As it happened, Fortune smiled upon me this week, and I snapped out of my puzzlebox madness.

I remembered a lesson I learned through the remodel of a house I undertook back in 2005-2006: I can’t do everything. Professionals do most things better than me. In this case, specifically, construction professionals can do construction tasks in LITERALLY 1/10th the time, and 10x better than I can. Despite a childhood spent around tools and construction, I was born an artist, and I chose to learn skills related to my devotion. I’m not a construction guy. 

At last I let the wheel turn. Which it was doing anyway. 

I called the construction dudes my friend knows. They were available (abundance!) and came right over (abundance!). My plans made sense, and after an hour we had a plan. I even got to work on time (abundance!). They had time to start the job right away (abundance!).

By the end of the weekend, I’ll have:

– a wall of painting storage. I’ve planned different sized mega-shelves, each with a rather clever non-scraping painting bumper system on the floor, to accommodate the huge influx of panels I’ve been freaking out about for a bit. There will be room for 20 30” squares, 20-30 16” and 12” squares, and 20 30” x 40” portrait panels. BAM!

– a wall of Studio Shit Storage at the other end of the space. These will take all of the rags, costumes, lighting blobs, paint cans, hot glue guns, staplers, feathers and other studio sundries and get them put the fuck away, for good and all, forever.  

The solution to all of my ruminating and graph-paper planning lay in the judicious use of available funding. Next step: revisit the art budgets for 2016 and 2017. And get better sleep.

* * * * *

The moral of the story: ASK FOR HELP

When I find myself ruminating on a problem someone else could solve , I’ll snap out of it by remembering to ask for help. And when I ask for help, I’ll accept the referral I get instead of quibbling over it… and thus sneaking back into rumination. And once I’ve got the referral, I’ll do what they say… instead of arguing and thinking I can do better. It’s hard, but it’s business, and it’s awesome.