When you’re hosting a dinner party you’re going to underestimate the time needed to cook the food because you’d rather have your guests wait 15 minutes for a hot meal than serve them lukewarm food immediately upon arrival. Not all the time. But most of the time.

When the weather people on TV know it’s going to snow they’re going to overestimate the total accumulation so the amount of snow doesn’t exceed your preparedness for it. Not all the time. But most of the time.

Last Tuesday in Buffalo, N.Y. was not like most of the time. 

They said we were due for a foot of snow. Maybe two. While that’s way too much for mid-November it’s nothing Western New York isn’t already used to dealing with a few times a year. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to a white out. 3 feet already on the ground and no signs of stopping.

This is a story about realizing what you’re made of.

Tuesday

I wake up Lindsay and tell her she’ll be working from home today. She doesn’t believe me until she sees it for herself.

The sun never rises but somehow it gets lighter out. All that does is make us realize exactly how much white stuff is descending upon us.

We migrate to the couch. We’re still in our jammies; half watching the local news and half flickering away on our laptops.

The meteorologist kindly scolds the anchorlady for calling this storm a blizzard because in order for it to be a blizzard technically there needs to be 45 mph winds that remain consistent for at least a certain amount of hours plus visibility plus blah blah blah. We got six feet of snow and I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house across the street for about 36 hours. THANK GOD IT’S NOT A BLIZZARD!

Around 10 a.m. we start to appreciate the severity of the storm. We’re already up to 42 inches and we’re told it’s not stopping until tomorrow at the earliest. And then we’re supposed to get another wave of snow late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“We should probably get out ahead of this and start shoveling.”

“Are you kidding me? That would take DAYS!”

“Well what other choice do we have?”

I thought about it some more and she was right. It recently became clear we’re not leaving our house for at least a day or two. We might need to walk places to get food and necessities. And by “places” I mean the bar. And by “food and necessities” I mean chicken wings and beer.

“Fine. I’ll shovel a path from our door to the street. That way when they plow it we can walk places.”

It took me about 4 hours but I did it. And when I was done I came back in the house where I worked, beer’d and Netflix’d for the rest of the night.

“Eventually we’re gonna have to figure out a way to get out of here because there’s no way I’m shoveling this all.”

Wednesday

This morning is just like yesterday morning except instead of about 3 feet there’s about 6. It’s not snowing as hard though.

Our cars are completely buried.

The top of that fence is 6 feet high for those keeping score at home.

I’m back out again in the morning. I start by eliminating the 2 feet of snow that accumulated overnight on the path I cleared yesterday.

“I’ve got nothing but time to kill. Might as well see if I can make this path a little wider.”

So I start hacking away at the sides of the path to widen it. I figure I’ll just go until I’m tired then warm up and get back to my work work.

But now I’ve thought of a plan. The insane accumulation totals have rendered my snow blower useless. But what if I chopped off the snow from the side of the piles and then hit all the loosened stuff with the snow blower?

Tried it. No go. The snow on the bottom is already so densely-packed my machine is no match. It’s faster and somehow easier just throwing it with a shovel.

“Hey, I actually made some progress today!”

Thursday

You see where this is going right?

More progress. This day features my longest night session. Night time is where the magic happens. If you enjoy ironing your clothes or going on long runs without headphones you know what I’m talking about. There’s a comforting quiet. You hear ever crunch of snow. The smell of fireplace smoke is heightened. If you live in a warm climate and are unable to experience a quiet snowy night I feel bad for you. That’s right. This is pure driveway therapy. Just you and your shovel. And your wandering mind. Pure magic.

Don’t act like your not jealous.

Friday

I’ve undergone a transformation. I’m a completely different person now. Like when Rocky goes off to East Siberia or wherever to train in the snow so he could go beat Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Cue the 80’s-est of all 80’s movie montages.

But seriously.

On Tuesday I was the “there’s no way this is even going to happen” guy.

On Wednesday I was the “at least I can be proud of myself for trying” guy.

On Thursday I became the “wouldn’t it be crazy if I shoveled over 4,800 cubit feet of snow by hand?” guy.

On Friday I was the “I’m totally doing this” guy.

I come out in the morning, guns blazing. The sun is out. It feels hot. I’m wearing a hoodie and my knockoff Ray Ban sunglasses. My neighbors across the street are slurping Tullamore Dew and cheering me on from their front porch.

With every stroke of the shovel the snow melts away like an aged mozzarella on a freshly-sharpened grater. I grunt a few times and don’t feel weird about it.

Then my shovel breaks. I scream “aw shucks” the same way Ralphie from A Christmas Story screams “fudge.” This was a diesel shovel. I had grown attached to it. I named him Javier. Not even kidding. I really wasn’t happy. It wasn’t as bad as Tom Hanks watching his bloodied volleyball named Wilson float away in the ocean but I think the comparison still stands. Also it was my only shovel.

Thankfully my neighbor has a spare to lend me. It’s not as strong or sharp as Javier, though. It can’t cut through snow that by now is almost as dense as ice. I retrieve my spade from the basement and use that to break the snow off the banks. Then I huck it up and over the piles with the snow shovel.

Not ideal, but guess what?

I finished the damn thing.

My back still hurts a little. My shoulders still hurt a lot.

It’s cool to have a cleared driveway. It’s cooler to feel like a grown-ass man.

My driveway is approximately 100 feet long and 8 feet wide. We got 6 feet of snow.

That’s 4,800 cubit feet of snow.

The average weight of snow is 6 pounds per cubic foot, which means I moved 14.4 tons of it during about 23 hours over 4 days.

But I almost didn’t. I gave up before I started.

On Tuesday I told Lindsay repeatedly there’s no way we’d be digging out ourselves. We’d either hire a plow service and/or wait for it to melt.

But then I started. I struck on the first of my just under 5,000 swings of a shovel. And then every swing of the shovel became one more that I had completed and one less that was left to do. Like adding to the “done” pile and taking away from the “to-do” pile.

Roy H. Williams has a term for this. He calls this the magic of the ELBs (Exponential Little Bits).

My point… What if we stopped thinking about how hard “it” is gonna be or how long “it” is gonna take?

What if we stopped looking at the scoreboard?

And just started.

And decided that you’d push your agenda forward (even a little bit) every single day.

And you didn’t look back.

What would happen then?

Would you ________________

(lose 50 pounds, run a marathon, start a company, publish a book, start a movement)

?

I don’t hold the answer to that question.

But I know a good way to ensure you never will, either.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

Swing the shovel just once. Do it. Then see what happens.