Lessons Learned from Exhaustion

    ex·haus·tion

iɡˈzôsCH(ə)n/

noun

1. 1. 

   a state of extreme physical or mental fatigue. 

   2.  the action or state of being used up completely.

     Like I really needed a dictionary for this one. But it's been my experience that when life sends the same lesson around more than twice, I should probably take note and dig deeper into the core of the matter.
     When I think of exhaustion, I think in two forms: physical and mental.
     To the former: there's exhaustion from moving furniture; selling a condo; running a business. There's exhaustion from day to day maintenance of things like houses, gardens and critters. In short, there's exhaustion in simply keeping up with life. No matter how much you love all these things, there's an expenditure of energy that goes along with the formula, that if not allowed for and treated properly, can deplete you if you don't pay attention.
     But then there's a deeper exhaustion.
     The kind that comes from caring for others and feeling helpless when they suffer. There is an exhaustion that comes from empathizing, not only with the pain of that loved one, but an extension of that care goes likewise to those who've been caregiving up close.
     And then there's the exhaustion of sheer loss.
     Physical or mental, exhaustion is exhaustion, and in my book, not something to treat lightly...If it's physical, our bodies will often slow us down, but if mental, that demands a whole new tact, as this state of emotion is not a mental visitor I want to overstay its welcome.  As Americans, I think we pride ourselves in our exhaustion. We wear it as a badge of honor, as if to say "Look how hard I'm working. My life has value. Just see how tired I am." But this is not a badge to strive for...not a word I want synonymous with my name. Not an energy I want to be known for.
     To my way of thinking, exhaustion is a lens through which we view life...and if we're not careful, it can become our lives, and I'm convinced, if not yanked up by the roots, it can take over our the garden of our lives like crabgrass run amuck.  I for one want to pluck it when I spot it...Pull out the exhaustion herbicide and say "Not in MY garden you don't!" My garden has a greater purpose than this. I will NOT let exhaustion take over the rows I've just hoed to make room for things vibrant and life sustaining."
     Having recently faced a series of challenges within a fairly short window, I've finally decided to stop and listen to my exhaustion...to literally ask it "Why are you here?" For if I'm honest, I have to admit as one who lives to create,  I've now come to recognize, I've left very little space in between projects for life to be...life.
     No doubt, my last two weeks have been doozies. I've spent way too much time in hospitals, stayed up way too late on deep phone conversation. I've prayed at the bedside of transitioning friends, and been there to share in the pain of saying goodbye with those likewise feeling the loss.  I've closed a chapter of my life lived in the city, and suspect I'll forever hate the tedium of taxes. But in the end, while exhaustion, may be unavoidable, how I dance with it is my choice. I can decide to keep going at the pace I tend to do things and hope for a different outcome (age old definition of insanity), or I can embrace exhaustion for the gift it brings and say  "Ok. Body, mind, life...Teach me how to do this better....or at least show me how to pace my life so as to make room for the sad times as well as the glad."
     I do not have any one answer for how to properly address exhaustion, save to say time and space are our friends, and meditation has been a ritual I shall no longer ignore. Throwing myself rapidly into another project is habit for me...It's my drug of choice. If I can redirect my thinking, shift my focus and energy, I have up till now, usually been able to distract myself from the pain of the losses...convincing myself that the energy once again, is going somewhere positive.
     But if I'm honest, I must admit that's a temporary fix. For friends loved deeply, life experiences lived richly turn to memories cherished fervently, and this is a good thing. I wouldn't take anything for it.  Therefore it stands to reason that life lived richly will make for losses felt deeply. And this is not a bad thing. In truth, these things are as much a part of what make us human as the happier times we strive for and tend to prefer.
     So if my body and mind suggest "perhaps a slow down to process this grief you carry" perhaps I should listen. After all, the older I get, the more I'm reminded, I'm in charge of very little, save for the way I interpret the experience, and the choices I make going forward.

