Adjusting

Now that my full time job is homemaker/writer/handcrafter, is it okay to just curl up with a good book for most of the day?  Or watch a movie?  Or any other "non-productive" (yet inspiring) thing simply for its own sake?  I'm new at this.  Should there be some measure of guilt when one is free from the obligation of leaving the house for work?  When weighed logically, it would seem that the $300 per month I was making is not exactly a huge loss so my level of guilt should be proportional to the amount of lost wages I no longer contribute to the household. 

Of course I know this is all ridiculous.  Middle class woman guilt. 

"It is generally assumed that a housekeeper's business is trivial and that the caring for home and family demands far less expansion of mind and vigor and intellect than the pursuits of a career.  This idea has prevailed and by some measure eroded the fabric of society because men and women, as a mass, have never been wholly educated on the matter."  Found in journal...not sure if they're my words or someone else's.

But that is my view on the matter which is probably why I took the time to carefully inscribe it...possibly to clarify it in my own head.  I'm acutely aware that most don't share that view and because I don't have any little ones to look after, I seem to be an even rarer species of woman. 

I have found that in a household of 2 or more people (when I am one of them), when everyone is working, things seem to fall apart little by little.  The laundry is always piling up and nothing ever gets ironed.  Dinners are far less enjoyable, hastily thrown together, and not always healthy.  I stash fabrics and fibers, essential oils and exotic sea salts...all for future creative projects and none of them ever happen.  Weekends are filled with the chores I couldn't do during the week and life seems to fly by with none of our hopes or dreams inching any closer and a lot less laughter and ease and a lot more malaise.  We are forever playing catch up.  The grass still needs mowing, the garage is an awful mess, the weeds are taking over the garden and all those green beans we harvested are rotted and moldy because I couldn't find the time and energy to can them. And I'll be honest.  I fail at everything that way because I can never put my full heart and soul into any one thing...there's simply too much to do.  This kind of living breeds a nasty, nasty depression in me.  Life isn't supposed to be this way.  Yet it usually is and for the most part, considered normal.  Other people seem to be perfectly okay with this.  Huzzah for them. 

My lifestyle and my physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being demand a lot of me.  A lot that doesn't jive with modern methods of existing.  But I finally gave in and agreed to follow my deepest instincts.  It'll take me a while to grow accustomed to the freedom ...to assauge the pressures of the perfection I feel I must achieve to justify my deviance from the norm. 

Hush the guilt.  If you see the Buddah on the road, kill him. (A most beloved koan.)  Embrace the possibilities.

Tuck Me Away In The Woods and I'll Change The World

I simply cannot stop dreaming of that sweet little cottage in the woods that will someday be mine.

Source: Uploaded by user via Laura on Pinterest

 Especially now that the bleeding hearts are pushing through the leaf litter and last year's kale, mizuna, and parsley have decided to stick around for another year.  It's the warm rains and the green and the mushrooms that follow that make me long for my own slice of land...equal parts forest and meadow and the most kind neighbors, living just out of sight and earshot.  In this little pocket of heaven, I will be safe from the madness of political idiocy and the sort of shocking ignorance that seems to be so ubiquitous when one isn't tucked away in their own little space of love in the forest.

I know.  It sounds like isolationism and pie in the sky denial.  But I long for community!  For neighborly visits and weekend farmers markets and local fiber shops.  Maybe I belong in other place.  Possibly another time, but I'm aware that this utopia of my imagination doesn't exist so perfectly anywhere and probably hasn't existed for quite some time.  Which is precisely what drives the push to find my domain...my kingdom of green vines and winding paths that always lead back to the hearth where a good meal is always simmering.

Source: Uploaded by user via Laura on Pinterest

It's quantum physics which leads my course of reasoning.  I've been trying to think of a good way to explain all this to someone who knows nothing about it...and knows nothing about the evolution of my mind.  Old friends seem to be stuck somewhere about eight years back for me and just can't seem to catch up or relate to anything I'm saying so it's a project of mine to try and retrace my formative steps.  How did I arrive at the conclusion that isolating myself from the madness will reign in a new era where my wistful visions of the future actually come to pass?  It's been a long journey.  It just might make a good blog project.  An odd one.  But a good one.