Slow Down

A small victory was won when I changed the filter on my furnace. Using the maintenance tracker app I have logged when I perform a task and schedule when I need to do the task again. Its a low hanging fruit item on the spectrum of home maintenance, but when you are lost in the haze of project deadlines and getting dinner on the table for a family it can quickly drop off the radar. 

As an empty nester, I have time to move methodically through my maintenance tasks. This slowing down in my life has allowed me to slow down in work. In projects I can sit with problems for longer and not feel the pressure of heading a household also weigh on my shoulders. I like this not just for the obvious reasons, but because complex problem solving is a process of digestion and repetition which takes time.

One of the main problems of civil engineering is the handling of stormwater. The root of the problem is the impervious surfaces (roofs/pavement) we experience in our day to day lives causes stormwater runoff which has to be handled somewhere else. The public's expectation of runoff is out of sight out of mind, but for a civil engineer the teasing out of a solution is a symphony of factors. 

We see our environments as a backdrop to our lives, but when we take small steps to interact with our environment we become more than actors on a stage. A task as small as changing the furnace filter can become a shift in perspective: we become stewards of our environment.

According to a research study 76% of my son's generation place our environment as their number one societal concern. People of his generation will choose to not have children in order to reduce their environmental burden. This elective empty nesting is saddening to me because people who are willing to make that sacrifice are also the type of people that make good parents. 

Finding time to slow down and methodically solve problems is not exactly a movie poster solution for the climate crisis, but it is imperative as we develop more land in the twenty first century to do so before our nests are preemptively empty.