today we will purchase windows and frame up 3 walls. By Friday the plumbing and drywall will be complete and next week we will insulate and do the finishing.

I enjoy doing this work and strangely look forward to it once I get over the initial shock of what is involved and the money that suddenly needs to be spent. I was cutting wood yesterday in the rain and I found it satisfying and even comforting to have this new plan guiding me along. So maybe having one plan is not the goal, rather the ideal is to have many plans and go from one to the next joyfully executing each one.