I met another neighbor, these were the neighbors the last guy I met warned me about. They seem nice enough and it sounded like the previous owners gave them a pretty hard time. I don’t like to judge someone based on their worst behavior, even when I see videos of a person shouting racial slurs at minimum wage employees I feel bad for everyone involved. It is a very rare case that that person says those things normally, now they have to deal with their mental break being shared all over the internet. People dumb, they make mistakes and often the court of public opinion thinks everyone always does the right thing, even though the judges are equally flawed. All that said, the neighbors were telling me the previous owners had dozens of animals on this two acre lot. They’d come home to see another dead animal in the yard and judging by what I see inside the house, I’m not surprised. My take is the previous owners had very ambitious ideas, but weren’t patient enough to have them done right. I can understand that. It’s taken 30 years of bashing my head against a wall to realize gently rubbing my head against the wall is less painful, still I do the occasional bashing to feel alive inside. Things are looking up, I’ve got a sleepy pup in my lap and have voice controlled music. I hear his relaxing groan and know everything is gonna be alright. I’m sure all the neighbors will be pleasant because I’m going to follow the rules or change the rules through the proper channels because I’m just a suitor of the land. I’d like to make things beautiful and prefer the work I do is able to stick around for as long as possible with little to no maintenance.
Life’s little leaks
The move is looking better today. When it comes to moving I only sweat the small stuff and at this point it’s all small stuff. Millions of little trinkets and do-dads that I don’t know why I ever bought them, I think of myself as a minimalist and maybe why I don’t like having stuff because of how much I hate having to move it. If everything thing I own could fit on my back, I’d be A OK with that. As the move winds down at the old place, I’m able to wind things up at the new one. When I let the dog out today, I spent some time picking weeds around the house. I want to eventually dig up all the plants around the house anyway, but in the meantime I can keep it pretty. My thinking is I don’t want an energetic tree to punch a root through my foundation. Pulling weeds also keeps me in that habit, I have to pull weeds everywhere I go on the property all the time because weeds never stop until they’ve been snuffed out. I suppose I can dig them up, but that’s just more sophisticated weed pulling. It’s a fun task though because there’s a sense of accomplishment at the end and when I look back, the area looks prettier than when I started. The time will come for trees though, I almost stopped at the plant nursery today to see if they still had this one willow tree on clearance. I probably will buy it online because I can get an older tree for cheaper, delivered straight to my house. A willow tree will be the focal point of the pond one day. I also met my first neighbor, well he lives four mailboxes down so I can’t even see the property, but he wanted to help in bringing the pond back to life.
24 Little Hours
What a day today has been. I woke up to make breakfast and decided to do some cleaning around the house because usually after a weekend of us relaxing there’s more than a few dishes laying around the house. I loaded the dish washer and when I hit “Start” nothing happens, I keep hitting start. Then I hit “Select Mode” and some lights turn on, so I know the machine is on. This was one more thing to the endless list of to do’s I have right now and my back was broken. I cried over a broken dishwasher, I only want you to do the thing you were designed for. Why is this dishwasher here and speaking to me if it’s going to refuse washing my dishes. Needless to go on, I had a bit of a break down this morning and needed to lighten my load. The big thing is my podcast, I’m not going to do it until I’m done moving out of the old house. I like to get into the mood to record, so the project itself is fun, but that requires a lot of energy and perfect timing. Right now I need my primary focus to be moving and cleaning that house before the end of the month. Mary told me I’m not a failure for resting, of course I’m not, why is my brain able to simultaneously believe something and deny it? Today ended up being a good day though, it was all about self care. I mostly laid my back on the heating pad and played Zelda. We’ve been enjoying our games and figuring out what this new home life is while playing games that live out fantasy version of what we’re doing. Mine is traveling through the world fighting monsters, her’s is designing and growing a deserted island. I made my first trip to the mail box today, that’s like going to the edge of the Shire.
