💃 Assume you can

Book of TREE 2.43

My grandfather had an office job at a steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado. He also built his own house. He built the garage first. His family lived in the garage for two years while he built the rest of the house. He wasn’t a professional builder. He was just a person who assumed he could build a house and so he did. Around the house was a tiny farm with an orchard that he planted, an acre of sweetcorn and huge vegetable garden. Because he assumed he could.

My dad’s first car was a Chevrolet Corvair. As a teenager, he took out the engine and rebuilt it on the driveway of the house my grandfather built. Because he assumed he could.

American hospitals massively overcharge for all kinds of things. You don’t realise this if your insurance company pays. For a while, my mother had a sideline helping people who don’t have insurance get their hospital bills reduced or erased. She had no experience in this area. She just assumed she could take on the the medical industry and win, so she did.

The reality is that you don’t fully know what you are capable of. I suggest that if you want to do a thing, assume you can. You’ll probably be right.

Shameful confession: until last night I’d never listened to Beck’s album Odelay. Judging by the relatively small number of streams on Spotify, a lot of people haven’t. This surprised me because in the mid-90s it seems like you couldn’t go 10 minutes without hearing Loser or Where It’s At. I think it’s time to bump up his streaming numbers. Give yourself a Friday treat. Grab your best headphones and go spend an hour with Beck’s Odelay. Here’s a taste:

Super limited edition print preview 4: I’ve just ordered paper samples from the fine art printing company I use. I think we’ll do a vote on the top three paper options.

Happy weekend
Jeff