My essay was selected as the first to be released in the Essays on a West Virginia Childhood project.
You can view the piece online here:
Tag Archives: West Virginia
Exactly the Distraction I Needed.
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.
How Lisa Lost Her Groove
I had a groove goin’. My routine, not yet rolling smooth, but definitely movin’ to a beat, a rhythm of some kind.
Get up, do morning news and facebook online, work on the magazine, visit the gardens, gather eggs, bake some bread, do some housework, work on the magazine, piddle with a project or two.
That was my rhythm, and I was really getting my groove.
Then, I decided to get a job with the census.
Bye Bye groove.
As a crew leader, my hardest task is getting everything done in under 40 hours a week. (Not counting the hours now required for regular laundry, ironing, organizing, primping — those things a job also requires.) But as a creative person, the hardest part is watching all my other projects fall behind.
First off, we’re back to store bought bread. Even with the bread maker, I just don’t have the mentality for it. For some reason, baking bread requires a complete “homebody” mentality, and I’m carrying that “career woman” mentality again. I just know any bread I would make now would be hard as a rock.
Also, the house is a complete mess. Dishes, laundry, dusting, sweeping — all behind, with new messes made every day. There’s clutter, everywhere. For me, clutter outside the brain causes clutter inside the brain. It drives me crazy. My usually organized desk is scattered with notes, papers and post-its. My work table is covered in census paperwork. The coffee table is piled with reading material that I now feel I may never get to.
The chicken pens need cleaned, the plants in trays need put in the ground, the flower and herb beds need weeded & mulched, the porches need cleaned off, and the yard needs mowed.
But, I’m caught up on all my census work and am only slightly behind on my monthly magazine routine.
It doesn’t help that I am always tired now. This typical insomniac has slept like a baby since this whole thing started. In fact, last night I fell asleep at 6 pm after dinner, woke up at 1 am, went back to bed at 2 and slept until 6. That manic energy that normally swirls around inside me (some people call it ‘gumption’) has vanished. I work from 7 am until 2, and by 6 or 7 in the evening, I’m tuckered – with still so much to do.
Thank goodness we don’t have children. They’d be going to school dirty, naked and unfed – without their homework.
We had Daisy Dewdrop on a diet and regular exercise schedule – that’s gone by the wayside.
I missed my last CEOS meeting (our cemetery clean up day, and that’s a good one), and I’m the club secretary.
Sure, I’m getting a regular paycheck now, and that’s all well and good. I like paying off credit cards, stocking the pantry with store-bought sundries, treating ourselves to Chinese food and a movie.(I ate two boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal this week – and am now wracked with guilt.)
It is very, very difficult to balance work and home – and I seem to be failing at the task. But it’s only week two, and I’m starting to feel like things are smoothing out. I might soon get it on a rhythm, and then I’ll get a new groove.
Soon, I hope.
