Checks and Balances

My Blogging muse has been on an extended leave of absence. Her position has been filled by the Creativity Muse who has inspired me to turn out large quantities of knitted, crocheted and loomed hats, scarves, Afghans and such. It seemed the two have conspired today. I’ve been crocheting a jacket for myself and yes, there are even life lessons to be learned in such a task.

I’ve never undertaken such a big crochet project before. This jacket is worked in one piece, from the bottom up, and it was labelled to be of Intermediate difficulty. Because a graph was supplied with the pattern, it was reasonably easy to figure out what I was supposed to be doing and I soon settled into a rhythm.

I got almost to the end of the second jacket front, which meant there were only the bands to be completed, when I realized, with a sinking sense of dread, that there was something wrong. The second front was wider than the first.

I hadn’t bothered to count the number of clusters had I? It was all (seemingly) working out just fine. I had just assumed that – since I’d been so careful about following instructions early in the piece – I could just cruise along and soon I would be modelling my finished garment and basking in the compliments.

But, somewhere along the line I had gone wrong, and now roughly two days’ worth of crochet needed to be pulled undone. I was NOT a happy camper, believe me.

I can make excuses of course. There have been some things going on lately in our household which have proved to be quite disruptive. It’s been hard to concentrate. There have been frequent interruptions. But the fact of the matter is – I got a bit complacent. I didn’t put in the effort and keep a check on what was happening. I just assumed that I had it all under control.

We do that often, don’t we? When we first start out on a new project, we are so careful, checking and rechecking everything, over and over again. But then,as we gain confidence, we begin to relax . After this we begin to become overconfident and even a bit smug. Until – wham - we discover a mistake which sometimes  might have devastating consequences.

Fortunately I only had to pull my jacket back to the spot where I began to construct the left front. And, thankfully, because my life is fairly low-profile, I’m hardly likely to be responsible for any worldwide catastrophes at any time soon.

But what if I’d gotten a bit complacent about something to do with my job – handling chemicals or balancing on top of ladders while trying to clean in high places? What if I’d gotten complacent about hygiene when preparing food for my family or about driving our car?

It really doesn’t matter how familiar I am with certain processes or repeating patterns within my daily routine. In order to avoid mistakes I need to maintain a system of checks and balances.

©Lyn Murphy 2012

Recalculating....

Today we went for a drive to our favourite Sunday-morning-breakfast Café. On the way home Pete wanted to call into a Plant Nursery he had seen advertised online, so he asked me to program the address into our GPS.

I was thinking, as we drove along, how much easier it is with the GPS to guide us. I remember back in the days when we would have directions all written out on a notepad, and I would be struggling to read the road map as we went along.

‘You need to take the third right,’ I would say, and Pete would frown at me and ask

‘Are you sure?’ So I’d check again and, sure enough, I had the stupid map upside down. LOL. I’m not very good with directions you see.

But the GPS has no such limitations -most of the time it will direct you unerringly to your required destination. Oh, there have been times when it has taken us on a wild goose chase – but that’s another story.

If, for whatever reason, you manage to make a wrong turn, the GPS will announce

‘Recalculating…!’

Usually it will then take you around the block to get back to the right heading, but, if this is not an option, it will tell you to

“Turn around when possible.’

Now wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if we could have a GPS to direct the journey of our lives? We would start by programming in our required destination – the goals we wish to achieve in our allotted time. The Life GPS would then ask us if we wanted to travel by the most direct route, or would we prefer to take the scenic way? And if, for whatever reason, we went off course, it would announce…

‘Recalculating…!’

If it couldn’t easily get us back on course, it would tell us to ‘turn around when possible’.

Now Pete often ignores the GPS directions. Unlike me, he has a great sense of direction and he usually knows pretty well how to get where he is going – the GPS is just there for back up really. But life doesn’t remain static like the countryside. There are all sorts of twists and turns which can affect our daily journey, and what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work again tomorrow. So the Life GPS would need to come with an added warning..

“Please be advised, by ignoring these directions you run the risk of becoming hopelessly far away from your proposed destination. So please – turn around when possible!’

©Lyn Murphy 2012