Start 2025 With No Resolutions

On Sunday December 29th our dryer went on the fritz. My wife came into the kitchen as I was prepping for dinner and let me know that thankfully the dryer was still spinning, just not heating.

I have been through this situation before. My dryer is almost upon its 20th birthday and I have removed the cover a few times to remove some lint and replace some parts.

Thankfully I have YouTube as a guide and Amazon to get parts to me in a day.

I sat with my back up against the wall looking at a wall of laundry baskets thinking thoughts which included: maybe this is a sign to get a new dryer.

There were 14 loads from the holiday season. With our two sets of twins, our washer and dryer seem to be in operation more than they are not.

My wife was in quite the tizzy worried that we would run out of towels which was adding a secret amount of pressure to me not knowing what the problem was with our beloved dryer.

So I leaned hard on the wall.

That is when I realized it was time to do the hard.

Many of us are wired where we do not like confrontation. Many of us want to take the path of least resistance. We would rather avoid bruising our egos or failing than confronting things head on.

Many moons ago I learned a valuable lesson, do the hard.

I have been able to solve many problems by taking the long road and I am so thankful I have.

I told my wife that I was going to fix the dryer and if it didn't happen right away, I would load up all the laundry and simply take it to a laundromat.

Honestly, that is the last thing that I wanted to do, spend a day off at the laundromat.

The parts arrived on Monday right before the start of the Monday night football game. I spent a good hour before the game working on replacing a sensor or two and both thermostats. Still no luck.

The last time I had the same challenge I had to replace the heater coils and it appears that was again the problem.

Replacing the coils is really a very easy process. Nothing hard at all.

When it kicked on and I saw the coils light up a bright orange a smile came to my face. I was able to watch the second half of the Lions win.

Nothing about fixing the dryer was really all that hard.

YouTube provided wonderful guidance with a few DIY videos from professionals.

Amazon was able to ship everything to me so quickly.

The most difficult was going to the hardware store to buy an $11 ohm tester to make sure the electrical connections all worked.

So what made this hard?

1. Unexpected challenge with a bigger ticket item.
2. Not knowing what the problem was.
3. Having a huge pile of laundry staring me in the face.
4. The look of defeat on my wife's face when it stopped working.
5. Not having time in my schedule for this.

Really what made things hard was the inner voice in my head. I was appearing calm and collected to my family as I had many thoughts swirl around in my noggin. I was the one making this hard. I had been though this before, not only with the dryer, but so many things in my life.

When your back is against the wall (literally) you will find times where you can perform at your best.

I ended 2024 doing the hard. Overcoming the inner voice and the fear of doom and gloom. Surprising myself (and likely my wife) with a prideful smile knowing that I did the hard.

As I ascend into 2025 I do not have any resolutions, I simply will use the end of 2024 to let me know that I can handle the hard.

Edit- since I have already been asked- my dryer is a Whirlpool with a small bit of rust likely from me kissing it over the years.