Intentions and windlasses.

The best way to get things done is to do them. We can spend a lot of time talking about an issue. Strategizing. Plotting. But until action happens, nothing gets done.

My intention is to be somewhere with a sign like this.

The trick, I’m learning, is the balance between brute force action and the finesse of dropping hints and planting seeds for the future.

Both of these are action, sure. Each has its place.

If I’m using a sailing analogy, brute force is using your legs and back to haul the anchor up each and every day. The seed planting is the money and time you spent installing a windlass. Each will get the job done (upping that hook to let you head to your next destination) and each is important. Even with a windlass, there are times you might need to do the old “ONE TWO THREE HEAVE!”

Before you up the anchor, enjoy the scenery.

Still, I prefer the windlass.

You plant the seeds, preferably or ostensibly in places you want the resulting plant to appear, in order for them to grow. You don’t intend for them to be eaten by birds, or die a slow and painful death in an unexpected frost, or to neglect them.

You plant them with the intention of a future something.

Note - I did not plant these. 

Okay, we’ll leave out the fact here that I have such a brown thumb that mint dies under my care (not an exaggeration. I’m thinking of hiring myself out as the mint eradicator. One look and SHRIVEL. But I digress.) This blog post, in case you could not tell, is a metaphor.

Intention needs to be careful, deliberate. It needs a plan. I’d no more drop a windlass on the aft starboard quarter (it belongs on the foredeck) than I’d plant a palm tree in Vermont.

I’d also not buy the windlass and leave it in the garage.

Action, whether brute force or seed planting, works better with intention and a plan.

A really old picture, somewhere en route to the Aves, in Venezuela.