The Rain Will Come. Build Anyway!

Hope is not the absence of storms. It's the decision to keep building.

Some mornings carry a heaviness in the air that has nothing to do with gravity.

Today is one of those mornings.

The sky is the color of wet concrete, and the rain has been falling steadily straight down, no drama, just insistence. The kind of rain that doesn't shout.

It soaks. It seeps. It waits.

And it brings me back.

Back to those job sites where the roof leaked, no matter how many times we patched it. Where areaways filled like bathtubs. Where mud found its way into boots, lunchboxes, and blueprints alike. Days where you'd show up hoping to make progress, only to spend the first hour bailing out buckets and dragging tarps like some trench warfare scene in a war movie, no one ever applauded.

It's easy, on days like that, to want to go home. To wait for a better forecast. To postpone until the skies clear.

But you don't.

Because when you're the builder of projects, of businesses, of anything that matters, you don't just work when it's sunny.

You show up especially when it's not.

I've learned that the truest test of a builder is not how well they perform when conditions are ideal. It's how steady they stay when conditions are not.

Rain delays are real. The weather stops progress.

But you find something to do. You clean. You plan. You organize. You fix the little things that didn't matter until they suddenly do.

And when the clouds break, you're ready.

I've witnessed crews building under scaffolds in sideways rain. I've seen foremen sketching solutions in fogged-up truck windows. I've observed masons setting brick while their jackets dripped and their fingers numbed, because the wall still needed to be built. 

That's what resilience looks like in the field.

It's not just about getting the job done, it's about the personal growth and strength you gain from these experiences.

It's not a motivational poster.

It's soggy gloves and stubborn progress.

The secret no one tells you:

Sometimes, the storm is inside.

The doubt.

The fatigue.

The voice that says, "What's the point?"  

That kind of rain can be louder than thunder,

and it doesn't always pass quickly.

But just like jobsite rain, you don't have to wait for it to stop to keep building. You have to decide that what you're building matters enough to get wet for.

You mop.

You tarp.

You find one solid step and take it.

That's the way.

The wise builder doesn't curse the rain.

He accepts it, prepares for it, and moves through it.

Because he knows what most people don't:

The rain will come.

Build anyway.

Field Note:

Some days, the work is the weather. You don't fight it, you learn to move with it. The strongest structures are built by those who know how to keep going, even in the rain.