Do hard things

Spring, 2021. Redoing the door on my “new” house. The custom front steps give you an idea what life was like…

When my children were teenagers, two brothers wrote a book called Do Hard Things.

The book was an argument against the idea that teenagers really can’t accomplish much, and an appeal that teens (and other people) should step up and try to accomplish significant goals.

Why are we convinced that our desires are far beyond our reach?

Note that I’m not talking about priorities here. If you choose to prioritize one goal over another, that’s your choice. Just don’t look at a secondary priority and get all wistful about it. (I’ve made this mistake many, many times.) You’ve made the choice to prioritize something else.

For many years I dreamed of owning a piece of land. When I lived in Washington State in the 1990’s, I longed for Minnesota. I remember hearing about nine acres near Bemidji. I sent away for information about it. (This was before you could just pull it up on Zillow.) I could feel in my guts how wonderful it would be to have a place to come back to, and eventually to build and live. But I failed to set aside money for a land purchase. I never did anything about the land except longing for it. I prioritized other things.

Eventually I did move back to Minnesota, and ended up living near the Twin Cities. I longed for the northern woods. On road trips and vacations I’d see a piece of land for sale and dream of buying it. Sometimes I’d even start making back-of-the-envelope calculations how I might set aside money for it. But I never did anything to actually make it happen.

In 2020 I finally took action. I used some money I had set aside to buy 40 acres. This wasn’t the northern hunting land I’d dreamed of. It was an overgrown sandy farmsite with some lowland pasture that had been passed over by local farmers and developers. The real estate listing had expired for lack of interest. I used most of the money I had in savings and spent a great deal of time and effort finding low-cost financing.

In my mind, this land (which didn’t include a house, just a ramshackle barn) would be a project. Eventually I could either resell it or build on it. In the process of buying the land, I fell in love with it. I began to see possibilities. I spent hours on the 40 that winter. I stomped out floor plans in the snow, imagining where my house might go someday and what it would look like. Whenever we got another dusting of snow, I would go out like an Etch-a-Sketch artist and stomp out a new floor plan.

Then life happened.

I’d had a job and a living arrangement that provided for my needs, but in the winter of 2020-21 both the job and the living arrangement went away unexpectedly. I begged for an extension of my living arrangements until spring. I scrambled for a different job. I bought a camper from my brother, and moved onto the 40 at the end of March, in the snow. My first construction project was an outhouse, because outdoor plumbing is far better than no plumbing at all.

That spring and summer I had a well and septic system dug on the property. I bought a trailer house for $350. It cost more than twice as much to move it onto the 40. I then spent the summer with the help of precious friends making the place livable. We rebuilt floors, replaced windows, built a door frame, patched siding, painted walls, reset toilets, installed a new shower surround. And cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. Starting in the blistering hot days of August, I felt the fear of below zero temperatures. Winter was coming. Could I survive out here?

That winter was brutal. Temps hit -25F multiple times. I did end up thawing waterlines twice, but it wasn’t all that bad. Each month I was able to make small improvements to the barn, the trailer house, the land.

I spent the day yesterday (and many weeks prior to this) working on a new project. My wife and I have bought a house, and we’re going to have it moved onto the 40. We’ll build a basement. The moving company will deliver the house. It will stand on the same high ground where I stomped floor plans in the snow three years ago. We will need to pull the trailer house off that spot and live in it during construction. It will be like camping.

At some point a few years ago, I went from wishing to working. Instead of dreaming about a piece of land, I took what was available and started doing hard things. It’s not that I knew how to do all the things I’ve done in this process. Heavens, no. I’ve learned so much along the way, and tapped experts when I couldn’t do these things myself. I’ve leaned hard on good friends, and tried to make sure I was helping them out as well.

When I think about it, taking my writing seriously is a similar journey. About five years ago I started to work instead of wishing. Next week my fourth book will be released (Wait for the Lightning, which you can order on this website or through any other distributor). I’m editing my fifth book, What Happened on the Redeye, which will be released this summer. It’s hard work. But I like writing books, and hopefully people will like reading them.

What are your goals? Do you find yourself wishing rather than working? That was my disease. These days I’m very much enjoying the tantalizingly slow process of seeing my goals become reality. Land. Books. I’ve got other things I dream about occasionally, but those two keep me busy most days.

Do hard things.