For the last three years, most of my efforts have gone into parenting, songwriting, and opening a restaurant. And for the last three years, I've hit every kind of a snag. Asbestos. Pipe leaks. Sick children. Writer's block. Broken arms. Lack of funds.
All the while, I've thought: if all the obstacles would just go away, I could get it all done NOW.
(I make myself cringe as I type that phrase. It's sad to admit that I've got the American "I want what I want when I want it" mentality.)
Anyway, it dawned on me this week that it's all getting done at the exact right pace. Here's how I know. I've been hunting down restaurant chairs on-line for more than a year now. It's been a challenge because I'm trying to use reclaimed wood for this project, and I've got peculiar tastes and not much money. I've spent countless nights daydreaming (is it possible to daydream at night?) about how the perfect reclaimed chairs would just fall into my lap.
And on Friday, they did.
Well almost my lap. I had to do a little hustling. At about 11 am, I had just finished renting a trailer and hauling 4,000 lbs of pine for my restaurant ceiling when I got a call from a woman named Katie. She saw on Craigslist that I was looking for chairs identical to the ones she was selling off from her restaurant in Chicago, Honey Butter Fried Chicken. And I just-so-happened to have a truck and trailer ready to go.
So just like that, I grabbed my Mom and off we went to Honey Butter Fried Chicken to get the reclaimed restaurant chairs of my night-day-dreams. By 3 pm, I was loading 45 chairs into my truck. It was cold, hard work, but now they're mine.
All I needed to do was have a vision, and not expect it to happen NOW.
Reader, there is a time for urgency, and then there's a time to let things play out in their own due course. Focus is important. Then so is patience. I really do believe that--for some things--time is on my side. And it's on yours too. I hope some of your daydreams come to fruition this week as well. See you next Sunday. -Em
