Tag Archives: rural

Exactly the Distraction I Needed.

June 6, 2010

I do a lot of planning in the winter. It’s my routine. I spend that cold indoors season planning out projects for the spring and summer. Usually, come spring, I’m off and running.

Usually.

But this year, when time came to put all those plans into action, I got sidetracked by – The 2010 Census. I applied (who couldn’t use a federal paycheck) and besides, I needed a break from my life — a life I should have been appreciating more, a life that should have had some kind of direction.

But, I was tap dancing. Garden plans were easy to work through – manual labor, in many cases, requiring little mental focus. But my writing, publishing, business goals — I just wasn’t focused.

I love being a publisher — but I’m still new at it. Meanwhile, the venues and outlets for publishers grows and grows every day: facebook, twitter, blogging, video, ebooks, photo stories, the options seem endless.

Meanwhile, I have discovered that my goals as a publisher — whatever they be — do not align with my needs as a writer. I write three regular pieces each month for Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine, and I feel that is more than enough for each issue, for sure. But, there are other things I want to write about that aren’t columns, aren’t “articles.”

I started Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine so I could learn with our readers. After three years of learning and educating myself though — I’m feeling that need to do some teaching with my words. I’ve been studying culinary and healing herbs — from seed to skillet or herbal tea or tincture — and have never found many books or resources that organizes the information the way I would. I hope to soon be publishing some eFiles (white papers, special reports, ebooks – whatever you want to call them) that shares the information in a more practical way.

Frank and I have also sacrificed our travels and travel writing for our garden and our magazine. Our camping gear is dusty and disorganized, but I feel a trip coming in the next 30 days. It’s been too long, and I have my new little Olympus camera to play with. I’m sure we’re going to Audra State Park (which we’ve covered several times before because it is our ultimate favorite place) but we’ve never taken video, we’ve never blogged about it, and we’ve been away for far too long.

None of this did I realize though, until I put it on the backburner, behind the 2010 Census. I worked exactly 53 days for the census before I resigned. I was trained, trained others, and coordinated CLD 105 until all the Assignment Binders were complete. I started with 18 active crew members, and the day I left, there were four left to wrap up the details. They didn’t need me any more — and the garden did.

The moment I turned in my notice of resignation, all my other plans and projects and ideas came into focus. Just as I was beginning to think my plans for a local community market would have to wait another year — our site location was approved. Research and development I was struggling to understand jumped out at me from the pages of a new book – clear as day. Herb seeds, tossed out in the early spring and since forgotten, appear and remind me of my hopes for them, and I caught the potato bugs arrival in the garden — just in time to win the first battle.

Before the census, I had drafts and plans and projects too many to process. But upon my mental return, they are simply waiting to be brought to life.

I’m still not organized. Things have come together in my brain and not yet in my life. Paperwork, dishes, laundry, dog walking — all these things also have to be done. But the direction is so clear now. Whatever was keeping my mind in a tangle has simply — disappeared.

I can’t wait to go camping now. Four or five days away from the phone, computer, farm and garden will be a retreat that allows everything in my head to fall completely into place, and provides the rest and rejuvenation needed to tackle it all gleefully upon our return.

But, before we can go, we have to get the garden ready, sort and wash the camping gear, publish and distribute the July issue, launch the community market, and find a sitter for the chickens.

<sigh>

In the meantime, I have started some new projects. I’ve been beating my brain about eBooks since January, and have accomplished two of my 2010 goals: offering eSubscriptions, and offering past issues of Two-Lane Livin’ as eFiles. Seems like two fairly simple things, right? Well, I’ve been trying to figure the right way to go about it for six months. Right now, I’m putting up past issues beginning with Volume 1, Issue 1 – September 2007 issue, and I’m going to work my way to the present. So far, two issues are available, both of them no longer available in print. The eSubscriptions right now are handled through paypal and links provided by e-mail, but I’m hoping to automate this service soon.

But not until AFTER everything else.

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I Miss My Life

May 27, 2010

Considering the rise in frustration and attitudes this week in my census crew, I would take a guess that we all need this holiday weekend. Of course, officials would rather we all worked but, they are willing to allow a little breathing room.

As for myself, I miss my life.

When a task demands that you be on call or available seven days a week, it is easy to neglect other things in your life. Gardens, pets, friends, family… Today, I am feeling a little resentful of the way the census has demanded my attention and time.

