It’s been hard writing in this blog these days. What you don’t see is days’ worth of blog posts that never make it to the web. They’re either too short, too long, too babbling or just too uninspiring to hit the page. And there’s a good reason for it. Lately, I haven’t had the physical or virtual space to let my mind settle. Instead, it’s been all over the place. A pandemic. A divided country. Too many zoom calls to mention. A sick kitty. A busy work schedule. A renovation project. Even as I started decorating for Christmas, I couldn’t find that simple joy that I cherish so much. My heart kept telling my mind to just chill out and that we truly had a great life here down on our little tiny farm. My mind kept shouting back, “Yeah? Look around. I’m busy, tired and stressed.” My mind, it appears, is a little defensive sometimes.
Very slowly, my heart now appears to be winning the battle. Part of it is environmental. I stopped allowing the news to take up so much of my day. As a kid, the news was delivered twice a day – once in the form of a newspaper which may have taken all of 20 minutes to read; the second time in that hour from 6-7 p.m. when the evening news came on. So, toggling to the news sections of various online news sources several times a day wasn’t doing a lot to improve my state of mind, honestly. There were other environmental factors at play as well. Meadow started getting better on her medicine and what was more, we could see that she actually felt good again. Nothing, it appears, breaks your heart more than having a sick pet who can’t tell you how he or she feels. On the other hand, nothing feels better than seeing that sick kitty get well.
Work, while busy, was also settling down a bit. And finally, my husband largely finished the remodeling of the bathroom and laundry room, which allowed the tools to be put away for Thanksgiving. With that and with my heart beating out a solid message to my brain, I’m starting to finally get the message: we got a good little life out here past nowhere.
That’s where I am today. Candidly, my husband has had a lousy day. It started when he decided to build a fire in the woodstove as we hunker down for a winter storm warning. The humidity and low barometric pressure pushed the smoky air back down the chimney and into the house. That set off a course of events that led to me – the asthmatic – spending about 20 minutes outside while he cleared the house of smoke. In the meantime, Meadow became distressed because of the commotion and ran into the basement, where the smoke was the worst. Twister, our little guy who isn’t so little anymore, took advantage of a lousy gate locking effort and managed to unhook his gate and wander downstairs in the middle of the commotion. That led to more panic as Darryl was trying to get Meadow back upstairs, get Twister back to his room and clear the house of smoke. And I, of course, with my weak little lungs, had to stay outside and watch from afar. It’s amusing now but in the moment he didn’t find it funny.
Still, a few weeks ago, a day that had stated that badly would have led to a day that ended even worse. Today, it hasn’t ruffled me. Instead, I took stock: the ladders are still put away, the kitties are still healthy, work is still manageable and we are still largely insulated from what’s going on outside our doors. So, it’s all good.
Now, I have to be really honest. Of all the things that were bothering me, the one resolution that has given me the most peace, sadly enough, is that the ladders are put away. I find as we continue to do renovation project after renovation project that I struggle the most with finding my own sense of simple peace when the house is torn up. Once the house gets put back together, I seem to immediately calm down and find my center again. Today? I’m all centered.
And perhaps that’s why I can finally write again? I mean, let’s face it. This post is just one long Seinfeld-like blog post. It doesn’t really have a point. But yet, the words are flowing. More importantly, those words are flowing from my calm place. The posts that you can’t see were all about how I enjoy my peace and my new life when – straight up – I wasn’t really in that head space. Today, I found simple peace again. This torrent of babbling is all genuine.
It occurs to me that I need to understand how order and chaos drive my sense of peace and that the ladders being put away is more symbolic than I actually realize. I left a chaotic but successful career to work from home and part-time. For nearly three years, the sense of peace and harmony that single act created has sustained a general feeling of good will that has stayed with me through the death of my mom, the illness of several close family members and even the early days of the pandemic. But the totality of all of the chaos of this past year finally overcame that sense of peace in the last few months. The ladders were only a symbol of that chaos.
Today, with the ladders away and a vaccine on the horizon, I am finding the physical and emotional space to again let peace settle in. It feels so good. But it’s also important to realize that my sense of wellbeing is tied to my sense of peace. That, as tough as I once thought of myself as being, I’m just not that person anymore. I need calm. I need simplicity. I need order. I need just one crisis at a time. With a healthy set of two kitties, a cleaned house and a renewed sense of serenity, I’m there right now. But next time I get lost? Well, I need to put away the ladders again – metaphorically, this time. I need to slow down all of the stimuli and find a quiet spot. Can I survive in the chaos still? Yes. I am still tough enough to handle it and for long periods of time, if I have to. But do I want to? No. And the older I get, the more I realize that my future days are more limited and it makes sense to spend those days in ways that bring joy to those I can help, those that I love and to… well, myself.
So, here’s to a quiet house. More importantly, here’s to a quiet mind.
The Yuppie Homesteader 