MountainWings - The Daily Inspirational E-Mail #1043
Helping You Over The Mountains of Life
Where do you get the time?
Someone came to my house today that receives MountainWings.
They said, "I really enjoy MountainWings but where do you get
the time to write it?"
In the previous MountainWings I explained that the busier you
are, the more probability that you are the very person that will
be given more opportunity. It's one of life's little rules.
The next rule is this:
"With major things, most of the real work is unseen by the public."
Take a child for example. When people see you in public, they see
a walking, well behaved (well sometimes well behaved) child.
This is what they don't see:
The nights you stayed up all night because your child was sick.
The bruises from falling when they were learning to walk and balance.
Scrubbing the walls of the future Picasso's drawing on your freshly painted
walls.
The times when quiet time means the interval when you are both so exhausted
that you both fall asleep.
The house note size nursery bills.
And a hundred and one other things. . .
All they see is your neat, well behaved child and they say, "oh they are so
sweet and cute." Yes they are, but there is a lot that goes before the
sweet and cute.
As with all things, the public often sees only the end result.
So it is with MountainWings
The major amount of time that I have spent with MountainWings is not the
writing.
That's the part that the public sees but it's not the major part. When you get
an e-mail, that's the neat and well behaved child.
Most have no idea what it took to begin a daily e-mail. For the slightly
technically inclined, let me give you a brief outline.
First I had to find an e-mail program. This was not that easy.
I had to download and try several programs.
Each had plusses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses.
The major feature that I needed was the ability to automatically send
pre-written e-mails at a selected time. Only one program that I found did that.
I didn't find that program right away. MountainWings began on the first day of
the new millennium and I hadn't found the proper program by then but I was
determined to get it going. That's another rule of Life. Very rarely will you
have exactly what you want, or think you need, when you start any project.
I did what we all must do to get started.
I used what I had.
I found a workable program but it didn't have automatic scheduling. Therefore I
was up each night at midnight to send the next issue of MountainWings. You do
what you have to.
I went out of town on the third issue of MountainWings. I took my notebook
computer. It took me several hours to get a dial-up connection working that
would accept the e-mail transmitted from the program. I was on a vacation
retreat with my wife. I was up at midnight to transmit MountainWings.
Eventually, I found a good program with an automatic scheduler. It took three
days to get the new program working properly. Now MountainWings transmits
automatically at 3am EST each morning.
I had to build the MountainWings website. It has animated graphics, it took two
hours just to get the flying eagle flying against the yellow background. It has
forms to submit subscriptions, ratings, and articles. I programmed them all.
That took a lot of time.
Then there was the database programming. That's another long story.
Now when a person subscribes or unsubscribes, everything is done automatically.
I don't have to do anything now but write MountainWings and spend a few minutes
scheduling it to send to you at 3am. It's like the neat and well behaved child.
There will be so many things in your life (most things) where the vast bulk of
the work is behind the scenes. Things people never think about. They will simply
see an e-mail and think, "it probably took about 15 minutes to write
that." Maybe it did, but it took about 15 days of work to get it set up to
send that 15 minutes of writing.
It took 45 years, to get the experience, to do the writing.
Was it worth it?
Of course it was.
That's like asking the mother or father of that child, "was it worth
it?"
Of course it was.
Your projects and dreams are like children.
Most of the work to produce them is done under the covers out
of sight of the public.
Some of your projects are yet unborn but you are pregnant with them.
Some of your dreams have not even been conceived.
When you do give birth to them people will also ask you,
"where did you get the time to do that?"
You'll smile and think, "if they only knew what it really took?"
A MountainWings Original
Laugh of The Day:
A small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a
trial -- a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, "Mrs.
Jones, do you know me?"
She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you Mr. Williams. I've known you since
you were a young boy. And frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You
lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind
their backs. You think you're a rising big shot when you haven't the brains to
realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes,
I know you."
The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room
and asked, "Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?"
She again replied, "Why, yes I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a
youngster, too. I used to baby sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a
real disappointment to me. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem.
The man can't build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is
one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him."
At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both
counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, "If
either of you asks her if she knows me, you'll be jailed for contempt!"
Thank you for inviting MountainWings in your mailbox.
See you tomorrow.
__________________________________________
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