Hate it when that happens

Before I load up a 6x12 trailer with my entire theme camp’s infrastructure and try to haul it up mountains in Tennessee to camp with the hippies, I thought I’d share a revelation I had this morning.

I have had low-simmering anxiety for a couple of weeks now, worrying over the loading process. Before the plague I stored all our stuff in the basement, which is essentially a dirt crawl space. When we had the moisture barrier in the crawl space replaced two years ago, I decided that I — the Theme Camp Organizer of 3 Old Men — was in fact too old to be climbing into that space and dragging it all out, then lugging it up the steep driveway to load it.

from 2016 — we have even more stuff now

Therefore I rented a 5x10 storage unit, from which I could just roll everything down a hall and straight onto the trailer. After we developed the Galaxy project last year, there was no room in that space for those new tubs, so I upgraded to a 10x10 unit. It’s climate-controlled and luxurious.

For two years I coasted along, not worrying about the camp equipment or transporting it, since every event was canceled.

Then the hippies started burning again, and I realized that I still have stuff to load at home, which means double loading sessions, on at home and one at the storage unit. Do I do the home stuff the night before? Do I leave the trailer sitting out on the street or over in the church parking lot? What about theft?

Should I load up the home stuff, excluding refrigerables, the night before and drop the trailer off at the storage unit until morning?

Should I stop by Kroger and buy ice before heading over to the storage unit? Is Kroger carrying ice at the moment? (My store seems to have difficulty with its storage unit.) Should I go to the Chevron station instead? Is there room for me to pull in with the trailer? (I can’t back the thing up, so don’t even go there.)

Etc etc etc.

This is what has swirled through my brain nonstop for weeks. It’s the green in me: Organization, processes, efficiency!

And then this morning, my brain gently reminded me of my own Lyles Theorem of Process Development, which if you’ve read my book you remember states: “It takes three cycles to get any new process right.” In other words, you have to start and end a process at least twice before you can say you have a grip on it.

This is only my second time negotiating this process, and I could make the claim that it’s really the first, since for Emergence in March I didn’t take the whole kit and caboodle.

So chill, Dale. Go do it. Makes notes for next time. ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS —> GESTALT —> SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.

It’s okay not to get it right the first time.

I’ll be back to what passes for normal next week.