The only way I could consolidate all our Scrap Metal was to carry things into a staging area in front of our sheds. But the stacked row of vehicles in front of the pile, and additionally the small host of additional vehicles that have accreted around our place, posed a different challenge: how might the scrap metal collector, in his truck, be able to access the pile of flotsam and jetsam I’d accumulated?

I worried about this challenge for a week, at least. Perhaps more. Finally I thought I had it all sorted, in my mind, so that I would be ready when the truck arrived. But then a visitor added a new vehicle to the mix, and our regular lodger returned to his country-side work here around the place for the weekend. Now how might the 6:00pm assignation actually take place?

I wrung my hands in despair, but I needn’t have feared. Jeff had a dynamic solution in mind that had never occurred to me. Two vehicles could be shifted in a dance around each other, thereby facilitating convenient access and loading of the scrap metal. It all seemed so simple, when it was eventually explained to me, or rather, when my feeble logistics logic got to grips with the solution.

I hadn’t reckoned on the dynamic strategy of moving Vehicle C while the scrap metal truck, having achieved its three-point turn, waited patiently, ready to reverse into the slot. I had thought, in my straightforward way, that the space would have to be pre-cleared before the truck could do its turning. As opposed to Jeff’s strategy of pre-turning before the access was clear. Simples, as we say. And yet. It wasn’t so simple unless you were prepared to look at things dynamically, in a state of flux as it were.

I wonder how many of life’s challenges we meet only head-on, rather than coming at them from a different angle? I mention my continuing thoughts on being ‘stuck’ in a particular mind-set, quite often to my beloved. I do like being jostled out of my staid thought patterns, being persuaded to take a different tack. Well, yes, except that sometimes it takes a lot of persuading!

If I can try to remember the joy of a successful logistical exercise, an exercise that defied my own logic, perhaps I might be more susceptible to accepting the challenge to look at things differently, sometimes.

And recognising the joy of understanding a new strategy is at least half of the new joy when the strategy actually works!

This blog is listed with Blogarama.com under the Life category.