Nearing the End of Year 2024

As I near the end of 2024, I impulsively wrote this blog post half-heartedly attempting to make sense of my emotions. This is a blog, not an official and important website, eh?

Just to contradict the rest of this post 🙂 – I live a fruitful, adventurous, and comfortable life. I am very grateful for my circumstances, support system, and opportunities. I have nothing to truly complain about and so my entitlement that comes from being a human being has driven me to complain about big picture ideas. Please feel free to criticize me in the comments, I’d really appreciate a slap in the face!

End-of-Year Rubbish

You can call it winter blues, or New Year’s Resolutions, so that your search engines might find this post relevant. But I’m not lost or wandering, looking for a direction – I’m angry. Livid, actually. What am I angry about? If you were to ask me in person, I’d say that I didn’t know, because it’s so much easier to chalk up this anger to an amalgamation of circumstantial factors that, combined, don’t really point to anything specific, but I’d be lying.

No, I’m angry precisely because I’m not lost, just stuck. The circumstances of our societal structures make us stuck, each and every one of us. Except maybe those 0.05% individuals of the population who have enough money to do whatever they want. Is that how simple it is? Having money to have liberty? It’s important to ask that question and realize that it doesn’t really matter if you figure out the answer or not because more than likely, it won’t help you get out of the dog days of whatever situation you find yourself in.

We’re ALL stuck in this spinning wheel of survival, of constantly working on projects and seemingly failing to complete them, all in the name of and attempt to liberate ourselves from the bounds of working to live. That isn’t to say I don’t want to work, so long as the term “work” refers to activities that involve developing the lifestyle I want to live rather than the lifestyle we are given to live. Does any of this make sense to any of you?

Anyway, none of it is anything new, not only have countless voices expressed the same thing but this singular voice has expressed it all countless times before. It’s not radical to yearn for the lifestyle described of a communal village, to want to spend my days tending to plants and animals, hands deep in the mud or dirty with fur. I don’t mind scooping shit if it means I have healthy, natural eggs to eat every day – rather than these yellowed, sour ones we get from Costco. (BTW – We just switched from Sam’s Club to Costco due to the greater variety of produce options, only to find that Sam’s has much better eggs. You can never win!)

Killing Eve

Here I am confessing to being a Netflix zombie – Killing Eve did just what it set out to do, which was challenge me to reflect on whether I, too, am secretly a psychopath who just hasn’t discovered her potential for murder, yet. Yes, Sandra Oh’s and Jodie Comer’s incredible performances had me tingling from the drawn-out, high-stakes tension of intimacy (not just sex – but it’s always about sex, isn’t it?) and wondering if that’s all that would take for me to drop everything in my life to become an assassin in hopes of freedom from societal standards.

The whole point of the show, of course, is pointing out that even the highest-paid, evilest members of a murderous secret society aren’t untethered from expectations, rules, and the risk of death by killing – no, worse – imprisonment veiled by a false sense of security. Isn’t that depressing?

Funnily enough, Gunn’s character hit closest to home. If I could live out my life in a cottage in the middle of a Scottish isle, hunting for food and tending to fires for warmth, would I be willing to kill rando’s for a living then? “As long as I don’t get my eyes clawed out and left by my most recent one night stand,” I think to myself. But there’s no guarantee of that, is there?

Call Me Whatever You’d Like

A poem by me, hopefully conveying the above-described sentiments all wrapped up in the foundational desire to be free and chaotic as nature seems to be, unlike the controlled and stifled feeling we collectively seem to have in this world of so many RULES.

I stood to admire the writhing worm at the steps of the clay house I sculpted it. 
Mud stained the palms of my hands and soles of my feet, 
Caked the crevices of my toes and lined the beds of my fingernails.
And to myself, I thought, 
"If this is what it means to be a dirty hippie, I don't mind."

I stretched a strap round the trunk and, tired, rested a moment against it.
Ants marched in my periphery and led the way through the bark,
Making further progress in moments than I'd hiked miles in the day.
And to myself, I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a tree hugger, I agree."

I caught the cold wind of the peak in my throat as I danced to the colors that came from it.
Sun blushed my cheeks, and my chest, and my chill.
So I spun my staff ever faster.
And to myself, I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a lost soul, I hope they never find me.

I swayed and I sang on the garden grass to the buzz of the bees who sustained it.
Daffodils danced and lilies laughed along to the harmonized wind chimes,
Azaleas held the foundational tone.
And to myself I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a flower child, let it rain."

I cried at the smart of the onion, and quipped back at it "must you sting me so?"
Crowded cutting boards and kitchen pans chittered their stories at me,
My gut grumbled back at them, disgruntled.
And to myself I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a health nut, I'm ravenous."

I screamed through the rush of the water, fearing the weight, oh the weight of it.
Stones smothered with life slipped under my feet
As I buckled, breathless, below.
And to myself I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a river rat, try and catch me."

I burned by the beams of her one watchful eye, faint from the heat of her morning.
Sand-coated, dusted, rubbed red and raw, 
Then bathed by the rolling foam floods.
And to myself I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a beach bum, bury me."

I crouched at the feet of a wood pile, I huffed and I puffed at the flame.
Leaves protested crackling or cackling, I'm unsure,
As the darkness slowly faded away.
And to myself I thought,
"If this is what it means to be a fire raiser, feel my heat."

I shivered and crawled into covers as the stars high above bid good night.
If fungi could speak, it was whispering, otherwise
A hush fell over the valley we reigned and a stillness froze even the mind.
Gratitude stayed my tongue and my eyelids, so I sighed a warm breath on your skin.
And to myself I thought,
"If this is what it means to be one with the earth, let me rot."

Bailey the Bus Update

She got her roof raise! We are working on getting all the rivets in. I am very fortunate to have received so much help from so many friends and family members and neighbors and other community figures to have accomplished such a feat. Check out some random photos from the experience in the gallery below.