The Biggest Fencing Problem
~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~
I’ve been shopping. It’s amazing how quickly prudence departs the mind after I convince myself of a need.
The whole ordeal starts logically enough when a predicament arises and solutions are sought. There’s a natural curve of thought involving assessment of severity followed by the weighing of options to identify which avenue will offer swift and effective remedy, or so the textbooks say. In reality, the curve looks more like a roller coaster track with loops and dips and corkscrews depending on metal factors such as fatigue, stress, workload, creative ambition, and more. I don’t have data to back me up, but my assumption is that one person will draw different conclusions to the same problem when affected by different situations.
That’s not to say there aren’t patterns that develop according to the disposition of the person facing the predicament. I gravitate towards cheap. Most times I develop elaborate solutions to avoid spending anything, which is to say that I work really hard to accomplish nothing.
My finest examples of handiwork include homemade gate handles that electrocute the user when they are even slightly damp, shade structures for livestock that collapse almost immediately after being erected, patch jobs on water tubs that leak faster than water can be added, twisted chain hinges that simultaneously make it more difficult for people to open the gate but easier for cows to escape, fence posts that split and free the wire entrusted to their care, and so on and so forth.
This dense capsule of cheapness, I believe, amplifies the thrill of shopping in much the same way a wrap of beryllium amplifies a nuclear explosion by bouncing neutrons back into the heart of the chain reaction. When a primer of difficulty blows up, my mental neutrons are set free and bounce off the cheap rind, finally colliding back into the heart of want, creating an inevitable release of extraordinary power. I blew up into the dopamine fueled fantasy of unlimited budget.
So I’ve been shopping for a fence charger. I don’t want some sissy thing, I want the Mega-Ultra-Super-Extreme edition that summons lightning from the sky and fries whatever touches the wire. That ought to solve whatever current and future problems I have, all for about $1,000.
It was a user manual, those pesky informational booklets full of overstated warnings involving threats of severe injury or death, that kicked the legs out from under my consumption spree. Here is a direct quote from Parmak, makers of the MAG. 12-SP Solar/Battery operated fence charger I currently own (emphasis theirs): “THE BIGGEST CAUSE FOR A FAILED ELECTRIC FENCE IS “HUMAN” … [Most people] do not understand that any electric fence requires routine maintenance to keep adequate power on the fence or maybe they are just too busy to take the time to do the required maintenance.”
Zing. Let me see, the last time I deliberately maintained certain stretches of my fence was…2013? Maybe 2014. We’ll say 2014 to make it look better. So my fence charger is trying to overcome nine years of accumulated cheap-O last-minute desperate patch jobs and today I sit here imagining myself as a sterling example of responsible humanity wondering why things aren’t working properly. Based on this instance alone, my children should be entrusted to the foster system.
What’s more interesting is that while I was so busy allowing things to fall into disrepair before my eyes I still had plenty of time to expand operations because I was so successful. I sense that when we are building a business we tend to think in terms of permanent modules, as if each stage of growth is a block that, properly positioned, will remain in its spot forever. We set one block, then another beside it, and one on top, and pretty soon we’re working way up high and enjoying the view. The problem is the bottom blocks have rotted and the view gets shaky as the foundation falls apart. Believe it or not, growth is the easy part as we pile up blocks and learn new things. Maintenance is the real work, and neglected maintenance is a cruel mistress. We never build and then move on; we build and then rebuild.
I’m no longer shopping for a fence charger. If I spend the same money allocated for the charger on new fencing materials, and then devote the time I’d spend on new projects to maintaining old ones, my operation will be transformed to such a degree that it will become brand new. “Brand new” is the result I’ve been seeking all along, I’m just going about getting it the wrong way.
Build and then rebuild and rebuild again. Holy cow, I have a lot of work to do, and for some reason it is more difficult to motivate myself to redo something old than it is to start something new. What an interesting quirk of the mind. Whatever, I’ll retrain my mind to take pleasure in what it knows instead of wanting what it doesn’t. I suppose there’s a lesson in that as old as the hills. Nobody wants to learn it though because we’re all out here building something new and better at the expense of satisfaction, health, and stability.