Life-Pace Whiplash
From my soft life to the farm and back again! Plus, what I'm sewing on these days!
FOR CONTEXT:
As I shared in my last post, I am trying to channel my summer energy into the momentum of starting a small business—Soft Spaces! I’ve run into some frustrating snags with the website that I made with all the wide-eyed website-building naivety in the world, but I am slowly figuring it out. I ordered business cards and flyers this week (ahhhhh!) and am realizing that my “start a business to-do list” is dwindling to the point that the next step will soon be “find some clients, do the work!” Which makes me nervous, probably because it is the unknown. But also because it will once again, be a change of life pace. I have never, ever lived life at the pace that I have for the past 6 months, and it is maybe a little bittersweet to ease out of the chapter I have been so dramatic about!
Like I mentioned in my last post, my life has been slow and spaaaaacious and simple, since my dramatic departure of the 8-5 world in February. It has not been free of anxiety, but it has been free of overload and hurry and forced office small talk and Sunday Night Scaries and red-hot stress and crying-in-my-car-during-my-lunch-breaks, thank goodness.
The bittersweetness is also just about the loss of freedom, the loss of autonomy, the putting-things-on-my-calendar again, the potential to re-join the Monoculture of Work Stress that I have I’ve been out of for the past few months. The pace of my unemployment has been a source of anxiety and much overthinking, but six months in, I am feeling much more at home in this slow and spacious reality.
Speaking of life pace, I’ve been having life pace whiplash over here!! I spent about 3 days on my family’s farm in OK last week. It was the first week of sweet corn harvest and everyone was working at max capacity, and my Enneagram 2-ness was SO happy to be of assistance!! I made some meals, did some dishes, watched my sweet niece, sorted and bagged corn, helped my sister-in-law pick flowers, dug potatoes, layed out some comforter blocks for my mom, and carried bags of corn out for customers.
Of course, I found this all so much more romantic than anyone else in my family. My own little agrotourism gig! I absolutely love going home during the middle of any harvest season and getting to manually labor for a few days. It is so satisfying and fun, and is truly one of the most natural ways my family-of-origin functions and flows: working hard together. It reinforces our commitment to each other, our love, our attitudes, and our family roles. My brother is steady and assures quality and “rightness”, I am the levity and hype, and my sister senses and fills in the gaps when anyone needs to bow out or take a break, or if there is a job no one else wants to do. This is essentially how we function in life as well as labor.
Ross and I have deemed ourselves the “farm aunt and uncle”, because we love going home and playing hard on the farm, but we also love leaving the true stress of farming with the actual farmers. Bless them. Farming is so vulnerable, full of constant problem solving, creativity, and flexibility, I am always in awe of my family. Due to some farmy circumstances, my dad and brother got up at 3 am on Friday morning to harvest corn to sell at multiple farmer’s markets the next day. 3 AM!!! Truly there was never a time when there wasn’t work to do. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I had things to do back up in Kansas, and Ross and I are going back this weekend to help at the multiple Saturday farmer’s markets.
It is always a shock to my system when I make the 3 hour drive from the farm where my whole family of origin lives and works, back to my home “in the city” with Ross. I usually come home tired, and fighting some guilt for leaving them when it feels like there is infinite work to do. Sweet Ross usually has the house clean when I come home, and some idea for dinner. I’ll start some laundry, do the dishes, water my flowers, and we will probably end the evening with a show on the couch and be in bed by 9:30. And the change of pace, the change of labor, the change of lifestyle and responsibilities always takes me a few hours to readjust to. I have remember my current life, the life I have built and chose, a life without a billion things to harvest and animals to feed and 3 am alarms to set, and how I actually love and value this softer and spacious life I am living.
PACE WHIPLASH!
I love to labor, and I love to not-labor. Somewhere in there is a balance I am looking for, I’m sure.
This morning, I went to my small raised bed at the community garden to “harvest”. I got a few zinnias, three tomatoes, and a cucumber. I pulled some weeds, and then headed back home. It took me 20 minutes! I did the work that was mine to do right now, in this season of life. Also, I have been using my Taylor Swift popcorn bucket for so many garden things this year. I didn’t even watch the movie, but when Ross and I went to go see Poor Things last year, they put our popcorn in a leftover Taylor Swift popcorn bucket, and it has come in very handy this summer!!
I also came back home from OK with tons of produce—my labor “wages”! I made zucchini corn chowder (yum), TWO batches of this version of chocolate zucchini bread to keep in the freezer, potato salad, corn dip, hardboiled eggs, tomato sandwiches, and just regular corn on the cob!
Other than the pace whiplash of summer, I have been dragging in sewing motivation lately. I know it is seasonal—I don’t want to be down in the Genesis Pod sewing during the SUMMER, when it is bright and colorful outside, but there was at least some movement there this week.
I am still continuing to work on my EPP project, since I can do that upstairs or even outside on the patio!
I also just finished a table runner for my Grandma’s birthday! I used all my purple scraps to make it, and traditionally, I do not use purple in my projects, so I had lots of it to use! I mailed it to her yesterday.
I also went to one of my favorite fabric stores this week, with a dear friend. I bought these seven fat quarters, and they have completely revived my vision for a new baby quilt I am working on! I was so excited to get my hands on some of the cutie Ruby Star goat fabric, melt my heart!!
The fat quarters played well with some other fabrics I had in my stash, this is going to be such a fun project!!
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This is my favorite time of year. The heat, the sun, the produce, the colors, the food, the flowers, the freedom, the solar energy of summer!!! From middle-July to the end of August is my absolute favorite part, and I just want to soak it all in, bottle it all up!
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Okay, that’s all for now! Thanks for reading along, I am grateful for you!
Until next time,
Kate
Finally able to finish this cliffhanger now that I'm at my laptop instead of on my phone. I'm laughing at the corn silk all over your clothing - accurate visual of the corn shucking process 😂 Your mom's wall hanging is beautiful! And I can't wait to see the new baby quilt - those fabrics are adorable.