That’s right. You heard it here first. The moment has come to make the decision to be a writer and never look back.
John and I moved to the farm more than a year and a half ago. Summers are busy because there’s just so much to do. Winters are a little easier (no grass or fields to mow) but also it gets dark at like 2pm so thank goodness for small miracles.
(I hate doing chores in the dark. John doesn’t seem to mind though.)
Anyway, I’ve been a software developer for a long time. And whatever, it’s fine, but the plan has always been farm + writing, farm + writing, farm + writing. And I finally have the community I need to help me make the leap!
The good is the enemy of the best. Or to paraphrase one of my mentors, often the thing that stands between you and a big audacious goal is a smaller, easier goal.
Who even am I? Taking about setting goals?
The thing is, I haven’t felt capable of setting and achieving a goal in a very long time. At least since my dad died, which was almost two years ago.
I guess the farm thing just kind of happened to us. I mean, everything just fell together and kept falling together, and it was all I could do to hold on.
But now we’re settled. And I’m ready to get moving on some things. I have created space, found my community, and locked in for a ride.
So let’s do it! Time to work some magic on my life.
I’m trying to figure out how to start this post about how I’m queen of the weirdos.
I don’t have a good hook. Which, when you think about it, is about 90% of why I’m queen of the weirdos. I never know the right thing to say. I often say the wrong thing instead.
You know that kid who never quite fit at the lunch table? You know, the fat one. The one with terrible acne. The one who didn’t wear the right shoes or have the right haircut. The one who liked all the wrong bands and all the wrong boys.
That was me.
Did you ever wonder where I went after I finally withdrew and the tiny sliver of table you allowed me was wordlessly redistributed to the cool kids? Did you even notice I had given up?
I’ll tell you where I went. I went to another table. An empty table.
The first day I ate by myself. The second day, one person joined me. Within a week, we had regulars. What’s the word for a group of weirdos? A congress of misfits? A cackle of nerds? A conspiracy of people you barely notice on the fringes of your life?
Don’t worry. I’m not angry. In fact, I don’t even frame the situation as “you reject me” anymore. I was pre-rejected. I’m guessing most of us were – by parents or siblings or nursery school friends. By the time I got to you, I had already learned what I was.
A weirdo. A geek. A fatso.
I built a whole identity around it. And at times, I served as the de facto leader of those who are invisible in plain sight.
I have spent my entire life living under the assumption that I am not like you and I will never be like you and I should probably just try to be as independent as possible so I don’t have to experience the awkwardness of being the object of your attention for any length of time.
I became an NPC in your video game, sticking to my little loop of pre-programmed actions. Nothing to see here, just another townsperson in your peripheral vision. I made myself invisible when you looked my way. No big feelings, no ostentatious outfits, nothing at all that would make me stand out.
But here’s the thing.
When you’re isolated, you start to lose track of yourself.
Who am I? Why am I here? I think I know, but…
There’s no key to unlock these questions. I know. I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere.
Except to you.
I believe creation happened because consciousness, as a singular entity, could not know itself. So it created animals, plants, humans – the world – so that it could expand and change and learn about all that is. I believe that each of us is a spark of consciousness – one body in many forms.
Today I realized that, if consciousness needs an observer to know itself, then I probably do too.
So I have to change. And this is my why: isolation isn’t getting me any closer to identifying and living my purpose.
It’s not going to be easy. It will take courage to stand tall in your sight, receiving your attention and perhaps judgment for what I am and what I am not. But if I want to live my purpose…
Someone banged on the door and the dogs went crazy and I went and opened it and the lady told me the horses were out.
Great.
I pulled on my boots and ran down to the barn for lead ropes and cookies. That’s when I noticed the gate was wide open.
Someone had been leaning on it.
I don’t know for sure who it was, but I have my suspicions.
[Calyx]
When things like this happen, I never expect anyone to come help. That’s the city girl in me. But the good people of Hamilton Township had our backs again. So many people stopped to help. One of our neighbors, who also keeps horses, caught them for us while I stood around uselessly holding cookies. His name is Hal. We learned a lot from Hal today.
When we got back to the farm, the township road crew had arrived to help.
Word gets around.
I am currently feeling sheepish because I haven’t done enough to meet my neighbors, and still, here they are today helping to corral five very stressed out horses and bring them home.
