I wrote about one of my dreams recently, having an observatory in my backyard, and the decision + my reaction to the decision that I had to let the dream go. But I found myself bargaining my way back into trying to consider another option, even thinking I might just impose an option that was perfect for me if not awesome for Andrea and Jacob because it was important to me and I had hoped relatively minimal disruption on them. Until I did the formal measurements tonight and realized, sure, it works for me, but it is not “minimal” for them. The only option that works for them isn’t worth it for me. So I need to kill the idea completely, I just can’t make it work.
Going off on a tangent for a moment, I talk to a social worker every couple of weeks for some much-needed talk therapy/counselling, and this past week was almost entirely about my reaction to the first “realization” that it likely wouldn’t work just two weeks ago. That realization/decision really threw me into a tailspin, as I blogged about earlier. Much of this week’s conversation was about not really have anyone to talk to about it or the emotions that go with it, and most of my diversionary options to distract myself are not available right now, so the social isolation is hitting me doubly hard. The irony is not lost on me that the introvert who frequently likes being alone was feeling lonely.
But one of the key principles I believe in most strongly is to expect people to be the people they are, not the people you wish them to be. A fundamental belief in self-determination, self-control, self-management, simply the concept of the “self” that is yours to define. It was hard with my mom, for example, seeing some stuff she did that I found less than ideal, as well as having to remind myself that she was being who she was, not the person I wished her to be. Sometimes I forget that with family and friends, but I try really hard not to impose my desires on them as expectations.
This is not a pity party, by the way, it’s just recognizing the limitations of the life I’ve chosen to lead. Certain things that I wish I had in my life are not there, and when I find them missing, it’s only natural to think it is someone’s fault, that person x, family member y, or friend z didn’t provide it. Except that wasn’t who they were, so it’s hardly fair of me to expect them to behave that way. And that’s mostly what I talked about with the therapist. She’s paid to listen to me on these types of issues, one of the reasons I see her in the first place. A professional muse to help me work through sticky emotional/logical intersections. And to give me some much needed perspective if I’m chasing my inner nuts like a mad squirrel.
Which brings me back to letting go of a dream
I know what I’m doing “instead of” that dream, I know how to adapt or divert my energies, I know how to confront the dream to see which parts of it are dreams, which parts are actual goals, which parts are merely scripts. But in the end, as I said, I’ve still been holding on to part of it, bargaining with myself that maybe one of those alternatives could be made larger and fulfill the original goal. Except it can’t. The measurements I took tonight confirm it. I simply cannot put a slab or pier or shed in the backyard in a way that will work for anyone but me. Maybe when Jacob is at university or something, but by then I’ll be retired and it won’t really be relevant. By then, I’ll be able to go out any night that is clear to a darker sky site to set up. Time won’t be the limitation it is now.
Two weeks ago, I did a bunch of research to see what I could find available about letting go of a dream, but I didn’t really try to curate any of it into any sort of practical “strategy” for myself. I just let it wash over me, saved the links, and set it aside. Going back now, I can see ten general trends in options:
Focus on the belief that a goal or dream doesn’t define you, you’ll be fine either way;
Meditate on the negative feelings that go with the loss of the dream;
Let go too of the “sunk-cost” mentality that you’ve worked hard for it already, or done the planning, etc.;
Recognize that letting go of something is neither failure or cowardice;
Recognize why you are letting go — unrealistic, unachievable by you, inappropriate for the current you, timing, it’s blocking you from enjoying what you have, etc;
Let go by actually letting go and not revisiting your old stomping grounds…move on by actually moving on;
Take a break from it to give yourself some physical and emotional distance;
Identify what that dream gave you in the present so you can celebrate the victory of what it gave you on the journey up until now, even though you are letting go of the final result;
Be the friend to yourself that you think you need…what do you say to yourself about the change?;
Consider whether there are other equally-rewarding dreams that you ignored because you were focused on the one that you now need to jettison;
Not surprisingly, there are no magic bullets in there. I suspect I most gravitate towards #4 as a stumbling block, as there is some sense of failure in the loss. Some personal choice that I’m not willing to pay a certain price to achieve it, even if I’m okay with that choice. Plus I did let myself get excited about it, personally invested, so #3 also resonates — a sunk-cost mentality of not wanting to give up and reduce the previous work to meaningless. #1, 2, 5, and 10 don’t resonate at all. #6-9 are interesting, but not compelling.
