The Cycle Becomes Linear – Repetition Revealed As Drive

A realization hit me today. Today was one of those slow, idyllic days where everyone was relaxed and perhaps there was enough time or room in there to dream a little bit. So I did. Along with that came what I have mentioned two posts back about the cycle I seemed to go through and how it seemed I was heading into it again.

So I started to wonder about this cycle again, wonder why I go round and round with it when I know how it’s going to end up. What causes me to pick it all back up again and yearn for the end result that I dream about?

That is when I started to realize that perhaps we weren’t talking about a cycle at all. Maybe what I was experiencing was something more akin to drive, or motivation, or a deep seated determination. Hmmm, interesting. That puts a new spit shine on things. I have never been one to really believe in a cyclical view of history or actions, coming from a Christian worldview I have always had a more linear approach to things.

So boys and girls what I think we have here is simply a case of linear determination and adversity, plain and simple. What I first envisioned as a cycle of discontent that lead to engagement which lead to frustration and then to simplicity and back now seems to look more like a deep, primal drive for an end result that just meets what should be expected adversity and resistance along the way. This is good because it helps me to see a few things:

1. Simplicity as an end result – The previous end of my cycles always ended up back at this point, simplicity for the sake of itself and as a solution. In the new perspective this becomes an issue, a band aid of sorts. If the deep seated desire can only be satisfied by the result it seeks then this solution leaves that desire unanswered. The manifestation of this is obvious now, it typically resulted in me picking back up plans and doing more projects and so on. Discontent would eventually bubble up because the desire was still there, it was just momentarily penned up by resolve, so to speak.

So what do I learn about this aspect? Simplicity is part of the process and part of the end result but is not THE end result itself. I cannot settle for just that, it will never work.

2. Adversity – All plans meet with adversity. While I was previously looking at adverse conditions as a brick wall that caused me to turn back and return to the starting point, I now must look at them simply as obstacles that require ingenuity, and determination.

3. Planning & Patience – I will be honest, I still need to figure this part out. This is where I always run in to trouble. Discontent with work or other areas of our current way of life have historically fueled my impatience and desire to just “get there”, as Sue Jamison said if Off the Grid. The inability to just “get there” in turn would fuel frustration, and frustration would fuel a sense of futility and doubt, which repetitively spelled D-O-O-M.

I need to figure out how to manage or throttle that whole process so that it does not keep becoming the reef that sinks the ship. Once that is managed I believe the rest will go a bit smoother.

The more I think about it the more it becomes obvious. Plans to “just do a garden”, or pick back up books of ideas that spurred motivation are now revealed as that gnawing desire for independence.

An interesting question for another day is where that desire comes from. I am no longer fiercely political, having lost faith in the character of the majority of people that represent us. While I still hold, and likely always will, to a muddled pool (my own) of conservative and independent beliefs, I can’t see that being the motivation. I take little part in following or engaging in the arena at this present time, but I do recognize the inescapable need to do so if I am to adhere to the philosophy inherent in the title of this blog.

Could it be from my worldview, which is Christian? I would like to say it was entirely Christian but having little faith in my ability to maintain a thorough and faithful Christian lifestyle I would say it’s largely Christian and somewhat worldly. Does the desire come from being “of the world and not in it” ? A perfect description of that is found here. Is it a desire to break free of the world that drives it? Not to abandon the world mind you, but in a sense to break free and set up an outpost from which to battle on my terms.

I do not know the answer to that just yet and perhaps it is one that will provide fuel to the fire but as it is it seems I have a little work to do and I think at least now we may be operating from a functional foundation, at last.

Sodbusting

One of the things that manages to survive the constant transition between one set of ideals and the other is my desire for a garden.

From a budgetary perspective it makes sense no matter what we are doing. From a health standpoint it just seems to make more sense to have good healthy food, and far more fruits and vegetables than what we are eating now.

Up to this point I had tinkered with raised beds of various format, 4 x 8 beds and 4 x 4 beds. It was most likely my fault but I was never too impressed. They seemed a bit constrained, restricted even. Unless I was a master biointensive gardener I could not count on a very high yield with a low bed count.

Along with this was the fact that there was an additional outlay for materials, which in my experience only served to really delay ever planting a garden. Waiting to have the money to put together more beds and finding the time to build them and THEN digging and prepping the beds meant that my garden activities were slowing to a halt.

I had loosely committed to taking a more traditional approach to the garden plot but just hadn’t go around to any action. This week was an internal battle between hiking, while it’s still “cold”, and taking care of chores around the home that really needed to get done. I floated some feelers out during the week and even as late as Friday night in an effort to let hiking win the epic battle but in the end, the homefront won.

After running some other errands I returned home and work got underway. I roughly plotted out a section that was around 20 x 20. It contained the area where my first three raised beds were so there should be some good soil in those spots. It was largely covered with bahia grass and some Johnson grass I believe it’s called.

