Matt Ragland finally installed curtain rods in his Nashville Airbnb despite fear of messing up, learning that imperfect results beat endless hesitation. He connects this to a deeper need for hands-on creation missing from his tech work, and traces his perfectionism and spending anxiety back to his upbringing.
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Ready to go? Hey, good morning everyone! Out for a quick morning walk before I really get cranked up on the day. I didn't get a video out yesterday and kind of bummed me out because there have been days where I haven't felt great about a video, but I've still shipped it. And it's weird because I did have footage I could have used. I didn't have a ton, and I just kind of hit some resistance, which was frustrating. I've also severely underestimated this hill in terms of how it would affect my breathing while I talk. There are a couple of themes that were rolling around in my head yesterday. We did a lot of work on our house in Nashville getting it ready for Airbnb. Spent a good bit of money, which always just makes me feel nervous, just how I grew up and just money overall. Spending a lot over a weekend for something that's not related to, you know, like mortgages or, you know, whatever. Yeah, just kind of messes with me, and I don't want to really be in that place, but that's, that's not what today's video is about. What I was really thinking about a lot yesterday is that I did something that has always made me super nervous, and it's not like a dangerous thing. It's not— I hate hanging stuff on walls because my fail rate in hanging stuff on walls is very high. I broke a guitar because I couldn't get like the string swing in. So it always ends up— not all the time, but it usually ends up with something broken and a hole in the wall. And so that's not something that I normally sign up for. Now for months, months, Morgan's been asking me, hey, can you put these curtain rods on the wall so that, you know, we can hang some curtain drapes. Which, by the way, did you know that you can't just put one drape on the wall? You put two on each side and they come together. Even if one drape will cover the entire window, that's not what drapes are there for. They're not just there to cover the window. In fact, I would— my experience now is that covering the window is the second most important function of the drape, which I did not know. Alright, here on the campus of UTC Chattanooga. It's right over there. So what I was thinking about the most is that this thing really made me nervous. I didn't, you know, we have a nice house, I don't want to put a bunch of holes in the wall because I suck at hanging things on the wall, and I also didn't have a drill and I was using that as an excuse, and then I was using the the drill excuse because I didn't want to spend $100, $150 on a drill. So I'd just been delaying this over the course of weeks, even months, but it was, it was time to do it. And I went ahead and I did screw up a couple of holes, but I was able to, I was able, I was able to fix it, or at least like cover it up. And it made me think about other times in my life other times going forward that hopefully I can remember this, that it's okay to try and that it's okay to put some holes in the wall if it means that overall everything's going to be better and it's going to look nicer. I guess I tend to be more of a perfectionist than I think, and yeah, tend to maybe be scared more than I think I am. So that was a good— that was That was my lesson for the weekend. Just thinking about failure and screwing things up, but ultimately getting— like, my wife was thrilled. I think she was just thrilled that I did it more so than it looking perfectly. And she was also probably thrilled that I understand the true purpose of drapes now after nearly 10 years of marriage and 33 years on earth. The other thing that working on the drapes made me think about was I miss making things. I've never been that awesome at like being able to— I have never been good at like carpentry and haven't really gotten into it a ton. Like I did Legos, you know, as much as any other kid did. But there's still something really valuable and really fulfilling about being able to do something with your hands. And this has been coming up more and more for me just as a feeling over the past several months and several weeks, and I hope it's something that I can literally kind of grab hold onto. I've talked with Nathan, our, you know, the ConvertKit founder, about this. He does woodworking and is really quite good at it. You follow him on Instagram, you can see some of the stuff that he's creating, and it's really cool to watch. I know for people like us who work on the internet all day and then still have such a connected life past that, to be able to do something tangibly is— yeah, again, it's just there's something really fulfilling about it. Ooh, here's the cannon again. Check it out. I don't know what kind of message they're trying to send as lawyers with having a cannon in front of their giant mansion office, but it's pretty interesting. All right, so back to making things with your hands. And so even though I haven't like always tangibly made things, there have been some things, and I've always just gotten a lot of fulfillment out of it. I, you know, went through a little stretch where I was doing fly tying, and I really love fly fishing. Another thing is this is when I was working at Camp Rockmont, and we had a blacksmith forge and workshop, and being able to do that was just incredible. You know, it takes on just hammer. It was fantastic. That's probably for me why I enjoy being outside. So much and doing very raw physical things sometimes like rock climbing, trail running, weightlifting, it just makes me, you know, gives me that very physical feel that sometimes is lost. Yeah, especially when you, when you don't work on a, you know, truly physical thing during the day. So I'm about to About to head back into the apartment to really get cranking on work for today. Thanks so much for joining me and for watching these videos, allowing me to catch up. I really, I really have enjoyed them. So leave any questions or comments. I'd really like to do a Q&A episode by the end of the month just to kind of close all this out and see where we're gonna keep going with this. So if you have any questions, you know, things in terms of working in tech, working remotely, having kids, exercise, any of the things that you've heard me talk about, or even things that maybe I haven't talked about that you're curious to hear. I'd love to answer those questions and hear your feedback. All right, hope you have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