Tea for Two
Last night felt like our first real night at the new house, we’re finally getting some time to slow down and enjoy what we have. Mary and I sat at home to play video games, it was probably the first time we ever did and I loved it. I’ll still be going back to the old place to get what’s left and to clean up until the end of the month. If there was an accidental fire that burned the whole place down, I wouldn’t need to clean it, the fire cleans all. Ah, but all my plants are still there, I want to make a trip to bring over a truck load of plants, but I’m dog tired and don’t know what the odds of that happening are. Today is also my pups birthday, he’s six years old though he’s got the energy of a six month old. Yesterday was when he found out there are deer in his front yard, we’ll see how that goes. There was a lot of staring and afterwards he wanted to go outside to “play”, but there wasn’t any barking, which is my main concern. He’s all grown up though, soon he’ll be dragging in venison and putting food on the table. I would give him his own room, but I think the closer he sleeps to me, the happier he is. I don’t know what we’ll do for the pups birthday, my wife wants to get him some presents from the pet store, so I’m sure he’ll be properly pampered. He pampers us too, so he deserves it. He’s gotten really comfortable on his back to where my wife and I can be laying down and I’ll pull him up to lay in between us. It’s all belly scratching and ear rubs from then on and he loves it.
Great Ball of Fire
Internet and furniture are at the new place, we’re officially moved in. There was even a beautiful sunrise when I woke up this morning to let the dog out. I’ll get to start everyday off with this view. What wonderful life I’ve been given. I’m watching the sun climb over the distant trees as I write this. Perhaps it will start shinning in my eye, I’ll let it for a little bit, the burn helps me know I’m not dreaming. There’s still so much to do, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed. When I let the dog out I noticed a bunch of spider webs on the porch, so I went to work with the bug spray. That led me to find the makings of a hornets nest, I sent them a strong message that they don’t want to build on my house. Then I found some ivy growing up the foundation and had to pull it off, that’s when I stopped myself. The sun isn’t even over the horizon, I’m supposed to be resting, get some breakfast. After this weekend I’ll hopefully be able to control myself better and the place will feel more like ours.
Oh yeah, I have some house keeping notes. I’ve been taking Sundays off from doing any work, but I noticed that the weekend and specifically Sunday is the most popular day for my blog, so I will resume posting my blog on Sunday instead of Monday. No blog posted on Monday, but all other content should remain the same. That sun is really digging into me now, I’m definitely alive and it’s beautiful. I’m very happy and grateful for everyone that helped me get to this point in my life. I know I can be a brat when I’m continually pushing for what I want. Hopefully I don’t hurt anyone too much and that I put more good into this world than bad.
From Binos to Ginos
When I was younger, sleep was one of my favorite activities and now it gets in the way of me being able to do actual activities. There’s never enough hours in the day and there’s even less wick to burn per day. Sleep is needed to be able to greet the next morning. I had another 5 AM wake up, this time from my wife hitting me. Because I get sleep paralysis, my wife knows to try and wake me up when I’m making groans. When I’m stuck in a dream and know it, I’ll struggle with all my might and in the real world it translates to some light rolling and noises. That’s the signal Mary looks for and that’s why she woke me up. Strange that it was about the same time I woke up naturally yesterday morning. All this sleep talk reminds me that I wanted to document how I sleep. After the world went crazy and I saw everyone was hooked into crazy juice from their phones, I said I’m not bringing my phone into the bedroom anymore. Right now the only thing I have on my bedside table is a watch. When I wake up in the middle of the night my brain needs to be reassured I have more than 20 mins left to sleep before it will relax. That’s the only update I need.
Now I’m waiting for the movers to arrive. They’re arriving early than planned, which happens to work out because yesterday the internet didn’t get set up as a result of a scheduling error and was rescheduled for today. Today is the big move and I’ll have to juggle a couple things. I find the hardest item to keep track of is the dog. Usually I isolate him to a room, but if people are coming and going all over that won’t be possible. I’ll have to disassemble and reassemble his crate a couple times, but it’s a small price to pay to contain that fireball.
Literal lumination like light
Last night’s sleep was revitalizing, my engines have been fueled and are ready to take off. I woke up around 5:30 this morning ready to jump out of bed, instead I hung out until my wife’s alarm went off an hour later. For a little while I’ve been good about maintaining a sleep schedule and it pays off with new life. When I look at my horizon I feel free, that makes everyday a personal adventure and I wake up thinking, “Oh boi, I can’t wait to shave and vacuum”, no joke. Discipline builds habits and healthy habits make activities more enjoyable. I’m not doing work for the man to give me a performance review, but I’m helping myself. Maintaining healthy habits is like building a brick house, it’s work that takes time and precision. Eventually shelter from the storm is created, but consistency is key. If I were laying brick and decided to take a sabbatical, then the rain might come and wash away my work. In the early stages, even a couple rows of brick can be taken down by ivy or an overgrown shrub. Everything has its place and time to shine. Today the internet gets moved to the new house and tomorrow the furniture does. Before you know I’ll be scything my fields and wiping sweat from my brow. I don’t plan on getting scyth, though they do look cool, there are more practical ways to cut grass without twisting and shouting in pain. I look forward to a riding mower because that feels very peaceful, even Forrest Gump continued mowing the school fields after he was a cogillianair because he liked doing it so much. That’s sort of how I feel about swinging an axe or a mattock, maybe that’s why prison always appealed to me. The worst punishment is being left completely alone and breaking stones all day long. I’ve gone out of my way to make that my reality.
