Improvise or…

Last week I posted a quote about planning and improvising in the weekly newsletter, sort of ironic as I wrote the newsletter from the last bench seat in the very back of a rickety bus traveling between Morogoro and Sagamaganga, the small village where I live in Tanzania. 
I’m a planner, or at least I was a planner, prior to visiting Tanzania in the winter of 2019. I had a strict budget I followed, I had a pretty tight schedule, I was very organized and although I took chances and made seemly risky moves in business or otherwise, they were more often than not very calculated, well thought out and I sought advise from other professionals before doing so. I think that changed for a lot of us during the pandemic. More often then not I find myself “winging it” or improvising, bumping through life in a 3rd world country, not to mention a remote village, trying to still mange my business from 10,000 miles away. I have been with the Builder’s Exchange for 23 years, if it takes on average 10,000 hours to master a skill then I passed that level of expertise more than 15 years ago. I think when you reach that level it really isn’t winging it per say, but expertly navigating. That being said, it has definitely help me be prepared when I found myself riding the bus last week sitting in the only seat that would allow me to have my laptop propped open, namely the worse seat on the bus, preparing the weekly newsletter, as I bounced through the extremely rough unpaved African roads back to my village. My experience has also helped during the countless power & network outages we experience here on a daily basis, or while writing a blog as I watch everything under the sun floating by during a massive rain storm. 
Life as we knew it has changed so much for many of us since March of 2020, and when we can’t rely on what we once knew there is nothing like experience to fall back on, or when all else fails just “wing it”. I for one would not have missed this crazy, heart-filling experience for the world.