I have a metal awning covering the front door of my house.
It has been making an awful creaking noise whenever the wind picked up for the past few weeks.
It’s definitely not new and is something my mind started budgeting for as soon as I started hearing the screech. I figured I would first budget time to see if it was something I could fix myself. I could call over my handyman dad and see if whatever was loose could get tightened and we could clean her up—leaving her good as new.
If that didn’t work, I figured I would budget money for a new one and I started thinking about different colors and styles I might choose to replace it.
This went on and on in the background of my mind since I started noticing the reoccurring sound several weeks ago.
It wasn’t until I actually went outside today and took a closer look that I realized all of that horrible creaking… and screeching… and reoccurring annoyance…
…Was from one singular, oh-so-tiny bush branch—no bigger than my pinky—that was rubbing up against the front of the awning in such a way and at such an angle that it made that obnoxious noise.
I reached up, broke off the branch, and voila… problem solved.
How often is it the case that we do silly things like this? Make something oh-so-tiny into something way bigger than it needed to be? Something that could’ve been solved at the outset with a little up front investigation and energy… but got delayed and blown out of proportion instead…
Oh, how much energy I (we) could have saved…