Recently my wife and I discovered that some critters decided to post up in our walls, getting ready to stay warm in the winter weather. With this comes some inspection of the home – where do we hear these sounds? How are they getting in? What do we do about this problem?
After several days of deliberation (procrastination), my wife told me fairly sternly, “something must be done!”. Well, if that isn’t a call to action, I don’t know what is. If you’re around my age, you may remember Sear’s air conditioning commercial. And now that I look at it – why does their home look better than mine? 30 years later? I must be slacking!
Well, walking out to the back porch of my house, I noticed that a small roof over our deck has some rotted wood along the sides. Some squirrels are crawling through the wood and getting into the roof area, but I can’t see an actual entrance into the house. Time to start tearing down.
As I grab a circular saw, it’s painfully clear that this is just going to suck. The siding boards that were used and nailed up have been dry and solid since the beginning, so the prying, tugging, yanking, or whatever other action you would use, has and will be used. I’m actually writing this now on a small break from moving to a chainsaw to start attacking it.
Through all this, I think there is a time in a man’s life where your partner just looks at whatever you have going on and says “yeah, no.”
This is not to belittle or shame my own wife, as there are plenty of reasons why she does not feel safe or comfortable jumping into something like this head first with me. But, when your partner cannot be the one to come up with the assist, who can?
In my particular situation, while I am fairly sociable, I am not sure I’ve developed relationships with people that would offer that particular part of a safety net. Do I feel like I have someone to call on that wouldn’t mind coming out for a day to help solve a particular problem? Would my friends want to come and help out? Sometimes I guess I don’t know. Or I feel like I’d just be a bother.
And thusly – this is somewhat a cry for help. I don’t necessarily feel inadequate to do a certain job, but sometimes just having someone to bounce an idea off of when things get a little rough offers an immense relief. Maybe that’s just me? Is it anxiety? Doubt? Fear? I don’t quite know anymore, but what I do know is that a guiding hand is what helps empower me though some of the tough things in life.
I am also certain I’m not the only one who experiences this.
Asking for help is my kryptonite, and my hopes with developing a local group of individuals is to foster that network of people that can be the Rohan that will answer when we light the beacons to call for aid.
This doesn’t always mean chopping some wood. If you’ve heard of spoon theory, it can mean just a few additional spoons that day to get through something particularly painful.
If this rings true to you, reach out!
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