Soooo, I have been thinking about my poor neglected blog for a few days. I feel all the feels when I think of this blog. Happy, because I like the past posts, sad and guilty because I never gave it the time it deserved to become what I wanted it to. Nostalgic, because man, were those simpler times or what? With the nostalgic feeling taking hold of me, yet again, I pulled up my word baby and saw my last blog post…. FROM 2017?! What?! Where does the time go? What have I been doing with myself? Is “life” a valid excuse? So I have made the vow (again) to love my blog a little more and to write more regularly.
2020’s finish line is in sight and boy has it taken everyone for a ride. A global pandemic, the crazy stock market, mass school and daycare closings, toilet paper shortages and in the US this was an election year! Let’s not forget the fact that in the US we had murder hornets and meth gators, all of Australia was on fire, and locusts were eating everything in sight in Africa. All of that paired with the protests that have been happening all over the world… The stress of it all has been a lot.
All these things caused SO many changes in our house, and at the same time, not so many changes at all.
The company that I worked for, who is still an amazing company and does good work, had to let almost everyone go. We are talking bare bones skeleton crew. I was not a bone in that skeleton. For the very first time since I was a teenager, I didn’t have a job. Heck, I normally have TWO jobs. Because I am a work-a-holic. I felt (feel?) totally adrift, like stuck on a dingy in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight and no anchor to hold me in place while I got my bearings adrift. I LOVE work. I love doing good work. I have always defined myself by my ability to be the best at that work, and if I am ever not the best I will work my tail off to learn all the things to try to become the best. It’s just that “Working Christy” has always been a large part of my identity. A piece of me is now missing, you know?
It’s not like I didn’t have anything to do. I am a mom of three kids and a urban farm. There is always stuff to do! Armed with a list full of house projects and the determination that I will do something with my life, I tried to put a bandaid on the hole created by that missing piece. I was going to fake it till I made it!
I have worked from home ever since I became a single parent back in 2008, so my day to day changed only in the fact that I wasn’t hooked up to my computer for 8 hours a day. Well, and I also added a second student to “The Bacon House Home School For Kids Who Still Need To School.” school. Luckily, Haley graduated this year so she only had to turn in a few things online to finish off her school year, and was responsible enough to be able to do that on her own. This was going to be a piece of cake!
It was not a piece of cake. It was hard. It IS hard. Homeschooling a first, now second grader is hard. Don’t get me wrong, Thomas is learning and he LIKES learning from his mom, he likes snuggling while we go through the curriculum sent out by his school and reading together. He is growing. But I am not a natural teacher. Gavin, who has been homeschooling since 6th grade, has always done it through a virtual school, so it is a pretty big adjustment. I find it hard to make time during the day to do school stuff. I am the type of person who wakes up, makes the coffee and starts moving. I am cleaning or working on a project from the moment I wake up to the time I go to bed. I even knit or crochet while I watch tv, so sitting and being present for JUST school was hard for me. I would just tell myself “It’s fine, everything is fine. This isn’t forever. You have a limited amount of time to get this and your projects done. You want to feel accomplished and have everything done before work starts back up, right?”. A few months I thought, maybe until autumn. Then life would have to start getting back to normal.
But it didn’t. School was not going to just restart back up. It looked different. Everything looked different. Things were still up in the air at the company I worked for. Not knowing where the next step is going to lead everyone is paused one foot in the air. Not that I speak with my coworkers with any regularity and could know for sure. Speaking with them makes it real. If I don’t talk to my coworkers still there, it stays just an extended vacation right? Everyone always says they could use a little R and R. I’m lucky, right?
With the realization that things need to change. I needed to change AGAIN and God do I hate change. I had to come up with a plan.
I have sold honey and things that I make locally for years. Nothing big, just honey and eggs at the stand, and the occasional craft or project when someone comes to me with some hope and an idea, things I make with the wax from my bees. I have played with the idea of expanding for quite a while. I have even had offers from some local stores (pre pandemic) to carry my wares. It was part of my ten year goal that I started a few years back. I knew I wanted to try, but it was such a big step.
With nothing but a black void in front of me, I took a breath and took that step, finally setting my foot down.
Because of the way things look with Covid, I figured that an etsy shop would be my best bet. With it being almost Christmas, I started with putting up ornaments. I try to post new stock on my shop about every two days. It takes me two days to get pictures I like and write out what I want to say about my products and feel good about what I am posting. It is scary. What if people don’t like the things I make? I like to be the best. What if I fail? I might. But you know what? That hole, that lack of purpose, it isn’t gone, but it feels like it has healed a little bit. Maybe writing not just about the going ons on our little farm, but also about our change, about my healing and rediscovery, will help someone else going through the same thing.
UrbanFarmingMom 