No Stress Here

   

     I'm told there's a stress chart out there somewhere and you can add up your points to see if you're alive. Things like "death of a spouse" and/or "divorce" usually top it, so I suppose things could be worse. Still and so, I'm pretty certain most people have buckled for less.
     Let's see...
     Last week it was emergency-room-turns-hospital-stay...(with a bleeding ulcer no less; if you're gonna do this thing, let's do it right, that's my motto~)
     This week, my mom's in the hospital, dehydrated from food poisoning...(At least we didn't land there together. I doubt seriously they could've handled us both, but at least we now know all the nurses.)
     I've officially moved from the city...(kept a condo for years, but since raising goats, I seldom get to see it, so this is best...Still, the move came at an unusually busy time.)
 

      Just for grins, we rescued a dog and are fostering till the new owner can get to us. (The stress here is dreading goodbyes. Yes, there's been an additional mouth to feed, and overall newness factor, but the hard part is trying not to bond, emotional exhaustion being the worst kind of tired there is. The good news: Lily's adorable. The bad news: Lily can't stay. Rosebud and Boo don't like her and stressing them stresses me.  Still and so, she's a sweetheart --(a sweetheart with abandonment issues, which means she will not let you out of sight and cries for whoever petted her last. That Lily...Such a good gurrrrrl.)
     Today she will accompany me again as I move the last of my boxes just before meeting with my closing attorney and handing keys over to new owners.
     Oh, and for good measure, you simply MUST lock your keys in your vehicle...Why it wouldn't be a move without those AAA guys~

     But hope springs eternal. Tomorrow's a new day...We'll be paying off the mortgage...Doing that Ramsey debt-free scream and rolling up our sleeves to finish Cookbook 3 and start this year's garden...
     All in a day's work. (It's just been one heck of a long day).
   

Wake Up Calls

           Don’t have time to re-watch the movie, but I’m pretty certain it was about day 215 when that Julie girl, blogging along to her Julia Child cookbook, had her meltdown. And while no one holds blogs to the same journalistic standards required of professionals, the journalist in me takes quite seriously the need to be fair and balanced as my little garden story unfolds. To those admiring cute goats and ambitious gardens as well as those concerned for my health in general for having taken on too much, well, you are right to have spotted it: there is a disconnect. I want to paint as honest a picture as I can and what I am now about to paint, is not pretty.

            The good and quippy news: Mystery of the Itchy Palm is solved!

            The bad news: Sometimes it takes a wake up call to make you rethink your strategy all together.

            A week ago I blithely blogged about my itchy nose and palms, quipping that company must be coming and money close behind. Meanwhile, the itch in my palms now goes round my wrist and moves halfway up my arm making it time to quit speaking in wives’ tales and get myself to a doctor.

After reaching out to an ivy-resistant neighbor to ask if he might remove what I thought was more poison ivy growing up my front porch, we too soon discovered that it was not poison ivy. Ruling out one more culprit while googling pictures of faceless, nameless limbs with rashes by which to compare this odd occurrence, it suddenly hit me.

The pain I was feeling I’d lived before, last encountered the summer of my junior year in high school. With parents newly divorced, juggling summer jobs and college applications, (while dating a guy my dad was less than thrilled about) …I was, in my silent in-between times, generally sad for everyone around me who seemed to be in some sort of pain ... for the family I could not keep together even if it wasn't my job to. It was stress born of the inability to control anything, (where most of our stresses come from) the internalization of which netted me the worst case of shingles, known to girl.

I recall that stress vividly. And while today’s stress does not compare, (after all what’s not to love about a bountiful garden, adorable goats, unconditionally loving dogs and a life I am living with intention, not to mention how blessed I feel to get to do what I love for a living, namely, writing)…I can  honestly say, I cannot imagine a better life. (Granted, I would like to imagine living it a little more gently.)

“Overwhelm” is a word that keeps creeping into my vocab these days…in my self talk, in my writing, my blogs. I know better, but for some reason calling it “overwhelm” has me believing that I, myself, will one day flip this capsized boat of mine and go sailing smoothly across the lake of life. I spend a lot of time visualizing “Someday I’sle”  …But when wake up calls hit you like this has, it just might be time to release the oars and consider doing things another way.

