On executing on an idea.
I am a big believer that ideas are vastly overrated. The real stuff is in the execution.
Execution is that part in the middle of a dream and the finished product where the dream becomes a nightmare, and you start to question whether it was even worth it in the first place—at least if you’re doing it correctly. It is the part between what you look like now and what you want to look like this summer where you have to drag your ass to the gym every morning; it is the part between a job you hate and a job you want where you have to upload your resume on one page and then re-type all that very same resume information in on the next page; it is the part between a family of two and a family of three (or four!) where you have to create an entire website telling the world that they can trust you in making the impossibly difficult decision of placing their baby for adoption with you.
Get used to me plugging Allie and Andrew, my friends. Somebody out there knows somebody who can help this couple—we just have to find them.
That brings me to the community garden and/or dog park, which remains at the beginning stages of execution. I want to thank a few movers and shakers who reached out to try to help with the execution—and, no surprise, it’s the usual suspects. Erik Bottcher put me in touch with the head of GreenThumb (within the Parks & Rec Department), who I’m talking to tomorrow; Arthur Schwartz reached out to chat about how the owner might be able to lease the property to us; Scott Stiffler and Eric Marcus promoted the idea through their newsletters; Alice reached out to offer to help me put a sign up; a local business called RAND Engineering & Architecture reached out to offer native plant seeds and other support. A boatload of neighbors reached out from Nextdoor.com with helpful ideas. Thank you for that.
Outside of the community garden, we’ve got some other ideas coming up in partnership with the West 400 Block Association (which is a few streets below us in Chelsea) and their leader, Susan Numeroff. Remember that name—my sense is that she makes things happen. One of the ideas we’ve talked about is a gallery walk around Chelsea with an artist guide, which a bunch of you have asked about.
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