My dad, for all his wonderful attributes is not a handy person. He does a fine job and enjoys maintaining the lawn, hedges and flower beds outside of my parents house. He will tighten a loose screw on occasion or hammer a nail into a wall when needed but that is about the extent of his home maintenance skill set. I am sure if he were a younger man with all the resources one has to learn things online he could improve upon this skill set but he is growing old and his body is beginning to fail him.

My mom on the other hand is someone with a lot of ideas and time on her hands. This cocktail of too much time and a lot of ideas tends to manifest itself into either "this needs to be fixed", "this needs to be replaced" or "we should do this".

My parents have had a long, wonderful, happy marriage but one pain point that has always existed in the relationship is this combo of a person who isn't a great honey do list doer along with a person who is an expert honey do list giver. We lived in an apartment in the city when I was growing up, so this didn't cause much of a problem because the building had a superintendent whom my mother could call upon to address any issues she happened to find. This worked well for my dad too. He could focus on work and his other passions, like coaching my baseball teams, reading, and listening to music. His chores around the house were mostly limited to helping clean once a week and occasionally pitching in to do some laundry. My parents repainted the entire apartment and put up some wallpaper in the living room one summer when I was a kid. That was our big renovation.

A few years after I had finished college and moved out, my parents decided they were tired of apartment and city life in general. They retired and moved to a resort town around 2 hours away from the city and after a year decided they would make this town their last stop in life and bought a house.

A house brought up a new set of challenges as there was always something to do, something to fix, something to change. This kept my mom busy and likely driving my dad somewhat crazy, so he found a local job and went back to work. However, my mom being an enterprising honey do list giver solved this problem by finding a guy. His name was David and he worked at home depot and did handy work and renovations on the side. Great outcome for all. My dad could focus on working again, my mom could assign all her pet projects to David and when he had time David could make a bit of extra cash.

This all worked very well for many years. Eventually my dad retired again but he was more than happy David was the guy who got the to do list. Don't fight inertia if you don't have to, right? But over a decade had passed now and David was getting a bit older too and had also retired at some point along the way. He was still taking on side jobs from his best customers but he was slowing down.

After the pandemic hit, lockdowns ensued, the to do list wasn't as much of a priority anymore, but the necessary "to dos" were piling up, fortunately for my mom her new David was about to arrive.

I was a lot like my dad when I was younger, unskilled and disinterested in working with my hands unless that included throwing a baseball around or fiddling on a guitar. However, when I bought my first home I started to learn a few little things and when I started my business the necessity to learn to be handy would increase with each passing year as we took on different types of projects that I needed to manage and no longer just sub contract to someone who knew what they were doing. Besides, even if I wasn't doing the work myself, I needed to have a sense things were being done well, efficiently and for a fair price. Many years and lessons later I still don't consider myself that handy, maybe I am selling myself short, but when compared to even hobbyists who do their own major renovations, I still have a lot to learn. I am more someone who likes to fix things than someone who embraces the joy of a major project and each step along the way.

It was January of 2022 when my family and I moved to that same resort town my parents did around 15 years prior, I had a lot of time on my hands as I was now officially semi-retired and I had yet to find SN to pass much of my free time that was not occupied by my kiddos. I became the new David for my parents.

Hopefully you aren't bored to tears as I have told this rambling tale for a reason. I get a lot of joy of living in the same town as my the parents. They get to spend a lot of time with the kids and I get to help them do things that age makes more difficult. I am happy I can be the new David for them but am under no delusions that I am as experienced and skilled as David. My parents appreciate the work I do to help maintain their home and never take my efforts for granted. My mom will always ask if I want to do something or if she should find a guy.

That being said, my mom's preferred response to almost everything I check off the to do list for her is "That's good enough". A lot of this has to do with my propensity to want to fix something that is broken rather than replace it but also some of it has to do with the fact I am not as skilled as David.

So, finally onto the crux of the post. I have been thinking about this phrase "good enough" a lot lately and even more so "when is good enough, good enough"? And when should we strive for excellence? There is a saying, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Meaning, don't allow the pursuit of perfection to prevent a good outcome. But surely we must occasionally pursue excellence or is excellence merely the natural result of the compounding of a series of ever increasing good enoughs?

Thanks for reading. I look forward to any thoughts and comments stackers have.

Sats for all, GR