I guess if I had to narrow it down to an actual strategy I would say it will be:
Analyse (#2 the negativity, #3 sunk cost, #5 why)
Adjust my thinking (#4 failure, #8 partial success)
Adapt to reality (#10 alternative goals)
Adjust priorities (separate)
I don’t know if it will help me self-manage better, but it’s worth a try. I’ve got most of the first one done and I am working on the second. The third is partially done, but I don’t feel like the fourth has been touched at all. The depression side of letting go is dampening down my enthusiasm for much else right now, so it’s hard to get excited about other projects. I’ll get there, just not yet.
I’ve posted the last couple of times about depression, letting go of a dream of having an observatory in my backyard, and bargaining with myself to replace it with other options. I can find better ways to let go, find alternative locations to view, and even consider a custom storage option for the backyard. However, in the meantime, I need to find a better way to transport my gear from the garage to the backyard and in a smaller number of trips.
I looked into some hand cart ideas, mostly dolly-like tools, and while they would transport a couple of the accessories boxes, they would do very little for my table, chair and actual tripod, let alone the scope itself. In addition, many of them have small wheels, some of them even just casters. None of them are particularly good at getting a large volume of gear to the back yard, down a rocky/gravel side path and potentially across a bumpy lawn. I looked at a few garden wagons, but they don’t hold much.
And then I found Gorilla Carts. These things are relatively magnificent. Amazon has one of the models that will carry a 400 lb load, and the prize isn’t outrageous. $182. It’s a bit short, and a bit narrow, but I could maybe make it work. The big feature are the wheels. 10″ pneumatic ones that can handle the terrain fine. My fear is I would have to make two trips which kind of defeats the purpose. Better than what I have now, sure, but I have a better idea. I’ll come back to that.
Another one on Amazon is Gorilla’s big model, with a payload capacity of 1400 lbs.
At 54″ long (an extra 20″) and 34″ wide (an extra 16″), it would easily hold everything I need to move, which gets me down to a single trip from garage to backyard. The price is steeper, $450, but you get a a lot more strength AND bigger tires for navigating the terrain. The weight also goes up of the actual trailer — the first is about 30 lbs; the big guy comes in just over 100 lbs all by itself.
I would prefer a push handle rather than a pull handle, but I might be able to rig something up. Or give myself a better way to pull it. Regardless, it’s certainly viable. I’m a little nervous about the 34″ width as the back gate just barely handles a 3′ clearance, and the side path is only about 39″ in a few places (there are things that jut out), but it is doable.
But my real “brainchild”, so to speak, was the idea that perhaps I could create a small parking berth in my garage, park the wagon IN it, and thus leave all my stuff in the wagon. No loading and unloading in the garage, except for things that need to be charged or dried out over night. I would still need to enclose it to keep dust and stuff out, but I could rig that myself. I don’t have great craftsman skills, as I mentioned earlier, but it has to be functional, not pretty. Functional I can do.
I’ve reached out to the American company, mainly as I confess the 1400 lb version is NOT the one I want. There is another model slightly smaller (1200 lb payload) and another possible one (1000 lb payload), but I can’t seem to find a reliable Canadian distributor. Lowes carries some of them, but there are a bunch of reviews of people ordering it and getting a Lowes-brand knock off instead that dies within a month or two. Particularly on the low-end ones.
But if I have to go for the big wagon, so be it. I can deal.
And besides, it can be fun playing with wagons, right? Just don’t tell my wife I’m going to completely gut major parts of the garage to find room for it.
Earlier this week, I mentioned that I need to let go of my dream of having a backyard observatory (Letting-go-of-an-observatory-dream/). It was based on the crash between the dream and reality, with the reality that multiple variables don’t work in my backyard:
I don’t have space for a pre-fab observatory (normally 8’x8′ minimum);
There’s really only one place in the backyard that works, and to make it functional, I would have to raise it up to deck level, but once there, the only options are either too expensive, too big, too ugly, or all three.
The weird part is that I’ve known it was unlikely for quite some time, and I thought it was “gone” from my plans and options. Some of it remains because I have had nothing to replace it with, to be honest. One frustrating thing for me with my hobby is that I don’t have any places nearby that I can just pop over and start observing from, with most decent options being quite a drive. So I couldn’t “bargain” my way out of the loss by saying, “Okay, but I can go HERE instead.”
