Author: ronnyjames

Finding Your Dream Job

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Surveys specifically tracking whether lifetime retirees worked their “dream job” are rare, but general workforce and retirement studies show that the vast majority of people never attain a dream career, and career dissatisfaction often drives post-retirement work. Across multiple workforce surveys, only about 7% to 10% of adults report currently working in their dream career, meaning up to 93% of the workforce has taken a different path.

Moneypenny Resources found that only 9% of those surveyed thought that they were in their “dream job” or career. There is a lot of fascinating data on what jobs seem to bring the most satisfaction, who are the “happy workers,” and even what states or areas of the US have the happiest workers. In 2023, Wyoming had the highest percentage of workers who are happy (100%, how could this even be true?) Washington DC sat at 87.5% so I feel the data must be skewed.

Never-the-less, this past Sunday’s message at the church I attend here in Northern Virginia had me wondering about dream jobs. Now that I have been retired for 8 1/2 years, I can look back at my own career in graphic arts with a good deal of pride mixed with a tiny twinge of regret.

I had started out in college majoring in Fine Arts and fully expected to go on to obtain a masters degree in either printmaking or painting. I moved to San Diego and it was there in 1976 that my eventual career path took a slight left turn. I remained in graphic arts and production for the next 26 years, eventually retiring from a church as their director of communications in 2018. And I loved every job I’ve had: they quite often combined my love of art with that of language (majored in Art, minored in English). But did I ever obtain my “dream job”? I don’t think so, though I have no regrets about the career field I eventually found myself in.

Above, one of my paintings from my senior show in 1974; working on matting prints of a friend’s artwork; and a recent acrylic painting of my own. I still work in that pointilist style, though on a much smaller scale than I did before.

According to workforce research, the choice to pivot away from a dream job is rarely due to laziness; it is almost entirely dictated by real-world friction. Again, data from Moneypenny highlights the top barriers preventing people from ever obtaining their dream: financial constraints (specialized training or education); lack of opportunities; or family obligations. Looking back at my own career path, it would have been financial constraint (the cost of advanced education) combined with fear of failure.

In a lifetime career regret series by Business Insider, hundreds of older Americans noted that they chose paths purely out of survival rather than passion. Many expressed deep regret over not prioritizing higher education or specialized training when they were younger, which permanently locked them out of the competitive “dream” fields they actually wanted to enter. That tracks, doesn’t it? The very high cost of education can certainly act as a gatekeeper, admitting some, excluding others from a career path.

Interestingly, what people regret while working changes dramatically once they actually retire.

  • Before retirement: People stress over a lack of status, missed promotions, or not making enough money.
  • After retirement: The narrative flips entirely. According to a large-scale study of over 750 retirees tracking what they regretted most about working past age 60, the overwhelming sentiment was the loss of time

Once the job is gone, retirees rarely wish they had climbed higher up a corporate ladder they didn’t care about. Instead, they express profound regret that they sacrificed their prime physical “health span” working a job they merely “enjoyed to some degree” instead of retiring sooner to chase personal passions, travel, or spend time with family.
Ultimately, the data shows that most people do realize they settled for second best, but they only truly mourn it once the structured routine of the career vanishes and they are left trying to figure out who they are without it.

While working on this post, I reached out to a college-friend of mine for his perspective. John is a few years younger than I am, and while we both attended the same university (go UNR!) at the time we pursued different majors. Today John McCaskill is the Artist/Owner of Studio Jomac in St. Pete Beach Florida.


John, as my wife and I were talking, I realized that I had worked some very interesting, and fulfilling jobs over my career. But now that I am retired, I don’t think I actually ever had my “dream job.” But I thought of you and your transition to full time artist, printmaker, and studio owner. To me that seems much more closely aligned with obtaining your dream job. Any thoughts you could share with me on your own journey?

“Becoming a full-time artist, printmaker, and studio owner didn’t happen overnight. I worked hard for many years to create the freedom and opportunity to build this kind of life, but it has absolutely been worth it. I love creating, and I love having a studio where I can explore ideas, experiment, and bring them to life.

