The Corn Thief, Spinning Backwards, The Need to Fix

So for the last few months part of my routine has been buying ears of corn.  These are not for me, I really am not a fan of corn on the cob due to the mess and debris that is lodged in my teeth afterward.  I buy it for the chickens.  Every morning I take an ear out, shuck it, break it in half and leave it in the chicken area for them to pick at.  Usually by mid-morning the cob is picked totally clean of kernels.  Well that changed within the last few days.

I started to notice when I got home at night that both pieces of the corn are MIA. They are nowhere to be found, something was taking them.  I hoped solving this mystery would be as easy as reviewing my Ring footage from the coop area where I should be able to spot the perpetrator.  Nope, nothing was triggered by the normal motion detection, damn it.  That tells me that either the thief is very small or very fast, possibly both.  My two prime suspects are either one of the squirrels that hangs around or a bird.  I hope to catch one of them in the act, somehow.

I got a surprising piece of mail today, it was a check from my electric company.  This was not expected.  I had talked about how my rough estimate was for the year I only consumed around 600-700KWH of power not provided by my 48 panel solar array.  Clearly I was wrong, the check was only for 15 dollars and change but it was proof that I actually ran at a surplus for the first time ever for a 365 day period.  I covered previously the changes that I theorized were responsible for the dramatic shift in power consumption.  Many of those changes only happened for part of the last year, I am hoping a full year of this will result in a big enough check to buy a weeks groceries or a few cases of beer.  Of course until the solar array is paid off, I can’t truly start working in earnest on having the system actually pay for itself, but this is a nice tiny first step.

Since I have been on my own I have had plenty of opportunity to do some self analysis to think about why certain things are as they are.  There are clear patterns that develop over one’s lifetime and one of my big ones is the need to always be fixing things.  In some ways this is a great trait, it keeps you motivated, hopefully saves some money along the way, and provides a sense of satisfaction when you fix something that was once broken.

However this trait becomes a negative when you try to apply these skills to other human beings.  I know I don’t like when someone tries to “fix” me yet for the last 30 plus years I time and again have tried to do this for others.  Rarely the end result is good but more often than not, long term, it isn’t the answer.

My brain doesn’t seem adept at differentiating between types of problems that could use fixing, if I see it, I want to fix it.  The time alone has given me some clarity about this part of my personality and made me realize that if your plan is to fix things for other people you are setting yourself up for failure.  It’s a hard part of me to turn off but if I want calmer seas in my future I need to be able to let things pass by the bow of my boat without throwing a tow line.  If someone asks for help, asks for a fix, surely I still will extend that arm if possible. It will always be my knee jerk inclination.

However I know how I felt when guys at the gym would offer unsolicited advice to others.  In their mind they are doing the recipient a favor when in reality their “help” is unwelcome most of the time.  I don’t want to be that guy in my future human interactions, regardless of context.