Today I experienced the magic of community. Your neighbors are just friends you haven’t met yet.
So I’m restarting my blog after a long layoff and I’m trying not to be a perfectionist about it.
I wrote some stuff, I wandered away, and now I’m writing stuff again.
This is fine because the world is still full of magic.
I know because I found my farm.
It’s 10 acres. It has a big bank barn that was built in the 1830s. The “new” part of the house also dates from the 1830s, and the original part – with the big cooking hearth – was built in 1800.
Basically it’s badass.
We’ve been here for about a year and a half and so far we have horses and chickens. Plus the dogs and cats, of course. I’ve discovered that as soon as you buy a farm everybody has adoptable animals for you. We’ve acquired two cats and two dogs this way (from separate people).
One day a random guy stopped on the side of the road and asked me if I could take a goat off him. It wasn’t his goat. It was just hanging around his yard and he couldn’t catch it. He said if I could catch it, I could take it.
What a sweet deal.
I thought hard about it, but then I lost their address, which he had scrawled down on a scrap of paper and I put in a random pocket. It’s just as well because random strangers offering goats by the side of he road is no basis for a system of government. Or something.
So 10 acres, a giant barn, a few other buildings, and a 1/4 acre established vineyard. That was a good start. We spent last winter renovating the house and adding run ins and a riding ring for the horses.
I’m settling in to the idea that I can have some peace now. My brain and heart are still set to chaos mode, so that’s harder than it sounds.
It’s so easy for me to get distracted and forget to look for the magic.
Work has been bonkers. People are leaning on me really hard for stuff and I find it impossible to say no. (I’m working on it.) Consequently there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
I planned to stay up all night on Wednesday to finish (maybe?) a project that was due that day, but the internet went out at 3:00 am. Pretty fatal for a web developer (at least while working on a live site).
John was relieved because I’d been pushing for two weeks and he could see I needed rest. But I couldn’t sleep. I was too hyped up on stimulants (which I consumed because I thought I would be staying up all night and the whole next day).
At 7 am, the internet was still out. So I went to Sheetz, which has a quiet eating area with power outlets, free wifi and good coffee. I was miserable. I just wanted to go home. But I kept getting texts and emails from clients asking for updates. And then the lunch rush started and my anxiety kicked into overdrive, and I found myself desperately texting John. “IS THE INTERNET ON YET? PLEASE ANSWER ME.”
Guys, Thursday was the closest I’ve come to having a nervous breakdown, and I’ve come close before.
It took me two days to come down from the caffeine high. During that time it slowly dawned on me (again) that this is my life. It doesn’t belong to anyone else, least of all clients. I have to learn to say no, or at least “not now.”
This morning I remembered to look for the magic. The voice was turned up to 11 the entire time (YOU SHOULD BE WORKING!) but I looked for the magic anyway.
First I knitted a few rows in John’s scarf, but that seemed daunting because it’ll be quite a while before I finish. So I put down the knitting and gathered up the ingredients for pesto.
This is getting good.
I had been thinking about making pesto because a) I love pesto and b) we have an enormous basil plant outside. I love basil and put it on lots of things, but I wasn’t making a dent in the plant.
Until recently, when I wanted pesto, I reached for a jar we got from Costco. The problem is we are out of Costco pesto and we can’t go to Costco without spending $400, which is about $350 more than I have right now (despite all the working). When I realized that making my own pesto meant we could actually have pesto without anyone going to Costco, I was sold.
Anyway, we had most of the stuff. Just a quick trip to Walmart for pine nuts and fresh parmesan, and…
…it’s pesto time.
The magic of this little jar of pesto isn’t in the home-grown basil or the easy recipe. It’s in the way it made me feel when I made it. Calm, secure, and fundamentally okay.
These size 1 needles are so tiny. And what do I do with this stupid cable? And why does my work have a big bare string of yarn in it?
I’ve watched 16 YouTube videos called “Getting Started with Magic Loop!” and it’s 11 pm and I was already emotionally raw because we watched the last episode of The Mandalorian tonight, and why did I ever think I could knit socks?
I have no idea what’s going on here.
Stop. Reset. Go to bed. Everything will look better in the morning.
