Posts Tagged ‘blogging’
Couldn’t Resist
Obsessive? Perfectionist? Linear? I just can’t help myself.
Last night I was preparing the post for today (June 1st!), giving a shout out to the PBS program, “Food – Delicious Science,” and in my over-tired stupor, inadvertently clicked the “Publish” button a day early.
So what? Who would even notice?
I would.
It messes with my order. I figure the mistake was a good indication of how excited I was about sharing the word on the incredibly informative program. It may also be a way to nudge me toward observing and contemplating my incessant drive to maintain a regular order of one-post-per-day. Or, it could simply be a result of not getting enough sleep at a time when my poor little brain is under a lot of stress.
Regardless, without this silly little addition to fill in the gap, June 1, 2017 would have looked as though there was no post on Relative Something. An aberration! Now, you and I understand that wasn’t the case, but what about others who stumble upon this place? I have to consider them.
So, instead of letting it go and getting on with important things, I gave in to the urge to right the wrong. Think about that.
Happy (extra post) June first!
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That John W. Hays.
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Mildly Hesitant
I found myself mildly hesitant yesterday about writing of our having ordered chicks. I had it in my mind when building the coop last fall that we might be able to get our hands on some adult chickens for our starter flock. Instead, we are starting with chicks. That involves a bit more nurturing than I’d been contemplating.
I should be thankful. We could have gone all the way and opted to hatch them from eggs. With no previous experience in this realm of chicken raising, there is always a chance disaster could happen and we might make some fatal error that takes innocent lives.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to blog such a possible outcome and expose the personal failure. Then it occurred to me, that is what I do.
In discussing this topic with Katie at work, I became aware of a change that has transpired in the four-plus years Cyndie and I have been here. When we first arrived from our lifetimes in the suburbs, we were entirely naive about almost every situation we faced.
Long time readers might recall that we didn’t realize we already had a hitch installed on the old pickup truck we bought. I had no experience with a chainsaw. We didn’t know anything about growing hay. We’ve come a long way. I would even say I’ve had a few moments of feeling cocky about our accomplishments.
So, it dawned on me that cockiness was bringing me to a place where I felt less inclined to write about the things with which we still have no experience, like raising chickens.
I guess I’ve quickly worked through that hesitation I was feeling. This John W. Hays’ take on things and experiences currently involves our ongoing transition from a suburban lifestyle to a rural ranch, one experimental step at a time.
Hopefully, next year I will be reporting about how few flies and ticks we are bothered by after the addition of chickens to our menagerie. Maybe also, how the transplanted tree in the labyrinth is thriving.
If those things don’t happen, I’ll likely have chronicled about that, instead. Chronicling the whole range of adventures we are living, both the successes and failures, is what I do. Even if sometimes, with a little hesitation.
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Being Me
It’s been a long time since I just let words flow from my fingertips without any preconceived notion of where I was heading or what would come out next. One reason for that is, it doesn’t tend to produce a result that holds much in the way of value for anyone reading other than me; and even I don’t get much from going back and reading the words that have piled up.
However, I’m feeling like lately my writing has settled into a somewhat humdrum pattern of dreary detail about waking up, driving to work, coming home, seeing our pets, clearing some snow, cleaning up after the horses, and lamenting over the news.
Where is my soul in this chronicle of the day-to-day?
When you write and publish a narrative of a personal everyday, there develops a pattern. The longer it goes, the more likely it can become something of a facade.
I suppose regular users of other social media are already well aware of this phenomenon.
It is likely that I am only writing what I want the world to know about me. Of course, there is probably a portion of who I really am that readers glean from my choice of subjects and words over time, which defines me more precisely than I think I am actually doing. But that is happening somewhere beyond words. It’s out there in our intuitive perceptions.
I guess I inherently accept that level of revelation.
I remember actually pondering over how to traverse the long walk in front of the packed bleachers of my high school gymnasium during basketball games without appearing to be the hypocritical fool I was attempting to be.
I was overly-selfconsciously trying to stroll as if I was not the least bit self-conscious about being an awkward adolescent walking in front of hundreds of classmates, parents, neighbors, friends, enemies, and strangers who shouldn’t care, or even notice me in the first place, yet were likely doing that very thing themselves; actually noticing and judging me whether or not they recognize the pettiness of doing so.
