Although I seem to have no difficulty keeping myself busy and entertained, I continue to struggle with blogging. In fact I also struggle with keeping up with social media and that seems odd because of the social aspect and the fact that I am once again struggling with balance, albeit in a very different setting than my previous struggles. It seems that once I struggled with having enough creative time, alone time. I admitted to myself that I said yes to too many things, that it was time to let go of that youthful and erroneous idea, that I could only be liked if I was useful. I admitted to myself that sometimes I went out too often, that I was avoiding being home alone, especially at night.
Would that simply admitting to one’s self-perceived failings in an insecurities, to one’s loneliness even, could be enough to turn the world around. It seems like there is always something new to learn, something new to overcome. I do not believe that this life, this physical world and life that we all share is the be all and end all. Often it seems like a proving ground, a place where we get to be tested, to spread our wings, to find out who we really are.
I struggle with the idea that if I am not going somewhere, doing something, hopefully something interesting I have nothing to say. Perhaps then, I continue to struggle with the question of what is a worthwhile life.
On the one hand, I am content to putter about here at home, content for the most part to not wander far. I have been cooking, knitting, sewing, gardening, reading. I have been watching television. I have walked around my neighborhood. I sit and watch the birds in the yard. I love my field of long grass, in back, where the slope is too steep for me to mow easily, where birds and bunnies cavort and play, and where my grand-puppy loves to collapse when his family brings him over for a walk. I mostly walk in my own neighborhood, and am oddly content to see the changes in the same space, day after day. When Tikka loved to walk for miles every day we travelled around, walked the many parks around Knoxville, and part of me wishes to do that again, wonders if perhaps I should go to the Smokies, but my focus has always been on the small, the everyday. I would go if I had someone to go with, but for myself I am oddly content with wherever I can get on my own power.
I am reading, a lot, news and magazines, which I have been gradually shifting from paper to digital formats. I don’t want to be drowning in paper. But books also. I am currently reading the third volume of The Last Lion, William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, as finished by Paul Reid, as well as Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool, which I am rereading for book club. I am thoroughly enjoying it; perhaps enjoying it more than I did with that first reading. But I tend to think of reading as an active intellectual pursuit, a conversation, and in a way a relationship that builds between the words and the reader, the author and the reader, not so much a relationship of people, but of ideas and awareness.
The birds get most of the blueberries, but I am not surprised at that. The crop is small this first year, and the bushes are too widely spaced, an issue that still has to be addressed. I do manage to grab a small handful of sugar snap peas every time I walk through the garden. None have made it in to the dinner table, but several handfuls of peas are consumed every day. I am reminded of a few essential truths: the sweetness of a pea freshly plucked, the subtle delicate life of freshly harvested lettuce, berries warmed in the sun, hands in the dirt, flowers you have grown yourself.
Some parts of the garden are doing well although there are a few failures. My bloody dock never germinated. I admit that I am moving slowly. I can only manage a couple of hours of garden work a day, and alas, in this stage of building and digging, progress sometimes seems slow. I started out all gung-ho in the vegetable garden, but then lost momentum as the spring remained chill. There are gaps in my planting. But I see little pockets of progress and they make me happy.
I made cilantro pesto yesterday and froze it in 2-tablespoon blocks for use later in the season. This was from the first planting, which is still going strong. I am about to put in the third cilantro planting, and i want some of the fleshy roots, but never having grown cilantro for the roots, I see that I will have to allow a patch to grow old and woody, to flower. Cilantro, when picked frequently for its tender green leaves, never develops a substantial foundation of thick roots. Once again, always learning.
I see I haven’t answered any of my questions, especially not my question of blogging. Does writing come out of some sense of discontent, of a need to express something intangible. What about comfort? Does one need to write when one is content, like Dash above, to stop and simply lie in the long grass? And does it matter? Perhaps there is time for all these things in this world. And then again, perhaps times of contentment, times of not rushing about can yield their own surprises. Only time will tell.
