Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash
Though I stand just over 5 feet, my head feels 6 foot four. Maybe it’s a compensatory thing, I don’t know. But I am inundated with big ideas, big questions, big dreams. Take this morning. News that a melting glacier in the Himalayas swept away over 100 souls led to a geography lesson on Google maps. Yesterday I was waylaid pondering whether classical liberalism is past its prime. Other days I am dreaming up some new book or business (rather than deal with the ones already on the drawing board).
But if big brain is so great (I ask myself), then why do I make little progress toward those BHAGs (Big Hairy Aggressive Goals?). Eleven months in the tight physical and mental confines of a pandemic has given me a very simple answer:
Chip chip chip.
While our household was recovering from Covid last month, I stopped thinking about big imponderables. I just wanted to feel better. To smell and taste again. To be able to leave the house.
During the dreary recovery, I was choking on my need for some tiny bit of accomplishment (my drug of choice). How could I fill the long hours when I had so little of my normal energy, passion, and well, ideas?
After a week of antsy boredom, I decided to knock off one pesky task: post items to my online Etsy store — items that used to line the shelves of the cute shop I had to close last spring. In other words, the task was to deal with the inventory that needed to be sold off, one tea cup at a time.
Posting online might not sound like a bad way to spend time, but it is a ball and chain to me. The task is always on my “to-do” list, but invariably slips to the bottom. It’s like the large wrinkly tablecloths in my ironing basket. Used once a year, these cloths are so boring and tedious to iron that they have formed a permanent layer in that basket; give me handkerchiefs and pillow cases any day. In similar manner, the mechanical steps of posting items have become the permafrost of my to-do list. To be sure, this loathing likely was fueled by the sorrow that my dream store was closed; my 6-year fun business was now flinching and near death. Who likes to mop up after a party?
But with low energy equal to the tedium of liquidation, I sighed deeply and began. The mental game I was playing with myself was thus: look, sweetheart, it’s cold and wintry. Not much else to do anyway. Why not get this monkey off your back and then get on with happier/more exciting/more productive things? Something new?
With that mental bribe, I rolled up my mental shirt sleeves and began.
The first few days I dragged myself through the seemingly interminable process that runs as follows: research item (e.g., does this English tea cup really date back to the Aesthetic period?); set price (what else is out there like this? What are my COGs and ROI?); take and edit Insta-quality photos of the item’s every angle, blemish and use; write an engaging product description; devise 13 strategic SEO tags; and, lastly, set up shipping arrangements, including estimating the weight and dimensions of the boxed size of the item. Only when all that’s done can I hit “Post” and send my precious tea cup out into the world. Then begins the wait for the Etsy “cha-ching” alert indicating that someone likes it as much as I do. Sometimes that’s a very long wait. Eee gads. Give me a brick and mortar any day!
Through the blurry days and weeks I chipped away at this blob of a task, and bit by bit my treasures made their way online. Maybe this steady, faithful and boring work wasn’t so bad after all, I mused. As accomplishment endorphins began to kick in, I would even sacrifice some evening Netflix time to plan and lay out the products to be posted the next day (previously unheard-of behavior on my part).
An amazing thing started happening: I was making progress. When a few items sold my sense of business failure began to lessen. Maybe this tiny glint could serve as a pivot, as the business coaches are all talking about. Maybe Covid wasn’t the end of Vintage Picnic, but a chance to rise from the ashes and begin again.
A pastor wisely noted that the lessons from 2020 are not perennial; they have a shelf-life. As Covid recedes (yes, God, yes!) we need to lock-in what we have gleaned/gained/learned this past year. As much as we all want to rise up from our national sick bed, it would be a waste to leave behind those hard-earned life lessons. After all, they’re not apps we can just reinstall at a later date. Rather they need to be hard-wired into our post-Covid lives through remembrance and intentional use. What a shame if a fallow year were not followed by great growth.
I plan to take my little Covid pick-axe with me as things revert to “normal.” Think of the possibilities of “chip chip chip” for my finances, health and relationships. Though big ideas and deep thoughts still press for attention, I resolve to keep chipping away on the boring blobs; those large and difficult things that line the bottom of my to-do list, and my life.