Hypocrisy.
I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. Somewhere along that adolescent time period, I experienced a profound epiphany that inspired me to strive toward being the same person in every moment. Regardless of whom I might find myself with at any given moment, I want to be my most genuine self. It’s not easy to achieve, but it is a noble goal.
I believe I have failed probably as often as I have succeeded over the years, but with that as my goal, the failures have been minor. I still judge others more than I mean to. I still say things behind a person’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face.
But I catch myself doing it most of the time, and that is the key to interrupting the pattern and making a correction toward the goal of integrity I ultimately seek.
One tool in aligning words with noble intentions is the art of saying nothing when you have nothing good to say. Another is to think before you speak (or write).
What I’d like to achieve is a place of enlightenment where I can write without thinking or filtering and have the flowing words reveal my pure soul and the narrative of the day to day, hypocrisy-free.
Wouldn’t than be a nice me to be.
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A Recap
How did we get to this point in the story? …Previously, on Something Relative:
John (that’s me) and his friend, Gary, were going on a trek in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal and wanted to share stories and photos of the trip with friends and family. Son, Julian, suggests I should use a blog for the purpose. I look to post something new everyday to keep the thing from becoming stale.
I write some poetry and take pictures. One day, my wife, Cyndie, tells me I should put my poems on my images. Words on Images becomes a regular, occasional feature.
I share stories and pictures from an annual bicycling tour and camping week that happens in June every year.
Cyndie and I go on a trip to Portugal to meet Ian Rowcliffe and his family and friends. Life altering trip inspires us to dream about creating a forest garden of our own and leads Cyndie on a path of discovery with horse communication.
When we decide to look into selling our suburban home of 25 years and shop for horse property, Cyndie gets recruited for a lucrative position with Boston Public Schools. Blog becomes filled with posts depicting me trying to cope with her absence while doing some minor remodeling in preparation of putting our house on the market.
Cyndie comes home after a year and we get our first offer on the house. We take a look at a few new properties in town before seeing the paradise that we chose in Wisconsin.
Blog becomes a chronicle of our transition to rural life while making property enhancements toward becoming first-time horse owners. Oh, we also got a Belgian Tervuren Shepherd dog named Delilah who has a knack for commanding all attention possible. Cat, Pequenita, is a sweetheart who demands less attention, but is no less loving and lovable.
I begin to figure out power tools and tractors. Cyndie and I trade off years staying home full-time to manage the property. We plot launching an equine-assisted training business. A relationship blossoms between our family and the Morales family in Guatemala, growing from a first meeting between Cyndie and Dunia at the Epona apprenticeship in which they were both enrolled. Trips back and forth to visit each other in our home countries ensue.
We decide to try building a chicken coop ourselves and make plans for a couple of years, fretting over how we would keep dog, Delilah, from killing them if we added a flock.
Neighbors (and our farrier), George and Anneliese temporarily move in with us while they are between homes in a plan to move closer to family back in Minnesota.
Somehow enough people overlook the crude and bullying, most times inappropriate, and occasionally vulgar statements and behaviors of a candidate with no previous governing experience to elect him as our 45th President in our national U.S. election.
Super moon arrives to the closest proximity in the last 69 years. It looks like a sunrise in my image.
I’m not quite sure what to expect next. Will we actually get chickens? Will we figure out how to grow our own hay and get it cut and baled? Will we launch the business? Will we ever get our dog appropriately trained? Will the climate continue on its trend of increasing warmth and extreme precipitation events? Will I continue to post something new every day? Will I find a way to get back to visit Ian in Portugal again? Will we get the significant projects under control enough that I can ride bike and play guitar more? When will I cut my hair again?
Stay tuned and keep following along. I’ll probably post about all the above and more, with photos!
Thanks for reading my “Relatively Something” take on things and experiences!
John W. Hays
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Many Thanks
On this eve of our Thanksgiving holiday, I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to you, my readers, for venturing into my world and joining in my adventures and explorations of Somethings occasionally Relative. You may have arrived to view my stories of a Himalayan trek, our visit to Portugal, my annual bike trips, pictures, poetry, Words on Images, or tales of a transition from the suburbs to our Wintervale Ranch paradise. You may be family, friends, coworkers, fellow WordPress bloggers, poets, photographers, wordsmiths, or happenstance searching link-clickers.
