Going With the Flow
On doing something.
Many times it’s difficult knowing what to do at the right time. Rather than freeze, I’ve decided to go with the flow, trust my intuition, and see what happens. We have no idea what the future holds or how things might change. We can only do our best with what we have, where we are, and how we can. The worst thing we can do is nothing.
Doing nothing is easy. It’s the path of least resistance, and Resistance knows it. Doing nothing means depending on others all the time. Doing a little more means depending on others a little less. That’s been my approach lately, and it’s adding up in ways I didn’t expect.
The small things I’ve done so far: I switched to reclaimed clay to cut material costs. I paid down debt by tightening my spending and picking up some overtime at the factory. The credit cards are paid off now. The money I was handing to the bank in interest every month stays here instead, and I’m putting it toward things that actually matter. My wife and I doubled the size of our garden this year so we can grow food that’s getting more expensive at the store. And I have plans in place to offset the electric bill by putting solar panels and storage batteries on the pottery shed roof.
None of those are dramatic moves. They’re small, deliberate choices, made one at a time. Helping yourself is a gift to yourself that eventually becomes generosity toward others. You can’t keep giving from an empty account, financial or otherwise.
The current challenge is information overload. I have several projects running at once and most of them are time-sensitive. The garden is the most urgent. I won’t be able to sit with indecision about what to plant because the planting window won’t wait. Miss it and you miss it. Resistance would love nothing more than for me to feel so overwhelmed by too many choices that I quit before anything goes in the ground. So I’m pushing through, making calls with the information I have, and accepting that some of what I plant will fail. That’s fine. I’ll know what to do differently next time.
The solar project, the garden, the reclaim clay, the paid-off cards. None of it happened by waiting for the perfect moment or the complete picture. It happened by deciding and doing, one thing at a time, and trusting that forward motion beats standing still.
If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have made one decision off the list instead of A made decision, even an imperfect one, moves things forward. Thinking about it again doesn’t.
Things I am grateful for: Credit card debt that is behind me now. A wife willing to double the size of a garden we’re still learning to grow.
If I get to live to be 86: I might only have: 12,684 days left. A few of them went toward doing something instead of nothing. That’s how it adds up.
Originally published at Creek Road Pottery
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