The other morning before school I went for a quick bike ride. On this gray, damp morning the roads had just started to dry from sprinkler runoff and the lingering marine layer. Plodding my way up a small hill, as I tried to organize my thoughts and anxieties for the day, I came across a snail in the bike lane. My new friend had maybe a foot of pavement left to cross. Amazingly, if he had started from the median, he had travelled across two lanes of traffic, a bus lane, and the bike lane (maybe 60 feet of asphalt). If he ventured from the other side of the road… Either way, this was an epic endeavor. This effort could represent many things - an astonishing level of achievement and performance or maybe it was snail against the world.
As I crested the hill I couldn’t shake the snail and his endeavor. I wondered what I could learn from the snail. Cruising down to the next climb I found myself thinking about Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. It wasn’t the Joads, the Okies, or even the Dust Bowl on my mind. Instead as the road went up-ish I thought about the turtle in Chapter 3. Steinbeck, in one of his transition chapters, masterfully weaves the turtle into the narrative as a powerful metaphor. The chapter describe a turtle crossing a lonely desert highway. The turtle’s journey is not unlike my new snail friend’s journey. A solitary figure against the elements of nature and humankind. To avoid thinking about how slow I felt, I focused on how, in many ways, I am the turtle and the snail.
The turtle and the snail represent the journey of Do.Think.Learn - me out on my own trying to cross the proverbial road. In his journey, the turtle gets knocked around, flipped onto his shell, and fights to right himself before making it to the other side of the highway. Steinbeck uses the chapter to describe the plight and fortitude of the Okies who migrated to California to escape the Dust Bowl. My journey is not as arduous or desperate as that. Starting a business, a school no less, feels something like that turtle or the snail fighting to cross a road - dangerous, stupid, smart, uncertain. As the turtle and snail might suggest, setting out alone is no easy task. At least the turtle and the snail had shells.
When I started Do.Think.Learn I left the security and relative safety of working at someone else’s school. Starting your own business is both exhilarating and frightening. Being your own boss...creating a foundation I believe in… building something from scratch - all of these are fantastic points. Taking a $50k pay cut… not knowing how the bills will get paid… losing gigs you thought you had - all less than fantastic aspects of starting your own business. When you set out on your own you have power and control, but there you are, out all alone, you against all the forces of nature. In the beginning I was the turtle just starting out,
...the highway embankment, reared up ahead of him. For a
moment he stopped, his head held high. He blinked and looked
up and down. At last he started to climb the embankment.
Front clawed feet reached forward but did not touch. (pp. 14 -15)
The turtle has to fight against the dynamics and physics of nature. However, it doesn’t seem that at any point during this arduous task, does the turtle consider giving up. Everything is working against him, but he keeps moving forward. At the end of DTL’s first year, - I am still the turtle but now out unprotected on the hot pavement,
And now a light truck approached, and as it came nearer the driver
saw the turtle and swerved to hit it… Lying on its back,
the turtle was tight in his shell for a long time. But at last
its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. (p. 15)
The turtle gets flipped over and pushed around. He has to make sense of his situation, he has to decide what to do next. Steinbeck’s description of what it takes for the turtle to succeed after being smacked around is inspiring. We should all have that kind of fortitude in our endeavors.
After cresting the next hill and crossing over the 101, I turned my bike onto some dirt and took stock of where DTL and I stand. There’s a lot to do. I have put a lot of sweat equity into this project. Yet despite my commitment, there remains a lot to do. Have I made any progress? There’s a lot I don’t know and I really need to figure out what else I don’t know. Setting your own course represents freedom and the independence many of us crave. And yet….the shadows of my mind grow darker and colder. Sometimes I wonder if I might be better served working in an established school. Today I wonder if the snail ever looked across the road and thought, “F@<k, what was I thinking?”
After I finished my ride I was sitting in Hollywood traffic listening to a podcast on freedom (which fortunately involved no flag wearing people spewing gung ho rhetoric). This discussion focused on freedom in the sense of not being under someone else’s yoke. This is my hope and goal. Even with constant financial and professional hardship and with continued uncertainty looming, I do not regret leaving my last job and venturing into the unknown. Having agency and some control over my future helps ward off the shadows of uncertainty. I have the freedom to succeed or stumble - it is my doing (cue the Sinatra).
Hopefully I have a more complex cerebral operating system than the turtle or the snail. Despite the extra synapses however, the three of us have much in common. Each of us crossed or is crossing a wide expanse of the unknown. Each of us has ventured out on a journey with an unknown outcome. The three of us (the turtle, the snail and I) have braced ourselves against threats and dangers as we cross our roads. After the turtle is hit by the truck, “lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over.” (p. 35). I wonder what the turtle was thinking, lying on his back on the hot pavement. Did he ever consider just laying there? The snail most likely dodged numerous vehicles in his slow motion version of Frogger. When the school bus roared over his flimsy shell did he consider turning around and going back to the median? After he got all the way to the bike lane and saw the curb, what went thru his mind? Maybe less complex brain power would be beneficial - the snail probably doesn’t over think much. What I’ve dealt with seems trivial compared to the life and death struggle of the turtle or the snail … parents changing their minds, students not doing their work, money trickling in sporadically, or failure lingering in the shadows. I feel like fate has swerved to hit me a few times and now I’m lying on my back on the hot pavement wondering do I really want to deal with this?
Of course there have been difficult days and more of these days lay ahead. The turtle kept going, “its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright.” (pp. 15 - 16). As I inched my through traffic I remembered the advice of cycling friend of mine. Since he started his own business and had years of experience I asked him for advice when I decided to take DTL full time. His words have been the best advice I’ve received about starting a business, “it is okay to bet on yourself.” Maybe making it across the road isn’t the point. Maybe having the courage to set out or being independent is the point. So now, little by little, I have to ease out of my shell, flip myself right side up, and see what lies ahead.