Which isn’t to say I don’t have SOME options. I live in what is classed as a Bortle 7 sky (scale of 1-9 with 1 being perfectly dark skies and 9 being the downtown of a big city). But once a month, we have public star parties in Carp which is a Bortle 5 sky. The Fred Lossing Observatory is just over an hour away and is Bortle 4, as is Luskville (1 hour), and my in-laws’ cottage (4 hours). North Frontenac is Bortle 2 (!) but at 2 hours, I’ve never made the trek. I would settle for Bortle 6 or 7 with better horizons and set up options than I have now if I could get there in less than 20 minutes.
So if I already knew the reality…?
As I said, I thought my heart and brain knew I didn’t have an option in the backyard. The glitch was that I had done most of my previous calculations based on a specific form of set-up. If I set up on my tripod, I need a central space that is almost 4′ in diameter. The simple math of the tripod spread demands that much. And I was thinking the simplest set-up that I could have would be some sort of movement of my scope in full mode, so I would be using my tripod. But then I had a small epiphany that if I did go the pier route, which is quite a small footprint (no tripod legs), then maybe I could locate it in a less-used spot and stick a box around it. And I let myself get excited again about the possibility. Partly because of the ennui of the current stuck-at-home world, I let myself go all-in on putting everything I had learned into HOW I could make it work in that spot. And I did it. I found an option that would fit the space.
Then I showed it to my wife and reality crashed. Any option except that space doesn’t work for Jacob using the yard; that space only works for Andrea if I can make the box around the scope short and attractive, which I can only do if I either pay someone else an arm and a leg to build it or I could pay someone else just an arm while finding a cheap pre-fab option to keep it pretty. Cheap, functional, or pretty. I would have to pick one, which kills the project.
Which knocked me on my ass on Wednesday. Like the start of a downward depression spiral. I know the symptoms well-enough to spot them and to attempt emergency measures to head it off.
Stopping the death spiral
First and foremost, I need to give myself space to breathe. So I took Thursday off from work. An actual vacation day. I didn’t try to monitor my phone, avoided certain things on FB and Twitter, locked myself in the basement and vegged. It didn’t help that Wednesday night I slept like crap and was dead tired. Hard to tell how much of that was physical and how much mental/emotional. But I needed the break to regenerate. Ideally I’d take a week, but that ain’t happening when the three of us are locked in the same house and there’s no escape.
Second, I need to reboot my coping mechanisms. One of those is music. If my brain is going a mile a minute, one of the few things that calms it is fast music played loud. Normally I could just go for a long drive and blast tunes. Alternatively, I could go for a walk, but I’m not really up for that right now. Lastly, I could put on some headphones and let it penetrate my skull until my brain is just so overloaded, it stops thinking and just shuts down. Meditation doesn’t help, it won’t quiet the chaos when I’m this far gone. Great for maintenance, lousy for restoring my balance from scratch. Except the f***ing iTunes wouldn’t recognize my downstairs laptop nor would the f***ing headphones that I have for the laptop work. Really? Whatever. I listened to some music, closed the door to the basement, and forced myself to sing along to some of the songs. Listening is better for me as I can let my brain free associate its way to some revelations sometimes, but not this time. I had to sing to drive out the turbulence.
Third, I need to confront the emotions and figure out WHY it’s knocking me down. In particular, why THIS loss is affecting me when it is not really a loss at all. I already KNEW I couldn’t do it, so the outcome is “no change”. Why would THAT knock me back?
Figuring out my reaction
It wasn’t hard to figure out why it’s bugging me, I just had to force myself to walk through the steps.
I started with the first aspect, the location. Is living in Centrepointe where I want to live? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the “reality” (that harsh word again) is that it is the best compromise for the three of us. I’d prefer to live somewhere like Dunrobin but that wouldn’t be fair or viable for Andrea and Jacob. Centrepointe is good for them and is fine for me for work commuting, access to commercial infrastructure, etc. I don’t really DO anything in the area, so it doesn’t much matter to me as a location, I could get most of it anywhere. But it is a good commuting compromise for everyone. If I only had to compromise with myself, I would probably find a way to live farther out, with a darker sky and better horizons. There are even some spots about 5-10 minutes from where I live now that would do, but not great options for the family. Just me being selfish.
Secondly, I know that there is no real reason why I have to have the viewing option at home. Lots of people do it at cottages. I don’t have a cottage, I can’t afford a cottage, I will likely never have a cottage. So that’s on me. If I managed my money better, was more entrepreneurial, maybe pushed harder earlier in my career for promotions, I could have that cottage. But I made my choices and it is a pretty good life. Whining about it is the epitome of a first-world problem and even more almost like a 1-percenter problem.