Holy Holiday
Good morning, I’ve got most of the small stuff out of the house and we’ll have some movers help with the furniture. Tomorrow the internet gets switched over to the new place and we’ll quickly follow. Then we can begin “unpacking” because right now I’ve been hauling loads over and dumping stuff in whatever clean corner catches my eye. There’s a certain degree of cleaning that needs to be done before settling in and we might rent a dumpster for a day or something because the old owners left a bunch of stuff. They left some great furniture, like a beautiful table with eight chairs, but there’s just as much broken junk. Plus the previous owners had farm animals, so there’s additional trash for that. The two sheds down by the pond that will one day be great, most recently they’ve been used to house chickens and will also need some cleaning. There will be a never ending list of things to do because that’s owning a house, so I’m glad to be documenting my days. I think this is going to work out nicely. Today I’m mostly around the old place, I’m going to mow the lawn for the last time and have got to sign for a package. I was trying to explain that I want to make what I do look more like a job because I feel people think my availability means I’m available. I’m always working, sitting still, I’m probably building something in my head or piecing together a plan for what’s next. You won’t know if you’re going the right way without a plan. I also realized yesterday how connected people are to their phones. As crazy as this may sound, I go out of my way to not have my phone around me during the day because I see it as a distraction.
Unsightly Sightseers
I feel a lot better after taking my day off. Before the house, my energy tends to run out by Fridays, so with all the extra running around I crashed hard on Saturday. I may have had a migraine, but my body was exhausted and I hadn’t been eating. If you didn’t know already, the guy who writes a blog talking to himself and records a podcast talking to himself, this guy has social anxiety. When the time came close on the house, I was laying in the fetal position because of the stabbing in my stomach I get from those types of situations. I needed some time to reset after that. Hopefully things clear up and I’ll work until the tank runs low at the end of the week again. On social anxiety, I was talking to a friend recently and he has to quit his job because he found a new one. We were talking about him having to tell his boss and how awful that experience is. Talking to anyone is an awful experience in our shoes, but he called himself a “coward” because he was afraid to make the call. My response was, “I volunteered for a war and I ran away from making that call, so don’t be so hard on yourself.” There are different types of people and they fear different things. If two people are walking towards me, one with a weapon and the other is smiling and reaching for a handshake, I’m probably more afraid of the person smiling; I know what to do about a person with a weapon. I’ve studied a couple books to know what I’m supposed to do in conversations although now that I’ve got my own land I couldn’t care less if strangers accept me socially. The take away is to be kind to each other because we never know what someone else is going through. I can handle a lot of pain, but the worst pains I experience are invisible to the eye.
Who knows how the flow goes
This is just hunch, but I may not be as young as I used to be. I’ve began moving into the new house and when I woke up this morning, my whole body was sore. There’s an initial fear when I wake up and my back is hurting, that fear says, “You can’t do what you used to do, quit now.” Mental fortitude has me telling that fear to get lost, we’ve been on lockdown for month and it’s been difficult to find the motivation for exercise. Combined with the stress of paperwork the last couple weeks, my body has to be built up. When I’m tired, I need to rest and when I’m feeling strong, I’ll let go of the reins. On one hand, moving is an exhausting event that will be over shortly, but the other side is that I want my days to be filled with physical labor. I’m going to be building structures, planting trees, and constantly moving heavy things from here to there. That’s a lifestyle that I want to live and I can live it, but it is far from the lifestyle I’m currently living. It’s going to take time to get to where I want to be. I can only get there if I’m getting appropriate rest when my body needs it. Change takes time, so today I’m going to rest as much as I can. I’ll probably end up taking some stuff to the new house because we’ll probably go over there to enjoy it. The house is still so new that it has to be broken in, but really what it’s missing is internet. My intention is to set up a big mesh of internet around the house, so I have a good connection when I’m working up there. I’d also like to set up a receiver someday by the pond to have internet down there. Once I get to that point, I’m never leaving home again.
Chris' Morning Pages 