What makes us do it? Why do we get grandiose ideas about making some large, extremely time-consuming, overwhelmingly expensive, immensely complex project that we always believe will either make us instant millionaires or make our daily life instantly simpler or more relaxing by a factor of at least ten? Now, I know what you're thinking. I never do that. But the truth is that nearly all of us do it.

Perhaps it is a new piece of patio furniture that we dream about building: Oh, how nice it would be to be setting on the back porch, as the sun gently falls below the horizon, drinking a nice tall glass of iced tea while gently rocking in the porch swing that I made with my own two hands. Or perhaps your dream is: Ever since I was sixteen, I have dreamed of buying a classic muscle car and making it new again and then rolling the windows down on a late summer evening and driving down to Dairy Queen to get an old-fashioned milk shake. What a treat that would be. Or maybe even: I think I will FINALLY go buy me a nice guitar (or piano, saxophone, etc.). Then I will buy one of those ‘How To Teach Yourself To Play Guitar/Piano/Saxophone’ books and dedicate the entire Summer to becoming the next Willie Nelson/Billy Joel/Kenny G.

So, by now you are getting my drift that these plans are ALWAYS much more ambitious than our lazy, couch potato, sloth-like bodies will ever be able to finish. And, invariably, they also ALWAYS require much more of a financial commitment than our over-burdened budgets and thin wallets would ever knowingly sign up for. And if that is not already enough, they usually also always involve building, assembling or making something that we do not remotely possess enough knowledge or skill to build/assemble/make even a third of the project, regardless of how many ‘do it yourself’ books we may read.

So we wake up one morning feeling quite sprightly and decide that there is no time like the present. Down the road we go. Not stopping until we pull up at the local home improvement mega-mart to buy all of the materials that we need to build that porch swing, including the new saws, drills and the obligatory tool belt, which will obviously be required. Or, alternatively, off to the guitar center we go to finally buy that five hundred dollar guitar with all the attachments and manuals and books, which themselves cost an additional four hundred fifty dollars. Or perhaps our trip will take us to the county junkyard to buy the perfect ‘skeleton of a car’ that will soon turn into the vintage, shining classic car of which we have always dreamed.

So, now we have all of the parts and accessories we need in order to dig-in and finally get started making all of our dreams come true. We get out the guitar books and manuals and spread them all across the kitchen table. Or perhaps we get our pencil and paper out to sketch out the final detailed drawings that will be needed in order to make the porch swing. Or perhaps we clean out half of the garage and park the newly acquired, ‘soon-to-be-a-classic’ bucket of rust, for which we just shelled out six hundred twenty five of those hard-earned greenbacks.

Our minds are overflowing with possibilities. We can already smell the fresh paint on the just-finished porch swing. We can hear the sweet rumble of the finely tuned Chevy V8. Is that the phone ringing? It’s got to be a Nashville record producer just begging to sign us for a new two-year record contract.

That’s right, our hearts are racing in anticipation of all the fun we are going to have doing this project we have dreamed about for so long.

But somehow, by some strange, unrelenting force of nature, exactly one year later, the rusty old car is still sitting in the garage just getting rustier. The guitar is now sitting in the corner of the closet just getting dustier and all of the lumber that was once going to be the porch swing is bowed and warped and weathered from leaning upon the back wall of the garage all throughout the cold, damp Winter.

These grand plans that we once thought would be great fun somehow turned into nothing more than a big pile of unused ‘stuff’ that just takes up space in the closet or the garage.

But don’t fear. I have the perfect solution for this mysteriously recurring problem. You see, the next time that I come up with some great project that I think will make the perfect hobby, here is what I am going to do. I will write down a well-thought out, neatly organized shopping list of all of the supplies and accessories that I will require. Then I will go back to that local home improvement mega-mart and carefully and expertly put the things in my shopping basket as I cross off items on the list one by one. I will then proceed to the checkout lane and politely hand over the four hundred seventy-nine dollars and eighty-two cents, in cash no less. I will then push my overloaded shopping cart outside, round the corner to the back of the store and embark upon the task of tossing every bit of it directly into the dumpster. I will then drive home, with a proud smile on my face, feeling good about myself for not having to look at all of that ‘stuff’ sitting around the house and the garage just taking up space for the next year.