Thirdly, even with my location, and finances, I could have an observatory in theory. It wouldn’t be perfect, it wouldn’t be ideal, but I could buy a pre-fab sky shed. Write a cheque, have it delivered, bam, instant observatory. And it would mean Jacob would lose any place to play in the backyard. I would love to have a pool, but we don’t, mainly for the same reasons. It would take up the whole yard for one purpose. And so we keep it clear for him. So why is that depressing? Because I’m irritated that I don’t get to do what I want to do, but he gets his yard and my wife gets her gazebo area on the deck. How f***ing selfish is it that I’m irritated by THAT? They’re both good and reasonable uses of the space.
Fourthly, I found an area that COULD work, at least in theory. But while I can lament the options being too costly, too large or too ugly, the real reason it can’t work is me. If I had the know-how and technical skills to build the observatory myself, I could do it at a reasonable enough cost that it would work. It wouldn’t be awesome, it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be functional. But I can’t, because I don’t have any of those skills.
I can’t put in two 6′ posts in the ground; I can’t build a nice-looking extension to the deck that would match what we have; I can’t pour a pier and attach the metal rods and face plate I need; nor can I wrap the deck around it and put railings on. It isn’t a question of just not doing it well, I can’t do it at all. I know the theory, sure, but the wood wouldn’t cut straight, I wouldn’t know how to line it up properly, it just wouldn’t work. I build bookcases and I’m amazed they even stay together when they’re done. In high school, I took machine shop in Grade 9 and 10, and the only reason I passed either one was because there were enough marks on theory to get me over the hump. I think my Grade 10 project, a C clamp, came out at like 14/40. I did manage to make a tack hammer in Grade 9 that I still have, even if the balance isn’t quite right. I just don’t have much in the way of talents to do all that. Which normally I’m okay with, I just write a cheque. I can do that, and I know the result will be WAY better than anything I could do myself even on my best day.
But after that, after the deck is in and the pier is there, all that needs to be done is to build a small box to put around the pier and scope. There are a series of steps that would challenge me, but I could likely take my time and get it done. It wouldn’t look awesome and that’s the rub. I got all excited by the option and showed an example to my wife who thought it looked ugly. Which was true. It didn’t look great. But, unfortunately, it was also about 10x better-looking than what I could make. This means that if THAT version didn’t fly, none of my options would either. My only solution is to write a cheque again, and that is putting the price for an observatory way too high.
Not great skies, not great location, not great functionality…so why would I pay $3-4K or more to build it? Because that is the only option I would have because I don’t have the skills to do it myself.
Ah-hah, now I’m getting somewhere
That’s really the crux of it for me, in many ways. I’m trying to compromise on what I want, with functionality, with what Jacob needs and Andrea wants, and in the end, I can almost find a solution. Except it is completely out of my control because I am not capable of doing it myself.
I can’t just throw money at it and solve it. We have savings, but we also have plans for a bathroom reno, a bunch of needed yardwork, some time off if Jacob has some surgery and needs a recovery period, and a subsequent trip, not to mention plans to retire in 5 years that requires me to buyback some time using mutual funds that just tanked when the stock market plummeted (which also means I will have to work another 18 months longer than I had planned).
And yet I can’t work around it and do it myself either. I can’t buy pre-fab and I can’t build it myself. My father could have, probably. My brother, Don, for sure. Me? No.
Which is what is knocking me on my ass. I can’t realize my dream, not because of location, or layout, or Jacob, or Andrea, or cost. I can’t realize the dream because I don’t have the skills to make it happen.
Sure, there are other elements at play. Isolation. Cabin fever. A desire for some momentum. And even if I had the skills, I probably don’t have the physical stamina to do it all. Not to mention the disappointment I feel in myself that not only did I let myself get excited for something that wasn’t likely to happen but also that I am not handling it better. But mainly it is the feeling of personal failure over all.
Moving forward
I am already experiencing aspects of denial, anger, and I’m trying to mitigate depression. But I’m hoping to embrace a more successful form of self-bargaining to turn it into something I’m willing to accept so I can let go of the past.
Putting my analytical hat on, there are four options that I can see. I could just let it go, with no replacement. Deal with it, don’t try to find any solution, let the winds buffet me as much as they might. I suppose that’s an option. Not a mentally-healthy one perhaps, but it’s an option. It’s going to happen to some extent anyway so I guess I can explore techniques on how to do that in a healthier fashion.
