A friend and I had discussed making a snowman, but normally our plans fall through. I wanted to make sure they didn’t.

I pinged him and we convened on the streets, in front of our houses.

We quickly learned we weren’t dealing with packing snow. It was cold, icy, and hard. When rolling the snow, it wouldn’t accumulate more snow. A traditional snowman was no longer in the discussion.

We had a decision to make.

To give up, and let the plan fall through, or to be resourceful and adapt.

We chose the second option. We scoured for pre-made blocks of snow of various sizes. Larger slabs for the base, medium slabs for the torso, and smaller slabs for the head.

We gave birth to 7 or 8 mini snowmen and placed them in front of every other house. The entire street was filled with make-shift snowmen.

It was a particularly odd sight to see. It was far eerier than it was joyous, but we made them with purer intentions.

We voyaged to a local park and found 5 or 6 large branches.

Crack!

Snap!

Now we had 16 arms for our snowmen. The hardest part of the construction was inserting the arms into the hard, ice-like, frame of the snowman.

It was getting cold, and morale was down. We came out to make a huge, human-sized snowman, and we were currently making 8 mini ones and struggling to stick arms into them.

But, we were almost there. We pushed through, and our effort bore fruit.

The scene that lay in front of our eyes made it worth it.

8 of these filling the street.

The snowmen were destroyed the following morning by a truck cleaning the roads.

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There’s a lot to learn anytime you create anything. The experience, while rooted in fun and youthfulness, reinforces the same lessons we learn when shipping a product, authoring a blog post, writing a piece of music, or physical training.

1. You must be willing to adapt when new information is presented.
2. You must be persistent. Effort over long term periods pays dividends.
3. Expectations never help anyone.
4. Have fun with it.