Uncontrollable Fate
The agony of waiting for something you have no control over and a reflection on the sheer luck needed to achieve certain types of success.
Hey Everyone, I am continuing from last week’s edition If you’d like you can catch up on it here: https://nickmcmurtrey.substack.com/p/what-makes-one-excited
The big moment arrived. Picture this: Tall, Blonde, and way more tan than you’d think (I’ve been outside a lot lately, what can I say) kid walking into the Tooele County Planner’s office. You probably assume I was unprepared, but I was fully loaded with my shoulder bag slung around me. Inside the bag had 4 hand drawn sketches of my passion project “concept” along with a hand drawn parcel map with measurements. I am sure there were far more elaborate and put together plans to build a birdhouse, but that wouldn’t deter me from believing I can get the go ahead on this 11 unit townhome project of mine.
I ask for directions twice from workers in the building since obviously proper signage for the building wasn’t included as a part of the property tax assessment budget. I walk into the office and there are two nice ladies. Courageous and without hesitation I say “I have an 11:30 appointment with the county planner” they look at each other and one says “I’m the county planner, but I don’t think I have spoken with you…” I then realized that even though Tooele is the name of the county and the name of the city, I had an 11:30 with the city planner and not the county. I don’t want to bash how the community decided to lay out their public buildings but you’d really think they would want to avoid confusing the public and not put them 1 block away from each other. I wasn’t going to let a teeny mix up on my part get the best of me though and I said “oh, I mixed the two up, but you’ll hear of my project soon after Jared and I get this approved” Jared is the city planner whom I have never met before but naturally assume will be on a first name basis with.
Side note, you call a judge, police officer, and Mayor a title and then their name, but does anyone know if that rule applies to city planners? Do they get offended if I don’t say Planner Jared? Was calling him Mr. Hall too formal? Would it show that I was timid? I mean I wouldn’t want him to think I was so nervous that I’d go to the wrong building and let him have the upper hand immediately.
I got to the correct location and they let me past the plexiglass barrier into a small conference room. I find it odd that it seems public buildings aren’t allowed to ever have any paintings or use any color other than sad grey. The city planner was on the phone while I was waiting (total beast power move) I sat alone with my sketches for about 10 minutes. Then he comes in and I pull out what brought us together, the mighty sketches. Full disclosure, I made the first draft of the concepts, but ultimately my wife made the final draft so I cannot take too much credit for these.
The first thing he notices is that in each concept the houses on the front remain in tact. Ultimately that is where the current cash flow is. The density only permits for 3 additional units if the homes were taken down. It’d be pretty difficult to be able to pencil the project without maintaining the homes. Also, we as a society are constantly talking about the housing shortage and the project would only be additive to the housing inventory. So I stuck to the guns and just talked about how it would help add housing while also preserving the land as it currently is, all while adding brand new construction townhomes to Tooele’s great main street. Win, Win, Win for all.
To my surprise he agreed! He said “as long as the attorneys interpret the zoning in the same way that I interpret the zoning I’d just as well let you keep the house and add these on the west side since you already have access and all the aspects needed to develop this” Bells started playing in my head. What a great guy. I’m going to start campaigning for him for re-election (are city planners elected? Another, great unknown question that I have) However, all good moments must come to an abrupt end. He said “I actually have a meeting with our legal team early next week, so I’ll bring this up and get back to you just to make sure this would be okay. The zoning language they wrote isn’t terribly specific, so I need to make sure they’d be okay with this.” Uh oh. How many dreams are made after someone brings in the lawyers? Every great Rom-Com starts after the attorneys get involved right? I think not :/
We are currently in limbo and waiting patiently to hear what the lawyers say. This has made me think once again of just how fragile everything is. This potential project which is on main street, in mixed use zoning, where I already own the current land, and what I want to build abides to the zoning laws exactly as they’re written (by the same lawyers who then decide if it’s doable ironically). Yet, this whole thing falls apart if one domino falls and they decide it isn’t what they’re interpreting to be allowable from the zoning verbiage.
It’s hard for me to accept, because I think of preparation, work ethic, dilligence, and grit as all things that’ll help me force my will upon success or what I want. Then I think about how even the USA Olympic Men’s Basketball Team (a team comprised of 12 all stars) still took some luck to get past Serbia (a team with one all star the great Nikola Jokíc) in the Semi-Finals. Even the Goliath of a roster still relied on the incredible luck of the Serbian Player Vasilije Micic missing a wide open 3 pointer that would’ve put the Serbians up by 4 with less than 2 minutes left in the game.
It reminded me of this Morgan Housel quote from the psychology of money: “Capitalism is hard. But part of the reason this happens is because getting money and keeping money are two different skills. Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there. But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.”
"Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves." -Larry King
I frequently reflect on just how lucky I am and have been in my life. I often forget that a large part of where I am and what I’ve become is due to that scary 4 letter word luck. This week we get to see if that continues to roll in my favor.
When will you post again?