Acceptable Levels of Disrepair
A series of extremely technical, complicated, and sophisticated concepts designed and deployed to provide self-sufficient … well, excuses.
Entropy at Every Corner
If you looked at any corner of my Jeep you would have found something that needed to be fixed. In fact, since we’ve recently been on the topic of lighting, if you ignored anything not directly related to illumination you’d still discover a hefty pile of necessary attention.
Given time combined with the wear and tear of daily driving and these things just kinda pile up. Oh, and all Jeeps amplify entropy by a factor of two. Let’s not forget that. But Jeep or no Jeep, entropy begins to amass exponentially once you start to subscribe to the doctrine of the Acceptable Levels of Disrepair. I wouldn’t have called it that at the time, but there it was nonetheless.
It really makes no difference if you’ve heard of the ALoD concept before or not, because we all subscribe to it in varying degrees (especially us guys). We applied it to our laundry in college, but back then we just called it the “smell test”. We apply it to our grooming standards, shaving the werewolf beards only after your fellow villagers start to gather their torches and silver bullets. It’s why a bachelor’s pad tends to have a certain aesthetic of function devoid of much form…and often times piles of car parts in the corners of rooms (or on kitchen counters).
There is chaos and disorder all around, but not yet enough to deem it necessary to get to work. And the more you lean into what’s acceptable the further your projects (and life) spiral into disrepair.
A Helpful Feminine Perspective
As an important side note, it’s also why most of us guys need a good woman to come along to help snap us out of this nonsense before our yards turn into pick-n-pull lots and our beards wildlife sanctuaries. Women are amazing. They are preprogrammed for seeing stuff done, with little patience for disorder. It’s why they’re amazing multitaskers, but also why they have the stereotype of becoming insufferable nags after turning to the dark side. Cuz their honey-do list ain’t got no time for this adolescent project life of endless excuses.
Well, maybe that’s just my wife (minus the naggy bits). And as she looked at my pile of parts, she would not be amused with the high-minded fortress of defense I’d found in the male doctrine of ALoD. She could clearly see it for the LoAD of crap it was.
Growing Up
It was finally time to get down to this lighting project once and for all. Eh, except for one more small item. Ahem, items at this stage of the marriage. You see, first comes love, then marriage, then all them little time-sucking, attention demanding, money consuming little babies in the baby carriage.
At the time of this project we had three small boys. And despite all of those true descriptions above, know that they were worth every bit of time, attention, and money they were robbing from my adolescent project life crap. But, as said before, stuff still needed to get done. Time to adapt and overcome, aka, stop making excuses, grow up, and get to work.
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