A friend recently said to Luke and me, "Write, you crazy fools, write!" So here I am, writing something. I've actually had several ideas for things to blog about in the past week but for some reason I never seemed to find the time to write them down... Even now, I'm writing frantically in the few minutes before dinner, hoping I have time to finish my thoughts before the ribs come in from the smoker (yes, I am usually vegetarian, but living with my parents means accepting a lot more meat into my diet... plus, ribs are really tasty).
I've just been too busy, honestly, to write. And it's not that I am running around like mad, getting things done from the moment I wake up to the moment I hit the hay. I just find that, when I have free time, I'm not that excited about sitting down at the computer to stare at a screen and furiously drag marvelous thoughts from my head. No, I'd rather take my free moment to sit outside in the sun and read about making rye bread. When you have the chance to do things you've always dreamed of doing (sitting in the fresh air and reading about things that interest you), it's hard to even think about doing anything else.
Not to say that I don't enjoy blogging! I do, I really do. In fact, I love it.
It's just that...
Well, I think I am trying to live a little more in the moment now, not worrying about things much. Writing can occasionally feel... obligatory. Now, I do lots of things in my daily life that are out of obligation rather than pleasure. I just often find that obligation to get up and do things outside gives me a different kind of satisfaction than sitting inside and enhancing my carpal tunnel.
Here's a nice example:
Today Luke and I cleaned the "mini-coop." The mini-coop is a smaller version of the main chicken coop that sits inside of the chicken pen. It also has it's own mini-pen. We use it to hold the young chickens while they are too young to mix freely with the older hens or if there are chickens that need different feed. As you saw in Luke's recent post, we (until recently) had 12 broiler-chickens. They lived in the mini-coop so they could eat broiler mash instead of layer mash.
Yes, different kinds of chickens need different kinds of food.
Anyway, the broilers being eviscerated and sitting quietly in the freezer, the mini-coop is sitting empty while waiting for the layer chicks to be big enough to move into it. Before they move in, the mini-coop needed a nice cleaning to rid it of several weeks worth of hay, pine shavings, and--ugh--droppings. So we cleaned it.
That task, to put it lightly, sucked.
We had to first scoop out lots of hay (foul, smelly, musty, poopy hay) with pitchforks. Then use a shovel to scrape up the bits that stuck to the floor. We did this to the whole coop (don't let the word "mini" fool you--it's way bigger than "mini") and then tackled the mini-pen. Same thing: scoop up shit-laden hay, all wet and nasty after yesterday's thunderstorms, drag chunks from distant corners, blast food trays with the hose. No fun.
On top of all this, it was hot and muggy. The mosquitoes and deer flies were terribly happy to see us. A tick was crawling up my leg within the first ten minutes. All I wanted was a hot shower and a cold beer!
But I stuck it out. We both sweated through the hour of drudgery for the sake of it. It needed to be done, we didn't enjoy it at all, but we did it. That is the kind of obligation I find myself fulfilling when I feel the need to accomplish something. I think that if more people spent their time doing things like that--getting tired, dirt-covered, sweaty, frustrated--then maybe they would be more happy with the simple moments of peace that have come to mean so much to me.
--Allison
I've just been too busy, honestly, to write. And it's not that I am running around like mad, getting things done from the moment I wake up to the moment I hit the hay. I just find that, when I have free time, I'm not that excited about sitting down at the computer to stare at a screen and furiously drag marvelous thoughts from my head. No, I'd rather take my free moment to sit outside in the sun and read about making rye bread. When you have the chance to do things you've always dreamed of doing (sitting in the fresh air and reading about things that interest you), it's hard to even think about doing anything else.
Not to say that I don't enjoy blogging! I do, I really do. In fact, I love it.
It's just that...
Well, I think I am trying to live a little more in the moment now, not worrying about things much. Writing can occasionally feel... obligatory. Now, I do lots of things in my daily life that are out of obligation rather than pleasure. I just often find that obligation to get up and do things outside gives me a different kind of satisfaction than sitting inside and enhancing my carpal tunnel.
Here's a nice example:
Today Luke and I cleaned the "mini-coop." The mini-coop is a smaller version of the main chicken coop that sits inside of the chicken pen. It also has it's own mini-pen. We use it to hold the young chickens while they are too young to mix freely with the older hens or if there are chickens that need different feed. As you saw in Luke's recent post, we (until recently) had 12 broiler-chickens. They lived in the mini-coop so they could eat broiler mash instead of layer mash.
Yes, different kinds of chickens need different kinds of food.
Anyway, the broilers being eviscerated and sitting quietly in the freezer, the mini-coop is sitting empty while waiting for the layer chicks to be big enough to move into it. Before they move in, the mini-coop needed a nice cleaning to rid it of several weeks worth of hay, pine shavings, and--ugh--droppings. So we cleaned it.
That task, to put it lightly, sucked.
We had to first scoop out lots of hay (foul, smelly, musty, poopy hay) with pitchforks. Then use a shovel to scrape up the bits that stuck to the floor. We did this to the whole coop (don't let the word "mini" fool you--it's way bigger than "mini") and then tackled the mini-pen. Same thing: scoop up shit-laden hay, all wet and nasty after yesterday's thunderstorms, drag chunks from distant corners, blast food trays with the hose. No fun.
On top of all this, it was hot and muggy. The mosquitoes and deer flies were terribly happy to see us. A tick was crawling up my leg within the first ten minutes. All I wanted was a hot shower and a cold beer!
But I stuck it out. We both sweated through the hour of drudgery for the sake of it. It needed to be done, we didn't enjoy it at all, but we did it. That is the kind of obligation I find myself fulfilling when I feel the need to accomplish something. I think that if more people spent their time doing things like that--getting tired, dirt-covered, sweaty, frustrated--then maybe they would be more happy with the simple moments of peace that have come to mean so much to me.
--Allison
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