8-12-2007
Now that nearly a month has passed from the great "poo" incident of ought eight I figured it was about time for an update on happenings here at Windemere. To be frank, there really there hasn't been a whole lot of new progress, or much in the way of news. Given the nature of the general news bulletins I've been posting here to date I'm actually pretty thankful that there really isn't much to report.
It has been nearly a month with nothing breaking, blowing up, leaking, flooding, disappearing, blowing over, or otherwise catastrophically failing. Despite some of these trials, I don't think i would give them up. I have come to realize that it is important for life to be hard sometimes. Too often we seek to make life easy all the time. I think that it is important, in some regards, that life be difficult. To be challenged and to rise to the challenge, to push ourselves to overcome. This is not to say that home ownership is any sort of heroic endeavour. It does seem to require a heroic level of patience and a heroic level of funds at times. But that doesn't mean home ownership is only for heros. It just means it is a lot of hard work for anyone, and those of us without a fortress of solitude and an aversion to glowing green minerals will really struggle. Strength of character can only be proven in the face of adversity not through scarcity of it.
It is far more comfortable to set about to take on a task that you know can be accomplished. Or to complain about some inconvenience or injustice. But it is far more difficult to do something about it. I have to admit that had I known what adventures lay ahead in the land of home ownership I might still be living comfortably in my drab ecru/almond/white/beige apartment. Sometimes it is the blind dumb luck of ignorance of the struggle ahead that shelters us from the unknown and terrible things ahead and allows us to make the choice to move ahead. It isn't always bravery but quite often stupidity that allows us to do amazing things.
Without challenges and hard choices and well fought and hard won battles there is little joy, pride, accomplishment, or learning to be gained from a task. While I may grouse and complain a bit about the cruel injustice of life as a homeowner I must also be thankful for the fact that life has not been dull and that I am stronger now than when I started. If the strength it has taken to get through the first 3 months are any indication of the road ahead I will be Hercules by the end of the journey. Well that's a little disingenuous. Anyone who has seen me knows that I have far more in common with Justin Long than Kevin Sorbo. Perhaps Sisyphus would be a more fitting tragic hero. As soon as one thing is fixed another will break and I will be pushing that boulder back up the mountain. But at least I have a mountain and I have a boulder and I am able to push my boulder up my mountain and for that I am grateful.