3 Months of Busy
- ddwyer60
- Jun 3, 2021
- 3 min read
The past 3 months have been the busiest of my life. I moved into a new house, remodeled the first floor, graduated with Honors from NIU, worked my regular full-time job, helped my fiance plan a wedding, all while waking up at 3:00 a.m. to get my workout in. These past 3 months have provided me with life-altering challenges, teaching me various lessons along the way.
The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is to create new limits while giving myself time to recover.
If you redline a car for too long it’ll blow the engine, don’t treat your mind or body the same way. I had to put in 18-hour workdays for the first few weeks to ensure I stayed on my deadline. My everyday schedule consisted of me waking up at 3:00 a.m. to work out, go to work, study, and remodel my new home.
I imagined the hardest part would be getting Kate to be on the same page as me. We knew our time together would be limited but she pushed me to work hard toward my goals. Date nights and evenings spent together at home were my reset times. I allowed my body and mind to wind down from all the physical labor I had completed that day.
I faced many challenges that forced me to stop, one of which being an injury to my right hand. The same way a drill stops going further in but you can feel it still trying to turn, at a certain point I was trying to work but nothing was happening. I overworked my hand and pushed it to a breaking point (not literally, but figuratively). The result of this drive/motivation to complete the task at hand is a permanent injury to the median nerve endings between my right middle and ring fingers. Because of this, those fingers are numb. At first, it was difficult to maneuver with an injury such as this, but I have pushed through with the proper care and rest.
Out of the pain came something beautiful.
The photo on the left was after adding 4 can lights, turning the pantry into a half wall on the right, adding a new pantry on the left wall, and removing the ceiling fan.
The photo on the right is after rearranging and painting the cabinets, adding a tile backsplash, tile floor, new countertops, new sink, new microwave, removing the soffit, running new electrical for over sink drop lights, painting the room, and adding a header for the barn door to the basement on the left.
These are only a few samples of what I’ve done during the remodeling process. More examples will come with later posts. For now, I wanted to provide the highlights of what my life has been like.
The best advice I can give is a quote from my grandfather: “We know where we are going to start and end. Even though we don’t know the roads that will get us there, we still trust we are on the right track.” It seemed odd at the time for him to say something so profound while on a road trip, but as I look back I realize that his advice was meant for later in life. Just because you can’t see your finished goal, doesn’t mean you aren’t right on track.
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