Backing and Filling
Atlanta, GA
July 14, 2019
We’ve all heard the story of the lady who receives a beautiful red rose and places it on her cluttered kitchen table. The flower is lovely, but its charms are overwhelmed by the mess around it.
She clears the debris, giving the rose room to shine…but exposing the dull veneer of the table, and the scars and scratches on wall behind it.
The table is then re-finished and the walls re-painted, only to accentuate how ratty the rugs look. When the rugs are upgraded, the floor’s deficiencies become apparent. A refurbished floor reveals deteriorating doors, windows, counters, and fixtures, each of which are soon replaced.
And on it goes, until the daisy chain of revisions and renovations turn the original stem into a $50K rose.
Like waves crashing into Corsica, or another of these missives invading your inbox, our latest home-improvement project is upon us.
After retrofitting our elevated deck last winter, we realized our property’s topography would soon jeopardize the fortified footings under its new posts.
Like Washington’s army escaping Long Island, our backyard runs away from the house in a persistent, yet furtive fashion. The degree of slope is not immediately perceptible, but steady erosion by rain and time have made it discomfitingly obvious, compromising the drainage of the property and integrity of its structures.
To ameliorate the situation, the ground must…like the career arc of a Latin American CIA sock-puppet…first be elevated. Then, after sufficient manipulation, cajoling, and extraction, it must be flattened.
As with our unsolicited thoughts and opinions, the first step is to contain and manage loads of disorganized fill dirt so they don’t spill too far or cause unintended trouble.
To raise and restrain the lawn, a long retaining structure is now rising across the yard. Mexicans are building the wall, and making us pay for it.
This is an exercise in assessment, trial, error, and adjustment. The foundation channel is dug, extended, filled, and extended again. Bricks rest firmly atop and beside one another, to be removed, replaced, and removed again. Dirt will be hauled in, piled up, spread about, and redistributed.
These guys work long days and hard hours under a hot sun. Episodes of staring blindly into space, stroking pensively under chins, or scratching anxiously along brows…in the manner of a Caltrans crew around a single shovel on an I-80 shoulder…are not unheard of, but are rare, and brief. They then press relentlessly ahead, backing and filling when appropriate, to complete their intended task.
These are artists, not scientists. Like a Italian chef or a French winemaker (or vice versa), they concoct without a recipe. A dash of extra mesh here, a sprinkle of additional gravel there…no two jobs ever produce exactly the same dish, but all customers seem to relish the resulting meal.
They gauge distance by the step, and survey using only the naked eye. They envision the finished product, yet have difficulty describing it to others. That’s OK. As Potter Stewart said of obscenity, we will know it when we see it. Or, to take a more ominous paraphrase, we may first need to complete the project so we can find out what is in it.
Not unlike, say, navigating an uncertain career transition to arrive at ill-defined personal objectives. I have placed a few irons in the corporate fire, while also gathering social kindling to ignite new professional perspectives. I have charged up the coffee circuit, with parallel currents flowing through a series of business breakfasts and networking lunches.
I have begun to jump-start or resuscitate a couple small business ideas, rolled them under an LLC, set up a bank account, and obtained my tax identification number. I was inadvertently reminded during conversations above the shore of Lake Michigan that back on the ground in Georgia layers of state, county, and local governments awaited, demanding business licenses as regulatory spatulas they can use to extract fresh fruit from every company pie.
Annoying as these administrative and bureaucratic irritants can be, they must…like a dirty diaper from an outstretched arm…be disposed of appropriately if we are to successfully sail entrepreneurial waters. For now, we’re still in port…continuing to read the wind and time the tides.
I could also take a cue from our Mexican workers, learn to sometimes throw caution to the wind, begin the voyage, and adjust my sails as I go. Meanwhile, I keep my tattered corporate canvas lashed to the mast, in the event of a favorable off-shore gust.
The Bastille is ripe for the taking. It is only for the commander to decide if he wants it…and give the order to advance.
JD