You were actually an early influence on my creative journey. When we were roommates and you were working toward your BFA, seeing your large-scale, dot-based paintings helped open my eyes to the possibilities of pursuing art seriously. Our time working together at Outdoor Posters also left a lasting impression. Even today, I still posterize and lay out many of my portraits using principles much like those we worked with back then.

For me, a dream job is not necessarily something you find. Sometimes it is something you gradually build through years of work, experience, and persistence. It also requires an openness to something larger than ourselves, a higher wisdom and universal harmony that we can tap into when we become truly receptive to the creative spirit. My earlier careers and relationships gave me the skills, inspiration, and resources to arrive here, so I see this chapter as part of the same continuing journey rather than a departure from it.”

Where are you in your own personal journey? Do you feel like you’ve arrived or are you still on the road? Sometimes it helps just to check in with a friend.

You can read more about John’s story and view his artwork on his website here. And definitely check out his gallery when you are in the St. Petersburg area.

Dogwoods in Virginia

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The English language, well perhaps every language though I am most familiar with English, has a tricky way with words, and sentences, when spoken aloud.

Growing up, the emphasis in this sentence, “Where have you been?” seems to have been placed more heavily on the where. As in, explain to me the circumstances around your tardiness or disheveled appearance. 

And years later, the emphasis had often shifted to the last word; more plaintive perhaps and not just an inquiry into your location.

Now among my friends I still use this line of inquiry but the emphasis has again shifted, more towards the middle of the sentence and landing on have. Where have you been? And lately, the answer is, all over.

Growing up, my immediate family lived in Nevada but my cousins were spread across California and Oregon. I remember my grandparents would drive their Oldsmobile up from their home in Southern California towing a small nomad trailer, their trips planned to include several stops over the summer months. 

They would stay for a day or two with us, parked on the street out front of our home, in their little home on wheels. Tiny bathroom, kitchen, a bed that folded down from the seating area around the dining table. I didn’t think a trailer could get much smaller, and it might explain my fascination with the Bambi model of Airstream trailers today; but that small size really packed a punch once it was loaded down. 

I have a cousin who often takes his teardrop trailer out for weekends in the mountains outside Tucson, Arizona. My wife and I aren’t really camping people (let’s not do that again!), but the thought of jumping into my truck and heading out to the first RV park I see still has a grip on me. 

Except…except I’ve seen some of the RV parks that are within driving distance and they leave me, well, concerned. So many people! 

In the late 1980s when my Grandmother learned that I would be settling down here in Virginia permanently, we talked about their life on the road. My grandfather was an avid fisherman and there were always stories of their times parked along the Rogue River in Northern California or motoring out here in the East.

As one might expect, my Dad loved to fish as well. Me? This photo probably shows my best day fishing. Apparently I didn’t take to it quite as well and truthfully, I haven’t had a pole in my hands since the mid 1970s, but look at that cowboy hat! and swagger.

Perhaps the clearest picture I have of that “I’m moving to Virginia” conversation with Grandma is of dogwoods. Who knows when my grandparents would have come out this far. They both had retired when they sold Hilbig’s Pharmacy to my uncle Ralph in the early 1950s. But thirty years later she still had a vivid memory of the dogwood trees in bloom here in Virginia. Those and the redbud trees. And the fishing of course, not the cold water trout they were used to but the bass for sure. 

I can just imagine them pulled up to some nearly-vacant campground, their folding card table and two chairs set out, my grandmother reading one of her paperback novels as she waited for Grandpa to catch something for dinner. Late afternoon, dogwood trees in bloom. Thanks for the memories.

Ralph and May Hilbig, about 1950.

Route 66 and an Unexpected Beginning

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Route 66, running from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, turns 100 years old this year. It’s iconic in a way that few other American roads are—so much so that a television series was created around it. Route 66 is probably unique in combining all of these things: a famous name, a clear beginning and end, and a mythology built around freedom, Depression-era migration, postwar family vacations, roadside architecture, and, eventually, nostalgia.