And frankly, no one can work seven days a week for three weeks or more and not get a little burnt out.

The government is a cold, flawed boss. Rules, regulations and policy — all of us are nothing more than temporary cogs in the wheels. No benefits, no over time, no mercy.

Of course, in my lifetime I’ve had other bosses that were the same, but I’ve also have employers who felt more like family than bosses.

Either way, there are some in my crew who look at the hay fields, and know it’s time to put up hay. Others, like me, look at their businesses and see the paperwork piling. Meanwhile, days of rain last week and hours in the field gave weeds in the garden a head start, and I wonder if I’ll ever get caught up with them, much less ahead.

Of course, the crew also includes the die-hard workers, who prefer to work on a holiday weekend, to milk the government pay for all it’s worth, or for lack of anything else to do. Meanwhile, there are those also who never really wanted to work in the first place.

Government pay is hard to find in Central West Virginia, and we are all very fortunate to be among the few chosen for these jobs. Even so, in many ways, I feel I have sold my soul for the almighty dollar. I’ve stockpiled coffee, cocoa, sugar, and other pantry staples, bought Frank two new pair of Levi’s, have set aside funds for new brakes on the GMC and a few other repairs. Our “tab” at the corner store is paid up (not that it ever gets far behind), and other than that — well, we really don’t need a whole lot.

A majority of our next year’s groceries are in the garden, or in the pantry already. No temporary job or government pay scale would purchase the bounty that our garden promises.  A couple week’s pay could never benefit the farm the way a good harvest of hay will.

In many ways, I feel spoiled and lazy when I say I tire of this job. I feel, in many ways I’m “looking a gift horse in the mouth” and I don’t care. It’s odd. I’ve pretty much had a job as long as I can remember, before I was sixteen. in my life, I can remember perhaps a total of a year, or two, when I wasn’t employed. Now that I’m self employed, setting my own schedule, my own routine, I find it difficult to be at the beck and call of “a job.”

What a spoiled, spoiled creature I am.

So, even now that I am painfully aware that I am no longer enjoying my task, I cannot part from it. I am not a quitter by nature. The task isn’t finished, and I fund myself unable to separate myself until it is. It must be that West Virginia work ethic, something that only runs through about half of my crew. For those who do have the work ethic, for some, the choice must be made — to continue this temporary task for the government and risk serious set backs on the homefront and farm, or to forfeit the 40 hour paycheck in order to secure the harvest.

Which has greater value? The 40-hour paycheck or the season’s success? Which should be sacrificed? I feel confident that an urbanite’s answer would be much different than the regrets I am being offered by a crew member or two — the same regrets that sound in my mind as I frantically yank grasses from my lettuce bed, and pinch weeds from between the carrots.

Certainly, the head office in Detroit wouldn’t understand…

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Two-Lane Livin’ Uncovered

April 23, 2010

Frank and I just completed our first “academic” year as students in the WVUncovered classes at the school of journalism at WVU. The project is designed to teach community publications about new media, and two main classes were held to show and teach us about online video creation, and online photo slide shows.

Remember, we’re not a newspaper, in a classroom full of newspaper people. Online videos and slide show presentations really make sense for a newspaper, but what about us? Video of me running the rototiller? Feeding the hens? Harvesting the garden? Pictures of turkeys mating, deer grazing, geese fighting… Who’d want to see that?

Well, it appears that some folks do want to see that. To us, it’s just normal, hum drum, every day life.

But still, I still have reservations…

I may be able to publish a magazine, tend three gardens, take care of hens, learn about bees, work the census, create a board game, and maintain some level of consistent “micro blogging,” but — I’m not always on top of the house keeping….

Videos, photos, will show that…. To the WORLD…

I know, people in Thailand or Zimbabwe might not care if there’s chicken poop on the walkway or a pile of laundry to be folded and put away, but I really don’t want the whole world to see that, especially people I KNOW. My mother would die of shame.

But, nevertheless, Frank and I will be forging into the online video and photography scene. We’ve got big plans… Garden reports, chicken reports, weather reports, maybe some cooking tips, plenty of wildlife video.

I’m excited about it, and still a little nervous too. In many ways, instead of me reaching out and posting to you, “out there”, I feel like I’m inviting all of you into our humble home.

I hope you don’t mind that “lived in” look.

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