You are my audience, and I thank you for your participation, silent or otherwise.
I hope that regular followers have grown familiar with the usual cast of characters that populate the content of late. A certain dog seems to get the most mention. Long ago I began a move toward dropping constant use of orienting descriptions for people and animals that show up in my tales of adventure and woe, hoping that they were becoming established and familiar to readers over time.
We are many chapters into a book that you are reading as it is being written. What will happen next? I can’t make it up. The drama plays out with little concern about how I might be able to narrate it.
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I purchased a replacement GFCI breaker for power to the waterer in the paddock. It failed, too. My “spidey” sense tells me there is leakage current, after all. Removing the access panel on the waterer revealed an incredible amount of moisture present. No wonder. I saw a statistic that we are currently running in 7th place for wettest November on record.
In the previous two years of having that waterer during the winter, we’ve never faced needing to have the heater on when it was so wet.
I’m temporarily bypassing the GFI safety feature to keep the ice off the water source for our horses. Cyndie had a heck of a time breaking off the ice for them yesterday morning, after I tried a night with no power at all.
It appears the solar-powered battery supplying electricity to our arena fence is successfully keeping the horses from wreaking havoc on the barrier.
I found a picture I had taken with the intent of showing how wet the ground was, and discovered it caught Legacy in the distance, mouthing the fence. Busted!
Don’t forget, you can click on the smaller images to bring up the full-size view for closer inspection.
Our house is already filled with the aroma of traditional holiday feasting fare. Cyndie has been busy cooking and cleaning in preparation of hosting Thanksgiving dinner here tomorrow. Family that are planning to come should consider bringing mud-boots.
The weather shows signs of possible precipitation, in addition to the water already saturating our grounds. I’m hoping we don’t all end up stuck indoors watching parades and football games, and eating way more than we should as a result of more rain. It would be a shame to miss out on walks in our woods, exercising Delilah to tire her out, walking the labyrinth, and visiting the horses.
I’m guessing we won’t let a little rain stop us from getting out for a little bit.
Thank you for reading!
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Two Things
While trudging through new drifts on a walk with Delilah yesterday morning, it occurred to me… there are two things. I’m sure it can be argued that there are more than two things, but that is a topic for another time. I’m just writing now about the perception of two things. There are always two and though they may be distinct, they are undeniably, inextricably linked.
Case in point: there is Delilah pulling me up the steep hill at the end of our walk, and there is me being pulled up the hill by Delilah. Two things.
There is happiness, and sadness. Hope, and despair. Winning, and losing. Those are obvious. How about, almost there, and not quite there yet. Dreaming your reality, and realizing your reality is a dream. Waiting for tomorrow, and wondering where tomorrow went. There is pondering how this could have been a poem, and seeing how likely such a poem would seem trite.
The thing that I find most fascinating about all this silliness, though hardly surprising, is how it is revealing the chasm which inevitably swallows all the creative momentum and ingenious possibilities between the amusing period of conception and the time-delayed attempt to build the idea into a rewarding post.
Yesterday morning, it was vapor, filled with potential. Then it evaporated. So I tried anyway, long after my brain was wallowing in the distractions of being back in the house. My poor brain, which more than anything enjoys every opportunity to take naps whether the eyes are open or closed. Maybe I think of naps because that has become the length of time I can do anything of my own agenda. It is the duration of Delilah’s naps.
Luckily she naps frequently. When she is not napping she is begging for attention beyond my capacity to engage with her. It’s right out of the breed description: “not typically recommended for people who are inexperienced with dogs. His temperament and activity level can be overwhelming to people who haven’t had a working dog before.”
When I went down and sat with the horses on Thursday, I had left Delilah in the house. She hesitated about accepting her leash and I wasn’t up to the game of enticing her. I went out without her. That is why I was able to spend a full half-hour of blissful serenity with the horses.
Two things. I was sitting in observance of the horse activities, and I was with them as a member of the herd.
Two things inextricably linked: my daily inspirations that become blog fodder, and the hard-fought battle of doing those inspirations justice in words, sentences, commas —or not— and paragraphs. No wonder I always try to include images.
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Relative Something 