A long deserved update
January 11th, 2012
It’s a brand new year. Time for an update, and to start thinking about what form this blog will take. I’ve been paying to host it without much activity over the past couple of years, hoping that I’ll eventually get back to a place where I am able to and feel like posting regularly. This might be the year… we’ll see.
An update is in order, since it’s been so long.
When I first started this blog (years ago, now) I was working with my boyfriend Jesse in our ceramics studio, exploring fiber arts as part of the larger studio, and living in the beautiful but somewhat remote driftless area in the southwest of Wisconsin in the midst of 80 acres of restored prairie and mixed hardwood forest. On any given day I saw more deer and wild turkeys (or their tracks) than people. It was quite the experience for a city girl like me, and I loved it. I loved disappearing into the woods for hours at a time, coming home as darkness fell with a camera filled with moments of discovery and awe and wonder.
We didn’t have TV let alone cable, and our main connection to the outside world was through our internet connection, which fortunately was more than adequate. I was working part time as a waitress in Madison, which was a perfect social outlet and flexible job to have as the orders in the studio waxed and waned.
But alas, it couldn’t last forever. The economic downturn combined with some personal and family issues led to us having to make some difficult decisions. I chose to go back to school, and we packed up our ceramics equipment, put it in storage, and moved to a farmhouse outside of Whitewater in late 2008. I began school in 2009, studying education, business and biology, along with a fair number of electives that I couldn’t resist. Moving houses is always challenging for me. I’m definitely somewhat of a creature of habit, and when my surroundings change I have known myself to feel a bit disoriented and more than a little overwhelmed. It took me around a year to really settle in and make myself at home in the old farmhouse.
Losing the access to nature, especially the complex biodiversity that had surrounded me out in the country, felt like a blow to the gut, as I craved that grounding energy more and more as the stress of the move washed over me. It’s said that when God closes a door, he opens a window. And so I became a passionate gardener, starting seeds in the dark months of March, ordering seeds from bright catalogues, and studying medicinal herbs, native plants, and permaculture principles. It wasn’t the same as the garden that Mother Nature had planted, but it was an outlet that provided me the opportunity to interact with the world outside my window, and I welcomed it.
I simultaneously felt myself drawn increasingly to studying environmental biology and conservation at school. Although I had read Aldo Leopold before my experiences in Blue Mounds, reading the familiar passages resonated deep within me unlike before, echoing with my time spent lost in the woods and clearings.
And it wasn’t too long before an opportunity presented itself for me to work at an urban farm practicing aquaponics. Aquaponics is the raising of fish and vegetables in a system that recirculates the water between the fish, who put wastes into the water, and plants, who uptake the wastes out and use them as fertilizer (there are a lot more steps involved and I could go on for hours, but for the purpose of this update I’m keeping it brief). Once again, I’d be working with Jesse in a business that I believed in, and as much as I didn’t want to shake things up, I couldn’t turn it down.
We commuted an hour each way to work for a while before deciding to look for a house to buy in Milwaukee. I really didn’t want to move again, especially with my garden beds just getting established, but at the time it seemed like the best option, since the drive was getting old fast and we were doing work in a field that we believed was going to be a good long term career path. So we took the leap, found a cute little cape cod with a generous fenced back yard and signed the papers (after 4 scheduled closings…. long story). I was actually relieved to be signing on for a 30 year mortgage, given my dislike of moving. I was ready to settle in.
Then, a bunch of negative stuff happened at work. I won’t go into it here, but suffice it to say that there were significant mismanagement issues and financial instability ensued. Jesse and I both found ourselves without our salary for weeks at a time. Pets got sick and passed on, our stress level skyrocketed, the painting and other homemaking projects got sidelined, and we hunkered down into survival mode. We tried to ride things out at work, but decided that we couldn’t stay any longer due to the ongoing issues and we both left in spring of 2011.
Since that time, we’ve been building our own business. It’s been a long and continuously stressful process but I do believe in what we’re trying to do and after going through several stages of processing I now am at peace with where we’re at. It’s a messy, unpredictable, beautiful, precious, straining, and rewarding time. I’m pushing my boundaries, learning new skills and rediscovering strengths buried deep within. Up until a couple of weeks ago, the stress of it all was kicking my butt, despite my best efforts to meditate, exercise, eat nutritious food – you name it. Days flew by, filled with to-do lists that never got knocked out despite long days and endless hours of work, progress was hard-fought, and moments of joy were hard to come by.
Things are better now. I’m practicing mindfulness meditation – trying to remember this is all very exciting if I can just let go of the death grip I feel like I have to maintain in order to keep things from spiraling out of control. The perspective I’ve gained from this has really slowed time down and made me realize how important being in the NOW really is, even if things are far from certain and financially secure and all of that, there really is so much in my life to be grateful for. And despite how much time and energy the business needs, I realize now that I have to set some time aside for myself and for settling into my new house. It’s such a relief to experience a bit of enthusiasm for house projects as the impact of the stress from the change is fading.
I have many projects to update this blog with from the past couple of years. At the worst of this stress storm, I had little energy or enthusiasm for anything, even my fiber arts, but that is getting better. I’ve joined a weekly knitting group, and I’m pushing myself to make time for the projects that really interest me. I’m so grateful that even though my budget is practically zero for such things, I’ve built up quite the spinning stash and I have more than enough supplies to weather this.
So, in conclusion, here’s to 2012 – and more frequent updates from me!
