Like Sand Through The Fingers

For Sale: Tiki 31 plans — unused.

Unused set of plans for the Tiki 31. I bought these at least 15 years ago, but never built my dream boat, and now, due to my failing health, I know I never will……..

I saw this on the Wharram builders and friends forum today and it struck me as incredibly sad and led me to start thinking about why it is that most people with a dream never take action and start moving towards it. I’ve noticed that a high percentage of members on the WBF site have entered the words ‘I want a Wharram’ in their profile and I often wonder why more of them don’t quickly change into “I’m building a ….” or “I’ve bought a….”
The very fact that they have taken the trouble to find the forum and join in would seem to indicate more than a passing interest and we all like to passively consume content about things that interest us, but those words ‘I want a Wharram’ show that they have more than that and yet it seems only a few actually do something about it.
I’m not being critical, I myself spent some 20 years kind of thinking about building my own Wharram but never doing anything about it, its a common story.
So what is it that finally triggers the massive action and continued commitment needed to start moving forward? For me it was a traumatic relationship breakup followed by a period of deep depression. It was as simple as waking up one day and thinking ‘Sod this I’ve had enough of moping around feeling sorry for myself what’s stopping me building that bloody boat I’ve been thinking about for so long”
The strange thing is that at that point in my life I was mentally weak and poorly equipped to tackle the not insignificant problems of little details like finding the money, finding a place to build, finding the time etc. etc. etc. It’s easy to come up with reasons you can’t do something isn’t it? There’s never a right time. Too young, too old, too busy, no money, the list is endless. It has to be a leap of faith.
The one thing that sticks in my mind is finding the barn I’m building Gleda in. I knew it would be tough, the area of Warwickshire I live in has it’s fair share of barns but most of them have been converted into very expensive houses. I looked for cheap industrial units, bits of land to build a poly tunnel on, I cycled miles and miles exploring back roads and tracks looking for a likely site and I kept drawing a blank. It would have been easy to say ‘this is hopeless’ but I didn’t I just kept believing, then out of the blue my phone rang and it was a guy responding to an ad I’d taken out in the local business exchange newspaper. End result a near perfect build site at a price I could afford in the perfect location. I recite this story as an example of the sort of thing that can stop a dream in it’s tracks. If I’d been ‘sensible’, done thorough research, talked to lots of people made a list of pros and cons, I would have concluded beyond doubt that I didn’t stand a chance of finding anywhere in the area at a price I could afford.
This I think is the reason most people never get started on stuff, they spend too long thinking it through, planning and researching all the possiblities and problems. It’s a fine thing to do but it holds a hidden danger. If the project you’re thinking about is a big one your brain simply can’t cope with all the possibilities, it’s too scary, there are too many unknowns, so it does what the human brain has done for thousands of years, it induces fear. It may be conscious or subconscious but either way the result is the same, we run away, we find reasons we can’t do it, we are paralysed.

Don’t end up like our friend who waited 15 years for the right time only to find that it had passed him by. The right time is now!