What A Waste

There needs to be a support group for people dealing with a very specific type of hoarding – those of us that collect and hold on to various building materials.  Look, I know I can go down the street to Home Depot and grab a couple 2x4’s, but look at the time I’ll save by having these two and a quarter pieces available whenever I get around to needing them!  Yes, I know these old door hinges are rusted, but what if I build a play house for my girls and need them for the front door or for some shutters?  I promise, I’m going to eventually use this.  I was a Boy Scout, you know, “Be Prepared.”  Waste not, want not.

I’m sure there’s a balance to be had with keeping some things and chunking others, but about 94.6% of my being resides on the “keeping things” side of the line, when it comes to building materials.  There may be other areas of my life where I have this problem, but as of now, that’s the only area of my hoarding life I feel comfortable coming to terms with in a public forum.

The other day something happened that caught me by complete surprise.  Didn’t see it coming.  Total emotional blind-siding.

My full-time job is in a shop that manufactures exterior doors.  Trees are a living and growing organism, influenced by everything from soil composition to rain fall levels.  As such, there are no two pieces of lumber that are exactly the same.  When you put a door together, one of the aims is to get the color and grain pattern to match as close as possible.  As you cull through the pallet of lumber, you have to figure out what part of the door each piece of wood is going to become.  There is always going to be a piece or two that you just can’t make work.  I came across one of those pieces the other day.

After planning this piece down, I realized that the grain structure was terrible and left burrs everywhere.  I started circling all of the imperfections.  Once I got to the end of the 121” board, I looked back down the board, saw circles everywhere, and realized there was no way we could use this board on any part of a door.  I took it back over to the cart and wrote “WASTE” on it in big bold letters, like this:

I stepped back to look at the board with that giant word written on it and my eyes got “sweaty.”  I was getting misty over a freaking piece of lumber!  But I wasn’t.  I then did something that put me over the edge and I had to walk to a secluded corner of the shop for a little while to regain my composure.

The reason I broke down is because I saw myself in that piece of wood.  I look at my life and I see a whole bunch of circles, my imperfections highlighted by critics from every angle and myself.  Your resume is too broad.  You’ve made too many mistakes.  You haven’t spent enough time planning ahead.  You keep getting screwed over because you continually line yourself up with the wrong people and I don’t think you’ll ever change.  No one wants to invest in you because you have too much baggage.  You’ll never be a good husband because you’re incapable of being truly emotionally invested.  You’re kids love you now because they’re too naïve to know better.  Everyone has left you alone, why should the next person you meet be any different?  You’re a perpetual victim.  You can’t commit.  You aren’t making enough money.  You can’t take criticism.  You have no stability.  You’re failing.  You’re wasting time.  You’re a waste.

There was so much potential in that tree.  There was so much effort exerted for years in growing tall and straight and just trying to be the best tree it could be, but in the end, it produced lumber that was worthless.  A waste.

What I did next is what put me in a secluded corner of the shop to regain my composure for a little while.  It’s going to be a little “preachy,” but you’re just going to have to roll with it.  I went over to another part of the board and wrote this on it:

See, I’m not a hoarder of building products because I have an affinity for rusty hinges, empty 5-gallon paint buckets, random assorted screws/nails, partial 2x4s, or scrap metal.  I believe in redemption.  At my core, I believe in restoration.  I have to.  Without it, I am just a board with too many imperfections to be useful.

Look at the front page of this blog.  The statement I made and put at the top is an original.  It’s mine.  I didn’t get it from anywhere else.  “My life is not yet finished, and my beauty still has yet to be found.”

That board, it may not make a good looking door, but I bet it’d make one hell of a small coffee table or maybe a rustic sign to put up at a lake house.  This is how I think.  This is how I operate.  If I can find usefulness in a ridiculous piece of lumber, surely there is usefulness for me.

I realize I’ve written a lot for a single blog in this post, but I want anyone who reads this to understand that imperfections don’t disqualify you from participation.  They don’t render you useless.  In fact, I might argue that they only enhance the end result.  Getting to the end result isn’t easy and it takes way longer than you want it to or think that it should.  Maybe you are your biggest obstacle.  Maybe the obstacles are much bigger than you.  Regardless, you are not a waste.  Your life experiences are not for naught.  Embrace them.  Restore them.  Redeem them.