Known as The Mother Road, Route 66 was officially established on November 11, 1926, when federal and state officials approved its famous number as part of the new U.S. Highway System. Road signs were installed in 1927, but the full 2,448-mile route from Chicago to California was not completely paved until 1938.

Historic Route 66

In Southern California, the highway followed much of the earlier National Old Trails Road. That route crossed the Mojave Desert from Needles on the Arizona border through Barstow and San Bernardino before ending at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.

I think three American highways reward exploration more than any others:

  1. Route 66 — the story of twentieth-century America.
  2. The Lincoln Highway — the story of the birth of the automobile age.
  3. The Blue Ridge Parkway — the story of the American landscape and conservation.

Taken together, these three highways tell different chapters of the American experience: how we first learned to drive across a continent, how the automobile reshaped the nation, and how we came to preserve some of its most beautiful landscapes.

I’ve traveled all three. Living in Virginia, with the Blue Ridge Parkway winding through the nearby Shenandoah Mountains, I’ve enjoyed countless drives along its ridges. I’ve also driven portions of Route 66. Yet it is my own family’s story that connects me most directly to that highway’s history and to the larger story of the Great Depression.

During the 1930s, Route 66 carried thousands of families west in search of opportunity. After World War II, it became the highway of family vacations, lined with neon motels, diners, and roadside attractions. Then, as the Interstate Highway System bypassed town after town, Route 66 was transformed almost overnight into a symbol of a disappearing America. Few highways have experienced such a complete journey—from necessity, to prosperity, to nostalgia.

Route 66 Diner

Several years ago, my wife, granddaughter, and I drove from Las Vegas to Williams, Arizona, on our way to the Grand Canyon. Along the way we stopped in several Route 66 towns, hoping to experience The Mother Road as it might once have been—or perhaps more accurately, as it has been lovingly remembered and recreated.

A roadside diner painted in turquoise and pink, a museum filled with vintage signs and memorabilia, small coffee shops, and family-run motels all helped sketch the outline of what traveling this highway must have felt like before today’s interstates quietly sidelined so many of these towns.

But my family’s connection to Route 66 reaches back much earlier.

In 1933, the California section of Route 66 had only recently been rerouted and fully paved. My grandparents happened to be traveling that highway at precisely the right—or perhaps wrong—moment. What began as a cross-country move ended with a baby being born in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

That unexpected stop tells a story of resilience, determination, and adventure.

An Emergency Stop at Wayside Camp

By April 1933, the newly paved Route 66 directed nearly all desert traffic through the tiny community of Essex, California. The Wayside Camp was the only formal roadside stop there at the time. It consisted of a handful of simple wood-frame tourist cabins, a modest café, a general store, and a service garage.

The buildings were captured in a postcard from the 1940s. I imagine they looked much the same when my mother’s family arrived on April 5, 1933, traveling from Colorado Springs to San Bernardino.

An Ad in the San Bernardino Sun from May 3, 1935.

What you’re looking at

From left to right:

  • The Essex service station with the large “ESSEX” sign on the roof.
  • Cabin office where travelers checked in.
  • Wayside Café, serving meals to motorists.
  • A long covered parking area, offering shade for both fuel pumps and guest vehicles.
  • Several tourist cabins, rented overnight.

This combination of gas station, café, and cabins was the classic roadside “motor court” that flourished before national motel chains appeared.

It was here that my grandparents stopped—not for convenience, but because circumstances left them little choice.

The Mojave Desert in April 1933 was beautiful but unforgiving. Roads were narrow, automobiles had no air conditioning, and thousands of families were migrating west during the Great Depression. The simple wooden cabin at Wayside Camp offered shelter and safety before the family would continue over the mountains into San Bernardino.

This is how Mom remembered that remarkable journey.

“Mother had inherited real estate in San Bernardino, and we moved in March of 1933. It was warmer there and she had family and property. Daddy was an electrician; had been a telephone lineman, climbing spurs and all. Could get a job anywhere, and did.”