It dawned on me on my way to the doctor that I’m 3 for 3 with August and hospital visits. Year one I got bitten by a brown recluse, and because I waited 2 full days before confirming it, I got to go through not one, but TWO methylprednisone packs…the likes of which threw my body into a zone I didn’t know humanly possible. (I now know why baseball players risk their careers to get this stuff.) In addition to insomnia, the other side effect for steroids is constant hunger. I gained 10 pounds in 10 days. Fortunately, once the steroids left, so did the cravings, but for 10 (22 hour) days it was all I could eat, all the time, wreaking havoc on my body.

Last August landed me again in the ER (again with a take home prescription for steroids). Little did I know when I agreed to judge a pie contest at the county fair that 37 bites of 37 pies (with a pickle in between to cleanse your pie-lacquered palette) could shoot your Crohns right out of remission. (Ladies please don't take it personally. I’d gone so long without the ulcerative symptoms of my 20s I forgot I had a weak gene, but I was reminded all too swiftly within two days of coming home from the fair when I landed in not one, but two different emergency rooms in a 4 day stint.)

Year three and here I am again—this time it’s shingles. Pretty amazing how a body in pain can grab your attention. At points like these you have no choice but to take your wake up call seriously; I slow down now to reflect on just what it is I’m doing wrong (save for trying to do it all by myself).

Truth be told, I love the process…even more than the end game, I absolutely love working and all the rote and routine details that go therewith. While most keep their eye on the prize, I keep my eye on the moment, which, as I’ve confessed before, can find me losing myself in a sink full of dishes turning into a newly cleaned fridge, or the cleanest goat bowls this side of the Mississippi. While I adore every phase of the garden process from the planting, the tilling (I especially love the tilling), the weeding and nurturing…That my plants come out healthy is a nice side effect; what I love is the process itself…watching the miracle of life play out before my eyes. But once everything starts to ripen (and sadly, it all comes in at once) well you’ve got precious little time in which to pull it, pick it, pickle it, freeze it…make massive amounts of food go into tiny little containers (all done in a tiny little kitchen by one fairly tiny girl). Nope. My management plan for the harvest is sorely lacking and I’m sad to say, it’s all my fault. (Of course, adding guilt on top of exhaustion pretty much guarantees your body’s gonna fight back, if for no other reason than to beg you get it drugs to prop up on or ERs to slow down by.)

Sure friends come and help, but given the heat and the downright work of the matter, the farm part’s usually more social than serious…what gets picked is usually enough for the meal we will share and all the veggies I can cram into your car before you go. (Like Jesus with the loaves and fishes, things just keep multiplying, and multiplying...and multiplying.)

Let the record reflect, I am seriously in love with farm life. Recently my mother reached out to ask if I had any regrets...Maybe I wanted to reconsider things…Perhaps I’d bitten off more than I could chew…Maybe talk radio needs another co-host.  A paper, another columnist. It’s not that I hadn’t pondered that…But truth is I love all I’m learning. I love stopping to write about what I’m learning. I love the whole life cycle proposition, only my cycle is a bit outta kilter. What’s more, my cycle is a unicycle, and well…as I’ve written on more than one occasion: farming is not a solo sport. To do it right, it takes a village.

It’s a notion I’m pondering more and more seriously these days. I watch a world of people, racing to offices, dealing in road rage, dreading their bosses, hating their jobs and I think “How blessed am I…My boss is a herd of goats and some plants that love growing for me.” (It is about this time that I seriously ask God to forgive me for sounding so whiney. I don’t want to give this up, so much as I want to figure it out. As I see it, for me anyway, I have two choices…I go back to the city; resume a day job. Make money the way I know how so as to pay to have farm hands come help …

OR

I create a village. Find others who share in the dream. They are out there. I hear from them increasingly…from friends out of the blue, to FB links directing me to others doing the same. There is something in the air for this notion of sustainable living…Not sure if our cultural subconscious is picking up on something (like those elephants that sensed the tsunami coming and headed inland long before the weather forecasters predicted) …or if we’re all growing suspicious of Washington politicians that are nothing like us, leading us into mounting debt, thus debilitating our spirit, all while we are left to process our stress and frustration in whatever ways we might (and often in ways that aren’t good for us).  If there is but on take away in all this, it's that farming is no hobby. It’s a serious commitment with serious deadlines … and like any serious business, you need a working plan in place. (My biggest mistake is I entered it while already working another full time plan –writing cookbooks—only I didn’t factor just how full time a farm and garden is. My admiration grows by the minute for the Thurmans of the world.)

