Nitro

As kids, when we needed a break from basketball and razzing each other, we’d walk from the Y down to the Meadow Market to load up on sugar and restart the razzing in a new location. They had an arcade game called Off Road, the kind of video game you put quarters into and had to stand up to play. It was in the corner next to the lone booth by the big window and adjacent to a rack of candy that had ten-cent options like Airheads and Lemonheads and that one, what was it called? that was basically a stick made of sugar that you dipped into a pouch filled with sugar and after you’d finished the pouch you ate the chalky stick. Across from that rack was the slush puppy machine. In the back they had pizza by the slice and a refrigerated wall of soda. Mellow Yellow and Mountain Dew were the favorites. 

I’m sure they sold stuff for adults too. They must have. There must have been loaves of bread and coffee filters and cans of dog food, but I can’t picture any of it. I don’t even remember ever seeing adults in there. Charley Brown got it right. We were at the age when the world felt like it was made for us kids. The important things were basketball, a sugar fix, and that arcade game.

It was a truck racing game. If you earned enough points during the race, you could activate the nitro button. You could hit it and get a big burst of speed, jetting you ahead of the competition if timed right. I was never good at video games, but wow, wasn’t it fun to feverishly tap that nitro button with your left hand, crank the steering wheel with your right, and watch that little truck on the screen tear around a corner while your friends both cheered you on and mocked your performance.

So, what does this trip down memory lane have to do with stonework? Bear with me, there is a point here.

A lot of the younger people I’ve had the pleasure of working with in stonework are hitting the nitro button and accelerating their careers.

Clarity is proving to be the boost.

There’s a myth that just because someone has been doing something for a long time, they should be better than someone who is new to a craft. But that’s not really how it works. You don’t need years and years of experience to be good. You need concentrated experience focused on the right things. That’s the nitro. It’s the quality of your focus. These young folks are getting really good, really fast because they’re so focused on dry-laid stonework.

Just because you have time in a field doesn’t mean you’ve used it well.

Have you been focused on your thing, or did your time and energy get diluted?

It’s okay if it did.

Find that clarity now. Hit the nitro button.