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You may remember a few Fridays ago I posted Dave Walker’s cartoon, “Waiting”, simply because on that day it expressed what I was thinking and feeling pretty well. Even done that? Just catch yourself staring off into space, thinking to yourself, “I know there’s something out there worth writing about, but what?”

Oddly enough, here’s something I noticed just the other day outside my office window…

My cube is located on the fourth floor, west end of our building, and across the street are several large lots just primed and ready for the eruption of new office blocks. Now, I’ve been at this location for over a year, but only in the last several months has anything happened; FIVE new construction sites have popped up in three directions within a block of our building! (There’s a freeway on the fourth side; putting a new building there might be, er, frowned upon. All those cars and everything.) Yep, business is definitely booming here in Texas – for a change.

Well, I’ve been watching this one particular site to the west for the last several months. As is customary for new construction, it started with a hole. Various and sundry earthmoving machines dug a large rectangular hole in the ground, about five or six feet deep, and somewhat wider and longer than the actual building will be. (In fact, it reminds me of a sandbox I played in last week used to play in when I was little.)

Excess dirt was piled high in long hills until an endless stream of dump trucks carried it off. Gradually, over several weeks, the building’s actual footprint became evident, covered and built up with a new layer of earth and sand such that it left a sortof plateau within the original excavation.

And then… well, then it rained. And we’re not talkin’ just any ol’ rain – it was more like “Honey, better load up the Ark!” Needless to say, the jobsite ended up with a nice medieval effect, what with the moat and all (which I personally thought was a nice touch). After another few days, a lone guy with a pump finally drained the lake and they leveled out the site.

“Finally,” I said to myself (yes, I talk to myself; what’s your point?), “time to get going again!”

Nope, not quite. There was a brief bit of activity while they built their construction shack, and wow, this is some shack! Underneath it’s really just a trailer; but man, this one has a nice wood exterior (not the usual cheap vinyl siding), a full length covered porch with shiny tin roof – even a beautifully finished set of stairs on each end. Very nice! They even installed signs proudly advertising “The XXX Construction Company”.

That was a month ago. Since then… nothing.

Seems kinda strange. Why don’t they just, you know, get on with it? All that site preparation, a beautiful construction field office no doubt filled with building plans – but still no building. So I gotta wonder: why don’t they just, oh, I don’t know, build the thing?

Uh-oh; somebody alert the media! I just had a thought (that loud clunk you just heard).

The thing is, just like pretty much everybody else on the planet (er, I mean this planet), there are certain things I’d like to accomplish; big things, small things – lots of, um, things. Come to think of it - if you wrapped them all up into one pretty package, it would be like… well, like a great big building.

See, I’ve been making these great plans to help me get where I want to go… but if I’m not executing them, well… what good are they? But – and here’s where the rubber meets the road – what real, tangible things am I doing, right now, to accomplish them; to turn my dreams into goals?

Hey, I got plans – lots of plans; I mean, doesn’t everybody? But plans unrealized – well, those are just called intentions. (Like that building across the way there, it’s just site preparation.) I mean, sure, it’s important (critical in fact!), but it’s not the building itself!

I heard a really profound statement once (and it’s all the more irritating because I’m guilty! guilty! guilty!) which I think sums it up quite well:

We tend to judge others by their results, but we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions.

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