For me…a girl rather addicted to work in the first place, I literally delight in the process even more than the end game (which is why I have so much overgrown okra lying on the ground turning to seed. I grew so much I couldn’t pick it fast enough.) What’s at issue is: what matters most, followed by “What am I going to do about it?”

They’re called “wake up calls”…Those breaking points in life where you can’t dodge the obvious anymore…It’s that point where something stops you in your tracks (your own health, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a crisis or a life drama that forces you to stop, unplug and take a serious inventory of your life while going deep within to discover just what pea it is that lies beneath all those mattress layers you’ve been padding with)…

In the same way it hit me when my bankrupt friend spoke of  surrender and the peace that immediately followed…these wake up calls, most often come as the result of something so shocking to our system we have no choice but to listen. It must, in order to grab our attention once and for all, bolt us out of our self-induced haze in order to affect change. I can’t say I’m surprised entirely; I try to ignore it…fill it up with more work, but deep down I have known something had to give. But it occurs to me I’ve been hoping my wake up call would come much like my morning alarm. (Rather than a loud honking noise that jolts, I have a dainty little Disney clock, that wakes me to a music box version of “It’s a Small World” or “Chim-Chim-Cheree” ~ Why God? Why couldn’t you give me THAT kind of wake up call? Preferably with a snooze button attached.)

At this, God laughs. After all, what’s the point of a wake up call if not to snap you out of whatever it is you’re numbly, blindly not paying attention to.

As for me, it’s not that I hadn’t noticed. Nope. It’s hard to miss the messy kitchen and the growing mulch pile of compost for trying to salvage on the second round what I missed on the first. As I reread morning pages from days and weeks past it was all I could do not to tear up when I realized how much of my day I live in guilt, simply for having bitten off more than I can chew, then feeling bad for having wasted anything like food or time or _______ (fill in the blank…I’ve got an endless stream of things for which the residual emotion is guilt…Being late for goat feedings, watching a pup endure a surgery and not wanting to leave his/her side for something like work…Count ‘em up. I’ve got a million of ‘em….I suspect we all do.)

Bottom line: it’s time for a change. It’s time to admit, I need help. It’s time to surrender to those things I cannot change, while changing the ones I can. It’s time for a serious soul search to ask myself, “What’s it gonna be?”

Right now, I do not have that answer; all I have is one very poignant question…(and one very itchy arm.) But this much I know…There is a state that precedes these wake up calls…A warning if you will…Usually several. You can recognize this state by one simple warning sign, and that sign is: discontent. I like to call it “divine discontent” for if we heed it, pay attention to it, stop and admit THE SECOND WE FEEL IT that “Hey. Something’s not right here. There’s a rock in my shoe, and it’s uncomfortable.” Because of our crunch on time, most of us will walk on that rock for a bit…usually long enough to form a callous. But when that callous becomes infected and serious attention is needed, well that’s when your wake up call hits home.

For me, the solution lies is recognizing these pebbles early on…before more serious damage is done. But this requires a sensitivity to pebbles that doesn’t have us saying, “Well, if I just stay busy enough, go shop some more, drink some more, watch mindless TV some more…maybe it will go away...Heck, I almost forgot it was there...” But I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t go away. The only thing that makes pebbles go away is stopping to address the discomfort, unlace the shoe…shake out the rock. This is not a “Take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning” kinda proposition. This is a life habit one must learn to cultivate. In this day and age and particularly in this culture, it does not come naturally. And just because I’ve got others who can relate, well that’s no excuse for me to keep ignoring the obvious…

And so I shall not. For me, it’s time to redirect, regroup…come up with a new plan…A better way that not only brings relief to my in my little world of one, but brings perhaps new ideas and alternatives for others, for I hate to say it, but I take too much comfort in thinking I’m not alone on this one…Just because others are feeling it too, doesn’t mean I should keep walking on a rock.

I enter this week on a much more somber note.

Here’s trusting he meant what he said about knocking…seeking…asking.

Ok God. You got my attention.

I’m listening.