I slept very little last night. Anxiety about going to the city tomorrow is growing. Tonight certainly doesn’t seem promising. But I am determined to do this.
I’ve reached the inevitable point where I start questioning my ability. Can I really do this work? Can I do it in the time I have left? What if I get sick or injured and can’t complete the work? What if something goes wrong? When I am awake and alert I know I can do the this project. But self doubt always creeps in when I’m trying to sleep or when I’ve really tired. It may be something of a challenge to get it finished in the time I have. I’m a perfectionist and that makes me very slow. I get tired quickly for reasons unknown so I won’t get a lot of hours in each day. As for getting sick or injured that could happen, but it is beyond my control. There will always be that risk.
Today I started preparing the area I want to work on. I started by moving all the stuff stored there into other parts of the house. Something good happened! When I moved a large utility shelf unit out of one corner I found a surprise: a bat entrance that could not easily be seen from the outside and which I had not been able to see from inside until I moved the shelf unit. This is the first opening I have found with incontrovertible evidence bats have been going through it. That is a good sign. I will of course plug it after they go out to feed tonight.
Next I summoned all my courage and started ripping up the old sub floor. Believe me, it takes courage to rip into a house this old. You never know when or where you will find wood rot you didn’t know was there! I wanted to have a look today, while there is still time to modify my order to include extra materials if I found surprises. Sure enough, I found some. It’s not as bad as it could have been, but with every piece of sub floor removed I found some rot underneath. What an emotional roller coaster. With every new discovery I got that sinking, knot in the stomach feeling, as if this was a major problem, possibly insurmountable. But on investigation and taking time to settle down and think about it, I realized each newly discovered issue was in fact relatively minor and could be repaired relatively easily.
I’m going to dig around for something to eat and then try to relax. I will find something to watch on Netflix. Tomorrow is the big day.