“In my great Aunt Belle’s diary was this notation regarding Mom and her family: “When Orlo moved his family away from Colorado Springs to go to San Bernardino, Calif, she wrote ‘Quite an undertaking with the car, trailer, six children, goat with two kids, canary bird, and a cat and dog.’ Orlo’s caravan left March 15, 1933.”

“Neil (the youngest) was 18 months old . We had a goat and our stuff in a trailer, and the dog riding on the running board . And Mother pregnant. And six kids in (I think) a Rickenbacker. Shirley and I sat on jump seats that let down from the backs of the front seats. We had to sit out a sand storm in the desert on the way. Mother handed out raisins to us, one by one. I don’t know when we left Colorado, but we hit Essex, California April 5, 1933.”

For families with several children, the promise of steady work could outweigh the risks of relocating across the country. California had earned a reputation as the “land of opportunity.” Even during the Depression, it projected an image of abundance. A mild climate, productive farmland, and rapidly growing cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego offered employment in agriculture, construction, oil, and manufacturing.

At the same time, Southern California was experiencing an enormous expansion of its electrical infrastructure. For an experienced telephone lineman and electrician like my grandfather, moving west was more than a change of scenery—it was a smart career decision. San Bernardino sat at the center of one of the largest regional infrastructure booms in the country.

But before the family could begin that new chapter, there was one final, unplanned stop.

They had left Colorado with six children. When they drove away from Wayside Camp in Essex, California, they had seven. The newest passenger was my aunt, Dorol Elizabeth Willis, born that day in one of the small cabins beside Route 66.

For my family, Route 66 isn’t simply an iconic American highway.

It’s where our California story began.

Photo Credit:
Wayside Camp, Essex, California
Burton Frasher, Wayside Camp, Cafe and Store, U.S. 66 Essex, California, 1932
Photographic postcard, Frasher Foto Postcard Collection, Pomona Public Library

Here’s the Prompt

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With AI, and using ChatGPT or Claude as an example, what you get out really depends a lot on what you put in, the prompt. Even then, the results can often be a mixed review. If you have a paid subscription your results may vary: mine is a free subscription and so far I have been happy with the results. But sometimes I just have to wonder…

Over the past several weeks I have been working with a team from our church to create a warm and inviting atmosphere for our Christmas Eve services. Yes, it was 90 degrees yesterday, it’s only August, but with projects like this you really need the time to think about, create, socialize or promote the ideas to the team, and have time to redesign or adjust. So we are working on an event that isn’t scheduled for nearly 4 1/2 months from now. And now you know a bit about church planning.

The area I am working on is our Lobby. It won’t be the first thing our guests and member see when they arrive December 24–hopefully we will have added some Christmas decor to the parking areas and our patio areas before folks ever enter the building. But once in, what will they see?

Our church has a Mid-Century Modern design aethetic in a very contemporary brick, concrete, and glass building. Whatever we come up with has to fit in with our furniture, concrete flooring and that massive glass curtain wall that overlooks our patio and a forested area beyond. It isn’t quite “Colorado cabin” style but at the same time, it isn’t MCM Palm Springs California either. But by rearranging some of the seating areas, perhaps adding pillows and blankets, area rugs and smaller design elements, we might be able to transform a very large space into something a bit smaller and more welcoming.

However. We are visual people and I’ve found it’s easier to present a few pictures of what I have in mind than it is to describe the changes in a Word document for nine people.

Below I have presented the original photo I uploaded to ChatGPT and the initial prompt. It took five iterations before I got what I thought I would have received as a first try. Let me know if you think I could have been more specific with Chat in my instructions. Or perhaps this is how we work with AI? a little trial and error until we say, “that’s good enough for now.”

Here is the prompt I gave ChatGPT: 

I’m looking for another Christmas decor idea here. Please remove the two chairs on the left and replace with the yellow couch. To the right of the brick pillar place a lighted and decorated Christmas tree. Remove the round coffee table and place large wrapped Christmas presents (4-5) up against the brick. Add a sled leaning against the brick.

