Attempting the seemingly impossible and when to quit.

"Choose wood with no shakes, warps or knots!"
—my grandpa

We've all been in this position, one my maternal grandfather would describe "trying to make something with shoddy materials and broken tools". My most vivid recollection was back in my days as an IT trainer. It was a Monday morning, I was due to be running tech training at some borrowed training rooms in Nottingham. I got to work early enough to load a van with computers, monitors and whatnnot, ready for the day's acivities. I got to the training site (a local electrical goods store) and began unloading equipment, staged ready to put in the lift (training room was on th first (second to USians) floor of the building). At this point, someone managerial told me the lift was not working and that he'd assign some staff to help schlep stuff up the stairs. I had

^{Shyness is nice, but Shyness can stop you}

^{From doing all the things in life}

^{that you'd like to.}

When I met her, she asked me what I was looking at:     

          "Oh, not much,  just the distance"  

It was a true statement, but later she told me she thought I made it up.  I made up a lot of stories back

I have gotten into the habit of recording the dreams that leave an impression on me when I wake up. Dreams are often lost immediately upon awakening, but often I wake up with the dream in my head. In my moment of waking, it feels super real, more real than real life, and I desperately fumble to record it as soon as possible, before it leaks out of my head and is gone forever. I've developed a system for cataloguing and indexing my dreams so that I can discover common themes. Around one fifth of my