Three years ago, I heard that a restaurant in Chicago called Honey Butter Fried Chicken was giving away furniture.  So on a cold winter’s day, I nearly broke body loading a 17 foot, 400 pound wooden bench onto a boat trailer and bringing it home with me to Rockford. I lugged it through my restaurant door, sanded it, finished it, and rested it against my bar wall for all eternity. My mom said: 

“That’s a lot of work for one bench.  What if you want to move it someday?” 

And I remember saying, “I’m never gonna move this thing.” 

But eventually, never happens.  

My restaurant doesn’t need an enormous bench anymore.  We need more shelving.  And so yesterday, I hauled the 17 foot, 400 pound wooden bench into storage so I had more space to build shelves. This week alone, I closed the chapter on almost a dozen pieces of equipment, furniture, and systems that I expected to last forever. 

I struggle knowing that something I’ve started will one day come to a finish, especially when I worked so hard for it.  I’ve never been good at hitting the end of those hard-earned roads.  But this week, I had a profound, almost happy lightness about all of it.  The end of the road isn’t an end.  It’s a chance.  It’s a release.  It’s a beginning, a fresh chapter in a new a book.  And all the work that came before was not for nothing: it was what we needed to do to get us to our newest opportunity. 

And good Lord, do I have a lot of work to do on this new opportunity. 

Anyway, I look forward to tearing down my old work this week and ushering in something new. Reader, don’t forget that your hard work isn’t living inside objects; it’s living inside you, getting you on your way.  See you next Monday. -Em