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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my wife has been told she looks like Rebecca St. James, Natalie Portman, and Anne Hathaway, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share something I learned by observing my neighbor’s grass.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
When my neighbors, Allen and Mandy moved in a few years ago, their lawn was kind of lackluster. It was a brand new house with new sod. Most of the sod had taken root and was filling in pretty nicely, but it was just an average lawn. There was one spot in particular that the sod was not growing. Since it was a new home with new sod, the home builder came back out and laid down some fresh sod in that area.
Allen and Mandy watered it, fertilized it, and did all they could to get it to take root, but it died again. The grass in the rest of their yard was now looking really good. It was green, thick, and healthy looking…with a very noticeable dead spot right in the middle of the yard out near the curb. I didn’t really pay too much attention to how it happened or how long it took, but eventually, they managed to get the grass to grow.
My lawn is very average, and I think that is being generous. It has weeds, there are a few thin spots in the grass, and it’s not very inviting. When you walk on Allen and Mandy’s grass it feels soft and your feet sink down into it. It’s like a carpet. If I were to walk with my eyes closed from their yard toward my yard, I would be able to instantly tell when I crossed the property line. My yard is hard like concrete. Feet do not sink into my grass.
One day last summer Allen and I were out in his yard and I commented on how good it looked. We talked about how bad it looked when he first moved in and how that one spot refused to grow any grass for a long time. He said that they finally hired a professional to come out and maintain their yard. They spray it several times throughout the year with weed control and fertilizer, as well as aerate it, and water it regularly.
The bottom line is he takes proper care of his grass and I do not.
It has now been over one year since I left the company I had worked for for 19 years and became an entrepreneur. This year has been incredibly rewarding, challenging, and educational. I’ve learned that I hate paying quarterly tax payments even more than I thought I would, I enjoy having a pretty flexible schedule more than I thought I would, and that the work is more rewarding than I imagined.
Last week I sent out my invoices for the month of April and while the invoices didn’t add up to being my highest revenue month in those 12 months (it actually came in 7th place), I did send more invoices out than ever before. This is actually a sign of growth. Instead of having 3 clients, with one of those clients representing well over half of my income, my income is now coming in from around a dozen clients. This puts me into a much more stable situation should one of my clients make a change that would involve cutting down the work I do for them.
Now, I’m am a workaholic. I’ve always been this way. Like many people, I find reward and fulfillment in work. It’s easy for me to get comfortable in my work and let it occupy my time. Since I now work from home, this is even more the case than it used to be. This is also compounded that I now have pressure on me to make this business successful. The needs of my family depend on my ability to get clients.
I typically work about 12 hours a day some days are longer. One day last week was 16 hours. That same day will be just as long this week too. Some of that work is for paying clients, and some of it is not. If I’m not working on a job for a client then I’m working on a project for the podcasting arm of Golden Spiral Media. That could be developing one of the podcasts that we’re launching soon, editing a podcast we’ve already recorded, creating an equipment review video, working on a digital product that I’ll be offering soon, or one of the other scores of ideas that I have on my list of projects.
And that’s the deal. I have a list of ideas and projects that never ends. I add ideas to it faster than I complete ones that are already on there. This means that there is ALWAYS work to do. I do not grow tired of my work. I love it. Even at the end of my 16 hour day last week, I was not at all tired of the work. Sure, my body was tired and when I finally got everything done that had to be done, I was ready to go to bed. But it was because my body was tired, not because I was tired of the work.
However, I know that I have to get out of my studio. Outside the doors of my studio is an 11 year old girl and a 9 year old boy that call me dad. There’s a beautiful woman who smiles at me and kisses me every day and I’m honored to call her my wife. They are more important than any work that I do for Golden Spiral Media or any of my clients.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to make time a few days a week and go on an evening bike ride or walk with my family. It’s a great time to get out of the house, get some fresh air and exercise, and spend time together.
This weekend I have been slammed with work from 3 new clients. I can’t fully express to you how wonderful it is to be adding new clients and the joy I get from helping them. However, I knew that I needed to be aware of my time and not spend the entire weekend in my studio. I worked until about 2 on Saturday and then unplugged. We went to the arts festival being held in our local town, went and visited my grandma for a bit, and then got out the hose and water bucket and hand washed my car. The kids put on their swim suits and had a great time playing in the water and washing my car. I had a great time too. In fact, it was energizing for me.
Here’s what I learned. Time passes by way too fast. The work will never go away, but one day my kids will. If I spend all my time with my head down focusing on my work, I’ll miss out on some of life’s greatest and irreplaceable moments.
I’m not perfect at this and it’s a lesson that I’m still learning. However, I’ve seen a lot of good people and great families break apart. Husbands and wives lose the affection they once had, dads are distant from their kids, and wives are put under too much stress as they try to keep it all together.
It’s easy in those situations to look at other options and see them as better options. It’s easy to look out away from your situation and see that the grass is greener on the other side. A wise man once told me that if I ever thought the grass was greener on the other side then I haven’t been watering my grass.
If you’re in a situation where the grass seems greener in the spot where you’re not, first ask yourself what you’ve done lately to make it greener. It may even seem like there is no hope that grass will grow and that it will just keep dying. I don’t know your situation and I can’t make that decision for you. But can encourage you to do all you can to water, feed, cultivate and seed your lawn, and maybe even bring in a professional to help guide you.
Maybe the grass is pretty green where you’re at. That is great. That’s where I am. However, I know that there is more that I need to do as a husband and a father to better care for my lawn and taking the time to properly care for my grass will not only benefit my kids and my wife, it will benefit and energize me too.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.
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