Muddy Mess

It’s a steamy August morning, and I’m on my way to Eagle Lake, MS. A high-power pressure washer is loaded in the back of my truck, and I expect it will be my companion for the next six to eight hours.

Much of the lower Mississippi Delta has been flooded for SEVEN months. The flood’s duration has been historic, and we’ve had five feet of water under our cabin since January 2019. Now that the water is receding, I suspect the great Mississippi River has left a huge deposit of mud on our concrete slab and cabin steps. As I pull up, I can’t see any of the carport or the bottom of the stairs leading up to the cabin. Mud is everywhere and about four inches deep.

I immediately know I need to go to Plan B with this much mud. So I head over to my neighbor Mike’s cabin to borrow a flat-edged shovel. If I can scrape off a significant portion of this mud with a shovel, cleaning might go a little faster.

Well, I’m about a third of the way across and now I’m in a section where the mud is even thicker. Just as I go to sling a shovel full of mud into the yard, my foot slips and I go down face first. Nice, now I’ve got mud head to toe. But no time to dwell — quick rinse and back to work.

I get the pressure washer going, and now this mud is flying off my slab. It’s amazing how clean and neat it looks once you put the pressure washer to it. I can clearly see my progress, and I feel my energy level rising as the carport starts to pop with a clean look. CeCe is going to be so proud. Did I mention that she doesn’t do mud?

As I make my way home after 10 hours of mud-slinging and cleaning, I realize how much this mud represents the things we get “busy” on and covers up the pop that our future contains.

Being busy accumulates on our business model and prevents us from prioritizing the time to work on our future. When we let busy run our schedule, we usually end up like me ─ face down in our busy mess. We can’t see our original plan and we don’t take the time to anticipate and plan for the future.

Are we investing necessary time in planning our future or are we covered from head to toe in sticky, busy mud?

Scheduling “think” or “whiteboard” time is a great way to fight being too busy. Blocking segments of time on the calendar works — I promise — and it pays big dividends.

Let’s keep a pressure washer close by and use it frequently to keep our vision clear and help our long-term future really pop!