Doing Work

Refilling my blue five-gallon water jug takes roughly three minutes and forty seconds. It takes seven minutes to fold and put away an average pile of laundry (not including a fitted sheet because who the heck knows). Unloading the dishwasher – two minutes and a half. Getting my bachelor's degree… dang, forgot my timer!

Sunset was in eight hours. I had to leave for two weeks the following day, so it was the last night for us to capture an image of Dirt pushing a lawn mower I’d been wanting to get.

7 Hours Till Sunset.

“Dirt Dog! Let’s go!” He lets out a screeching bark. I grab the treat pouch, fill it with dog crack, and we're off.

Dirt’s velcroed to my side. He knows he’s about to get paid.

We pull the mower from the barn and place it in front of a few four-wheel drive toys as a backdrop.

“Alright, Dirt, let’s see if we can make this work.” We’re standing beside the mower, his eyes locked on me.

“Hup hup,” I say, tapping the mower handle with my left hand and holding a treat in my right.

Dirt circles the mower, then jumps on top of the engine.

Oh boy, I thought.

“Nope. Over here, Dirt.” We try again. This time, I just looked for the tiniest attempt at his paws leaving the ground.

“Hup hup.” He places his paws on the side of the handles near the bottom of the engine.

“Yes!” I hit the clicker around my neck and paid the man.

“Hup hup.” Again, paws on side handles. “Yes!” Clicker. Pay..

After the fifth time, I started delaying the reward until he placed his paws further up the handles. Worked like a charm.

We take our first break.

5 Hours Till Sunset

Break is over. I refill my dog crack, Dirt lets out a few barks, and we get back to work.

“Ok, Dirt Dog! Let’s do this. Hup, hup!” He jumps on the engine.

“No, no. Over here, bro. Let’s try again.”

I take a step next to the handles, and Dirt resets. Again, tapping the handles with my left hand to help guide him.

“Hup hup!” He paws the side of the handles. I click and pay.

I tried to delay the reward after only the second time he got it right, and it worked. He even got his paws exactly where they needed for the perfect shot on his last attempt!

But when I tried to get him to repeat it, he wouldn’t do it. He kept starting at the bottom.

I wiped my sweaty face with my shirt, looked down at Dirt, and realized the black lawn mower and Dirt’s black coat were now in the beaming hot sun. I was no longer having fun. Which meant Dirt certainly wasn’t having fun.

We needed to wait for the sun to fade behind the trees. So we took another break.

While we waited, I set up the camera on the tripod and dialed in the settings so we would be ready when the time came.

1 Hour Till Sunset

It was crunch time, the light was perfect, and I could tell Dirt was feeling refreshed. I knew I could likely get him to touch the handles where he was supposed to and hold it for just long enough to grab the shot, at least once.

“This is the time, Dirt! You got this. I know you got this. You ready?”

He lets out a few barks.

“That a boy! Alright, let’s do it!”

I walk over to the camera, set the intervalometer to take five hundred images, one every half second for roughly four minutes, and press start.

We stand next to the mower.

“Hup hup!”

For the next thirty minutes, Dirt jumped on the engine, the side of the tires, the adjacent handlebars, and everything except the one spot we needed to make the picture.

I wound up with just over a thousand images of almost the perfect picture – the picture I wanted to capture.

In Spike Lee’s 2009 documentary, Doing Work, he follows the late Kobe Bryant before, during, and after a game where the Lakers take on the San Antonio Spurs.

After the game, Spike and Kobe sit down to watch the film back while Kobe walks us through his thought process.

“How do you feel after you’ve missed a shot? Or two or three?” Spike asks after Kobe bricks his second jumper in a row.

“You can’t let it get to you, ya know? You just have to keep shooting. If that third one don’t go in, that fourth one better go in. If that fourth one doesn’t go, you better damn sure make that fifth one go. And if that fifth shot doesn’t go, then you have to make the sixth. Or the seventh or the eighth… you just can’t let the misses get to you. You have to shoot until you find it. Then your confidence will start to come back.”

Dirt never worries about the frisbees he misses. He doesn’t even give himself time to consider whether missing means he’s bad at catching frisbees. Like Kobe, he doesn’t allow his failed attempts to control his confidence.

What fills Dirt's heart is the same thing that fills Kobe’s, the art of trying, not the art of winning. Winning is simply the outcome of their efforts. When we get to a place where the only goal is the next shot, the next frisbee, the next sentence, the results will speak for themselves. It may not always result in the desired outcome, but it will always result in the outcome we need.

Dirt’s only goal is to spend as much time with me as possible. And to enjoy as much of that time as he can. And he always enjoys it, I’m sure. I mean, I’m quite the treat to be around. Pretty much all the time… please.

Greats love to win. They love to win more than they hate to lose. But the one thing Taylor Swift, Micheal Jordan, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Kobe, Hemingway, Andrew Carnegie, Elon Musk, and Dirt love more than championships, sold-out arenas, rocket ships, steel, classic novels, and frisbees is the process it takes to get there. And they protect that process at all costs.

Three weeks later, we tried again. And this time, without a time limit. If we got it, we got it. If not, there would be tomorrow. The enjoyment was in the effort, not the result. Why do you think it took me a combined 7 ½ years to get my bachelors? Oh whoops! I mean, I forgot my timer!