The dream was never static. Fires, floods in the basement, never not something to fix. A viral pandemic was unexpected, but the dream leaves room for the unforeseen, demands that we remember how to steer. Pivot. Rework the dream, adjust the model.

Crunch the numbers and crunch them again. Gosh it’s hard to model a business with so many unknown variables. What will August look like? And November? The dream is now conjecture and patching a path with whatever is handy.

My grandparents had a colony of cranky bees in the siding of their farmhouse that they counted as insulation. Sometimes what stings us will also keep us warm. Stir something of that old lesson into the model. Plan another month of sack lunches & grocery boxes with real butter.

From a car outside someone hollers to me to keep on keeping on and that means something very different now than Before. I hear: move forward with a plan that may or may not be a disaster. The dream leaves room for that too.