Below are the images I received back. I like #6 and think that it most closely resembles what I had asked for, but you be the judge.

The final image (couch on left facing the two chairs, Christmas tree with presents and a sled against the brick wall) looks the most like my original intent. We did gain two pillows in the final design, and after the first image I had Chat brighten up the room. And for some reason the couch seems to have grown two feet wider but overall, not bad. I forgot to add the area rug but I’m not one to test the fates, this will do.

How about you? Have you gotten more or less than what you’ve tasked AI with? I have Photoshop, and when it comes to time spent, ChatGPT beats me hands down.

By the way, if you are looking for a warm and engaging church to attend for Christmas Eve services this year, give us a try at Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn VA. Or stop by any Sunday and try out the couches–they are very comfy!

Walton’s Mountain: A Visit to Schuyler, Virginia

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Take Highway 29 south of Charlottesville. The broad four-lane highway rolls gently away from the crowded streets of this college town, climbing into the wooded ridges of Nelson County. Mountains? Having lived in Nevada, I still think of these as hills. Beautiful, forested hills—but hills nonetheless.

The road passes wineries, cideries, and bed-and-breakfast inns that seem perfectly at home in Virginia’s countryside. As pleasant as they are, I found myself wondering what this landscape looked like during the 1930s.

Twenty-four miles south, turn left onto Route 6—Irish Road. A few minutes later you’ll arrive at the Walton’s Mountain Museum in Schuyler, Virginia.

Walton’s Mountain Museum building front

That’s how I drove home.

Getting there was another matter.

From Somerset, Virginia, I followed State Route 20, where road construction narrowed an already winding highway. Cars crept through one lane at a time, each of us patiently following the next toward destinations that, in my case, were entirely unfamiliar.

July in Virginia is predictably hot and humid. But on this particular day another visitor had arrived first: smoke from the Canadian wildfires, nearly 900 miles to the north. I had hoped that by climbing into the mountains I might outrun the haze—or at least rise above it. Instead, the smoky air that blanketed our valley had settled over Schuyler as well. The destination proved both new and strangely familiar, but the clear mountain air I had imagined never appeared.

Housed in the former Schuyler High School, the Waltons Mountain Museum features carefully recreated sets from the television series, including John-Boy’s bedroom, the family kitchen, and Ike Godsey’s store. Opened in 1992, the museum has become an important part of the local economy, drawing fans from across the country and around the world. During my visit, guests had come from nearby Charlottesville, North Carolina, and much farther away. A glance through the visitor log confirmed that the appeal of The Waltons extends well beyond Virginia.

Walton’s Mountain Tshirt signed by Richard Thomas
Newspapers remembering Earl Hamner
Original Hamner Home
The Hamner Home-TV version

The television series ran for nine seasons and 221 episodes before concluding in 1981, followed by a number of reunion movies through 1997. Nearly three decades after the last of those specials aired, visitors are still making the pilgrimage to experience the world of a family who, though inspired by real people, largely lived in fiction.

The museum occupies an interesting space somewhere between celebration and remembrance. Visitors come to relive the lives of the fictional Walton family, but the museum never lets them forget the real family behind the stories. Earl Hamner Jr., whose childhood inspired the series, grew up here with his parents and seven siblings. Throughout the exhibits, photographs place members of the Hamner family beside the actors who portrayed them, gently reminding visitors where fact ends and storytelling begins. The Hamners first became a novel, then a film, and eventually one of television’s most beloved series. Yet behind it all remained a very real family from a very real Virginia town.

Spencer’s Mountain, by Earl Hamner, Jr. image from Amazon

The museum’s caretaker that afternoon had grown up in Schuyler. She was old enough to have known many members of the Hamner family personally, although I never quite sorted out exactly who or when. What mattered was that she transformed the exhibits from static displays into living history. She shared firsthand stories, local memories, and bits of background that never appeared on the exhibit labels. More than anything I read on the walls, she brought both the people and the town to life. I found myself disappointed when she excused herself for a break.

