My daughter Primrose is asleep in her bed all by herself, which is very rare. Her sister, Marlena, is upstairs asleep in the Pack n Play. Their mother, Savanna, is asleep in her palace upstairs. Both dogs are asleep on the ground. The cat is outside hunting rabbits, birds, and mice. The quiet sounds of 27 baby chicks chirping from their boxes upstairs soothes me to an almost asleep state as I sit on the futon looking north out our windows at spruce and birch trees swaying in the wind with a background of a light blue and pink sunset sky.
We have been busy… so it is important to have moments like these. What can two unemployed adults be busy doing? I am too tired to start a list of things we’ve been doing, I’ll sum it up in one word “Landscaping.”
Every day we are out there working our butts off or we are in here doing our chores and taking care of our two little girls. Okay… not every day… We just went camping for two nights and it was AWESOME and much needed! I highly recommend to anybody reading this, put the pick and hammer down and go out into the woods for a couple of days with your family to be reminded of OTHER reasons you live where you do.
One of my girls, Primrose, is exploring every damn emotion known to Man all within a manner of 3 minutes and it can be so draining and triggering that it requires every bit of patience and sometimes disassociation to not yell. And it doesn’t help when her little sister cries and cries and cries. Oh geez, the whining!!!! And then being around two kids learning how to talk means that they don’t know what decibel they are talking at so they’re basically always yelling and screaming and it’s really, really fucking loud. Phew…
Today was different, though. Today I pulled both of the girls in a Gorilla Cart down the road to the gravel pit where one of them climbed the “mountains” of gravel and slid down while the other practiced standing in the cart. And then we went down to the creek where the one threw rocks in the creek while the other practiced standing and smelling. And then we slowly, slowly, sloooowly walked back up the hill. All of that walking was done in silence. We listened to magpies, chickadees, snipes, cranes, ravens, eagles, and robins. We watched them swoop from tree to tree. We smelled the tiny pink labrador tea flowers and dandelions. It was quiet and calm, just like I like most days. We did that while their mama was inside sanding our newly built table and coating it with Helmsman.
I took the eldest girl on a similar walk later in the evening where we went to the gravel pit for her to climb mountains. She chased the lone sandhill crane that has been looking for a mate and then I sat on the highest point of the gravel pit with the sun on my face after what seems like months without the sun and she sat down below me playing with rocks all by herself and then she climbed up the hill I was on and sat down next to me. Finally, at one point, Primrose, myself, Charger, and Dulce (the two dogs) were all sitting down next to each other on the hill not moving. It was so, so nice.
But that’s not how it is a lot of times. But this morning I had a great talk with Savanna about how badly I wanted to talk less and do more, especially regarding parenting. So it felt like I succeeded today.
I must enter a brief note in here about my writing:
After I was on the Cleared Hot podcast about a month ago, my book sold more copies than it had since the first month of it’s release. I have received a steady stream of listeners sending me friend requests, private messages, and emails letting me know what the podcast meant to them. It was/is a huge surprise! And with that surprise, I’ve been fueled to write the second book. Now, the second book is currently in 2nd draft form, so it’s already written. But I am struggling with getting over the hump of “this book is garbage” and into the land of “this book is amazing!” I am working through the self-talk that says “you don’t make any money writing, so why don’t you get yourself a real job that pays rather than waste your time doing this.” I am trudging across the valley of “you have a thousand chores to do outside, not to mention the unfinished projects inside… so don’t waste your time writing.” And then I have to overcome the urge to spend every minute I am alone on the computer trying to find ways to promote my first book, reading reviews about my first book, or simply staring at the picture of the cover on Amazon and thinking “holy shit, I actually have a finished book for sale online!”
So I am trying to get into the habit of waking up at 5 to write on Book 2 before I go outside to work… But it’s not easy… I hate to say it, but if my writing was making me thousands of dollars each month I think it would be a lot easier to justify the time spent. But since it’s not, I have to battle the self-critic every time I open this damn laptop to try and work on my writing.
Because “Landscaping” calls. The kids call. The wife calls. The chickens and chicks and plants and…and..and…
And… I’ll finish this blog by saying how freakin’ stoked I am to be riding this pink cloud of life at this moment. Chimes singing in the background, I’m about to sleep on the couch just like I did before I met my wife. I LOVE sleeping on a firm couch.
Be grateful for what you have and be the person you want to be.