The rest of my day was spent breaking up the ground with a shovel (400 sq. ft. of it) and then raking out the pulling out the grass and weeds with a 4 pronged rake. It may not have been back breaking but it was back pulling at least.

After breaking up the ground I did a little raking to get ready for the digging. I plan to double dig the plot but I’m not sure if that will be smart.

So for now the plot is at least ready for further work. I plan to have it done in time to plant something for the spring. I may start looking for some heirloom seeds between now and then and look at a transplanting schedule as well.

Up till now I have fiddled with a lot of theory and very little practice and figured its probably best to just jump back in and learn through trial by fire. Grow and amend, grow and amend.

Until next time.

Cyclical Bitopic Amnesia And Compulsion Disorder

OK, I made that name up, let’s talk about what it means…

First, let’s take inventory. I was going to post once a week, do all these things and keep this thing active, blah blah blah because that’s what they tell you to do to get traffic and be successful and some more blah blah blah. Umm, didn’t happen. Probably wont happen, oh well. At least right now

I had partially devised a complicated plan to achieve all these wonderful things and it just wasn’t working, it never worked. I have come to a point where what makes me a little more settled is the thought of simplicity. Reducing all the things I am trying to do, reducing all the clutter, reducing all the lists and plans and everything else is becoming more attractive. With a 6 month old and a 4 year old, complexity is not a good bedfellow. And it’s stressful.

I was going to become a theologian, small scale organic farmer, survival guru and instructor, master naturalist and bonified woodsman. Oh, and I was going to maintain my IT job (notice I didn’t say career), and give appropriate attention to my wife and two daughters and the church. Riiiiight. One of the hard pills I am having to swallow is that I cannot make a seismic and drastic shift in what I do and how we live all at once and right now. Maybe not at all. Every rerun of Survivorman (he’s returning by the way) and Good Neighbors I watch makes me want to do it all even more. Every edition of Acres magazine has the same effect.

Usually what happens is I get stressed out, things fall behind or remain undone, the unpredictability of life springs up, so on and so forth. I also at times would take off the rose colored glasses and wonder about the feasibility of it all. We, as many others, are heavy laden with an obese mortgage and what might as well be two more kids, Visa and Mastercard, they cost as much anyways. How can I transition careers and roll the dice and start over when we’re in no position to do so.

Other times I would consider our temporary temporal nature and wonder if what I was engaging in was the best use of time. Come judgment day how much weight would an organic garden and survival instruction and a Linux OS matter? Often tending to the soul and sanctification is what fell behind.

It is at this point that I would decide to focus on the things that had eternal importance. Studying the Word of God, taking care of the family and providing, and leaving all else to God’s will in my prayers. That is where I am now. I have been here before. Enter the cyclic amnesia.

What normally happens is I will go for a while content and then will become highly discontent at work and wonder about the eternal importance of that choice. I will tire of living life on someone elses terms and hours and goals and so forth. I will wonder if I am teaching my children to just be sheep and dutifully fall in line with the world. I will look at my 40 hour week of drudgery and wonder why I am spending my life that way. At this point I will start to think about the things we could do for the Kingdom if we were on our own terms, the freedom we would have in our vocation, limited only by our creativity and our ability to find niches in the market. And it is here that I will return to the former paradigm.

Ideas start to blossom, editions of Acres magazine come back out, Survivorman comes on, and though it pains me to admit that I read it even only occasionally, I see off grid homes and awesome gardens in a magazine that goes by the name M.E. News (I refuse to spell out the name, figure it out). I start to realize that we are talking about a big paradigm shift and this is not something to pursue haphazardly so I start laying out goals and creating lists, and doing all these things. Cyclical.

So I tend to go back and forth between eschewing the whole complicated idea and choosing to focus on a few small things to committing to struggle if I have to in order to chart a new path for us because we just do not like the one we are on. Round and round, round and round.

That’s inventory. That is the struggle that has been going on, that should explain the lack of posts. All the options at times look attractive to me and at times they all stink. I honestly do not know which way to go. So essentially Cyclical Bitopic Amnesia and Compulsion Disorder means I go back and forth between two paradigms and forget why I left the other paradigm behind and discontent with factors affiliated with the current paradigm compel me to return to the previous one, and then the process repeats itself. A cycle between two ideas that is driven by forgetfulness, and perhaps idealism.

That all explained I have returned to simplicity mode.

Gardening is still a go
Reduction of clutter and junk, go.
Growing in my faith, go
Family, go

That’s the foundation at the moment. I will still tinker with survival stuff, some hiking and camping when possible and feasible. I will try to swallow the vocational discontent as much as possible.

As a sidenote I have let the domain mapping on this domain and wonderfulwild.com expire, they will go back to their WordPress names. The mapping was a 12 dollar renewal, and the domains are coming up for renewal on the 28th, that has to be around 50 bucks or so for the two of them. Basically I don’t have 75 bucks to throw at blog sites that I am not keeping up right now. Maybe I’ll wrap it all in to redeemerfarm.com one day, who knows.