I can replace it with some modified form of storage since I can’t have an observatory. I mentioned in the previous post that I’m not in favour of putting all my gear just in a storage locker, but if I could find a way to perhaps just put the big items in there, maybe keep the expensive stuff in the garage and only make one trip, and maybe even find a shed big enough to put my scope in it in the full upright position on the mount so I could just “slide it out” easily, then would that be an option? I gave it a go. If I’m not building an observatory, then eating up more lawn space with just storage isn’t great as an option. So that leaves me the deck. With the only viable space being about 45″ x 60″. My scope’s tripod can fit in a space 43″ x 37″ x 56″ but it’s a struggle. The 37″ is the problem dimension.
Very few sheds come in a size other than whole foot dimensions. So if I go with one above 37″, it pretty much has to be 4′ … but I only have a space 45″ deep before it starts to interfere with something else. So what I really need is 3.5′ by 4′, and that’s not an available size in pre-fab stuff. I found one that came close, but it is way too tall…I want it about 5′, and it was almost 8′. Too imposing a size and potentially presenting a wind risk in a storm.
I found one option that is almost okay. But it is entirely made of wood, no shingles on the roof, and no indication if it would keep out rain. Plus, it is so tight, I doubt I could fit anything else in the shed with it. And it is almost $2000. Pass.
The only sub-option that I see is to maybe pay someone to do a custom build at some point, get it exactly the size and dimensions that work for me in the space. But that is also going to run up the cost. And, more importantly, a hypothetical “future” option that is out of my control doesn’t help me bargain with myself in the short-term. Pass.
I can reframe the question back to the original problem. Moving all my gear from the garage to the backyard takes too many trips. What can I use that will speed that process?
I looked into various carts and dollies today. Whatever I use, it likely needs at least 10″ pneumatic tires. The narrow space in between my house and the neighbour’s is rocky and even when I get to the backyard, the lawn itself is bumpy and coarse. I have a dolly already, but I’ve never put much mind to trying to strap all this gear to it. The bottom plate isn’t very deep either. Hard to see how I would get a table on it, all my gear, plus the tripod and an observing chair in one load. But if I’m doing multiple loads, what difference does it make? I’m wasting time loading up and unloading if it doesn’t really change the calculation. I might be able to find a way to leave some gear in a wagon or something? I don’t know. I’ll need to play with it. But the solution might be just to decide to go with a smaller footprint by either using Jacob’s equipment, or perhaps just taking one of my EPs to use rather than a bunch of them. Minimize the options, and minimize the load. It seems kind of pointless to have gear that I don’t use, but if I’m not using any of it now, I guess using some is better than using none. I looked at all the options online and didn’t see any ideas that screamed “pick me”. If I’m going to use the backyard, I either need to compromise or suck it up.
If moving everything to the backyard is a pain in the patootie, what if I reframe the geographic scope again? I mentioned earlier that I would be willing to go somewhere with at least equal skies if I could have a decent horizon. If truth be told, I haven’t looked EVERYWHERE that I could. I checked major parks in the area, a few other options, but nothing that didn’t have major negative aspects. But if I loaded the car in the garage quickly (it’s only a foot or two to the trunk) and then unloaded directly at the view site, it would be simpler than hauling it all to the backyard, I just would have to drive somewhere to do it. Including more use of FLO out in Almonte, I guess. Again, I need to find options or suck it up. Once the restrictions lift, I’m going to devise a search grid for every neighbourhood within a 15-minute drive of my house and see if any of the parks, no matter how small or big, can accommodate me for use. Then I’ll just have to commit to going there at least once a week and maybe once a week to FLO.
Conclusion
This post has been a classic change-up for me. I thought, when I started writing it, that I was going to just write about techniques that are out there on how to “let go” of something that is no longer possible. Instead, I talked my way through why it is bothering me so much and some bargaining options to help me deal in the short-term.
I’ll look into those options on how to better deal with letting go with lost dreams, and I’ll consider maybe a long-term solution for a custom storage option, but I suspect the price for that will be prohibitive. I need to get my short-term solutions going, namely ones that I can do and that I can implement on my own. Once the restrictions lift, I’ll find a new place to observe close to my house and make efficiencies for commuting out to FLO to observe more often.
I may not have the skills to build an observatory, but at least I know how to drive.