Earl Hamner Jr. was born in 1923 and died in 2016. He was only three years older than my father, one of five children, and five years older than my mother, who grew up with six siblings of her own. Like the Hamners, my parents lived through the Great Depression. Yet standing in Schuyler, it was easy to imagine that those difficult years were considerably harder in the hills of rural Virginia than they had been for my parents in Southern California.

Still, hardship has a way of producing stories worth telling. In this case, those stories have endured for more than fifty years, continuing to draw people who long for a glimpse of a simpler world—or perhaps simply a kinder one.

I spent an unhurried afternoon wandering through the museum, complimenting the caretaker on the thoughtful exhibits. I lingered longest in John-Boy’s recreated bedroom, which somehow felt exactly as I had imagined it. Before leaving, I picked up a few jars of Waltons Mountain jam from the gift shop. The Moonshine Jelly contained considerably more “moonshine” in its name than in its recipe, but it was enjoyable all the same.

After more than thirty years producing graphics and exhibits for museums and visitor centers, I’ve seen displays of every size and budget. Every exhibition hopes to honor its subject well. Could the captions have been more legible? Certainly. Would improved lighting and newer display cases have showcased the collection more effectively? Without question.

But they also might have polished away some of the museum’s charm.

John-Boy’s Bedroom
Waltons Living Room set
Waltons Kitchen set

For me, the exhibits were memorable. The stories were unforgettable. And the best exhibit in the building wasn’t behind glass at all—it was the woman behind the front desk who remembered when these stories were simply the lives of her neighbors.

If you’ve been to the museum, let me know in the comments below. 

The Mountain

A Pilgrimage to Walton’s Mountain

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Today there stands a small museum in the town of Schuyler, Virginia, not far from Charlottesville. It occupies the old Schuyler Community Center, where Earl Hamner, Jr. attended school. After living in Virginia for forty years, I finally decided to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive south to Nelson County to see it for myself—a pilgrimage of sorts. As I’ve been researching my own family’s life during the 1930s, it seemed fitting to visit the place that inspired the novel Spencer’s Mountain and which eventually became The Walton’s.

I grew up in the 1970s when there were two television shows that held a special place in our family: The Waltons and M*A*S*H. Looking back fifty years, they seem to have had little in common, except perhaps for the close family bonds that developed over years of living together. The doctors and nurses of M*A*S*H, thrown together under the worst of circumstances, created a kind of family that viewers came to love over the show’s remarkable eleven-season run from 1972 to 1983—far longer than the actual three-year Korean War in which it was set.

Both shows were built more around relationships than events. Of the two, MASH was always my favorite, but The Waltons created something equally special. It centered on a family of eleven—seven children, their parents, and both grandparents—all living under one roof in what today we’d call a multigenerational home. Somehow, it worked.

The Waltons aired on CBS for nine seasons, from September 14, 1972, to June 4, 1981. It began with the holiday television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, which premiered on December 19, 1971.

The show’s roots reach back even further. Earl Hamner Jr.’s 1961 novel inspired the 1963 film Spencer’s Mountain, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara. Hamner, who also served as the off-screen narrator for The Waltons, based the story on his own childhood in Virginia. While the film relocated the Spencer family to Wyoming, the television series wisely returned them to the hills of central Virginia, where the story truly belonged.

Growing up in the 1970s, the Great Depression felt impossibly distant. Forty years earlier? It seemed like ancient history. As a teenager, it never really occurred to me that my own parents had lived through those years. Not as adults—that would have been my grandparents—but as children and adolescents. They would come of age during the 1940s, another era with its own unforgettable landmarks.

Writing this in 2026, that same forty-year span no longer feels so enormous. Looking back forty years today takes me not to the Depression, but to the mid-1980s. And I remember those years vividly. In fact, I loved that era.

