I was hauling cut firewood the other day, the kind of work that makes your forearms buzz and your shirt stick to your back like it has suddenly become emotionally needy. Log after log, grip and lift, step and stack. Nothing glamorous about it. No applause. No app for it. Just a man in a driveway moving wood like a background character in a painting called Midwestern Persistence.
Then later, over dinner with neighbors, we did that human thing where we trade highs and lows from the week like baseball cards with feelings on them. When I said one of my highs was moving firewood, there was some surprise. Understandable. From the outside, they saw labor. Sweat. Repetition. Splinters threatening diplomacy.
But that is not what I saw.
Every log I picked up was already on fire in my mind. I could see the cul de sac lit up in summer dusk, friends in chairs, kids weaving through the yard, somebody laughing too loud, somebody telling a story that gets better because the flame is doing half the storytelling. I was not moving wood. I was carrying future evenings. I was stacking memory before it happened.
That way of seeing is not always a default setting. It arrived easily there. Wood is honest. Fire is persuasive. But the lesson is bigger than a pile of logs.
A lot of the work that fills our days shows up wearing ugly clothes. Alignment meetings. Revision rounds. Product release wrangling. The fifth email to get three departments to agree on one sentence. It is easy to stare at the log and miss the fire.
But the fire is there.
The frustrating meeting may be the moment before a customer says, on a call six weeks later, that a new feature finally made their day easier. The AI spreadsheet skill you’re building may be a future sigh of relief. The draft may be a future yes. The mundane task may be the first brick in a room you will someday be grateful exists.
Some work is heavy because we insist on seeing only its weight.
Sometimes the trick is to pause long enough to see what it becomes.
Stay Positive & The Log Is Not The Log
- The Gospel Of A Few Extra Bags - April 23, 2026
- Name The Leak, Not The Plumber - April 22, 2026
- Strike The Match Before The Work - April 21, 2026