Our own family had a version of the Waltons. My father’s sister and her family lived on a ranch in southern Oregon during the 1970s. Their property had towering fir trees, open meadows dotted with cattle, chickens wandering the yard, and a large vegetable garden—many of the same elements I admired on television each week. Their family was smaller, with five children instead of seven, and our grandparents spent summers there in a trailer rather than in the “Big House,” but the feeling was much the same. It was a place where family gathered, where everyone belonged, and where life seemed to move at a slower pace.

I’ve come to realize however, that I’m no longer John-Boy Walton, writing about his childhood. These days I’m closer to Will Geer, who was seventy years old when he played Grandpa Walton. My beard has turned whiter than I ever expected, although I’d like to think I spend considerably less time in a rocking chair on the front porch than he did. And while the original novel followed Clay Spencer, a mill worker in a small Virginia town who struggled to raise eight children while building a family home and helping his oldest son, Clay-Boy—the inspiration for John-Boy Walton—go to college, well here we are, nearly ninety years removed from that story, helping our own granddaughter prepare for college.

I like the symmetry of that. Except, perhaps, for the rocking chair. Then again, Cracker Barrel has plenty of those.

And biscuits with sausage gravy. Hmm…

The actor Richard Thomas (born 1951) is best known for his leading role as John “John-Boy” Walton Jr. in the CBS tv-series The Waltons. Thinking back now about the television series, we were nearly the same age, he acting a television role while I was watching it.

More Hair

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Reading this I recognize how we often fall into consistent, though perhaps not recognizable patterns or habits. I just got another haircut yesterday, and shaved off the beard I had been working on for a month. It’s Just Hair (from three years ago). Enjoy!

It’s Just Hair

More Weeds

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It had been a couple of weeks since my last visit to the cottage, and even then it was only a quick stop to meet with a contractor. We haven’t had much rain lately—not the kind of long, steady, grass-soaking rain that keeps everything green. So I expected the yard to look a little rough. It did. The grass was dry and patchier than usual. 

But it’s the middle of July, and summer heat, humidity, and scattered afternoon thunderstorms are simply part of the season. What I didn’t expect was the utter chaos of weeds.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the book of Proverbs. Our church is spending the summer studying it, and the most recent passage was Proverbs 6:6:

“Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”

I’ll admit, I’m not much of a fan of ants, so this verse didn’t immediately resonate with me.

Our pastor gave an inspiring message from those few words, but one word stayed with me: sluggard. Depending on the translation, it appears as lazybones, slacker, or simply lazy one. I’d run across that word before, and that’s where Scripture and experience suddenly came together.

Consider Proverbs 24:30–34:

I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. Then I saw and considered it; I looked and received instruction.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.

That phrase caught my attention: “I looked and received instruction.” What a wonderful description of a teachable spirit. Back in my Army days, my friends and I quoted verses 33 and 34 to one another all the time.

“Get up, you sluggard!”

We loved that part.

But we rarely paid attention to the verses that came before it—the neglected vineyard, the weeds, the broken stone wall.There are countless lessons packed into this proverb, but on this particular morning, standing in my gravel driveway and staring at weeds that seemed to have appeared overnight, only one thought came to mind:

A little sleep, a little slumber… and your yard and driveway will be overrun with weeds.

It doesn’t take long. Ignore something for a little while, and suddenly the vineyard is overgrown and the stone wall begins to crumble. And once it reaches that point, a few minutes of pulling weeds isn’t enough. I spent hours out there… or at least it felt like hours. If I’m being honest, it was probably closer to thirty minutes. But it was hot! Of course, Proverbs isn’t really teaching us how to grow vineyards or maintain our landscaping. It’s pointing to something much deeper.

Another proverb we often quoted says:

“Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds.” (Proverbs 27:23)

Pay attention. Know what’s happening around you. If you’re a parent, know your children. If you’re a supervisor, know your people. If you’re a friend, stay connected. If you’re a follower of Christ, don’t neglect your own heart.

Weeds rarely appear overnight. They grow because small things are ignored for too long. The same is true in our relationships, our work, our spiritual lives, and yes—even our driveways.

A little attention today often prevents a lot of work tomorrow.