Looking Back

     The date is now Saturday, September 15, 2012. The date I began my last post was March 6, 2011. Clearly, a lot of time has gone by between then and now, taking with it something like 533 days worth of experiences and emotions.

     In the beginning I had every intention of documenting this journey on a regular basis. As I re-read some of my previous posts I can almost feel again the excitement I had from those early days. I had a sense of purpose then, I had a mission, and my plan was to write down the feelings, emotions, and experiences along the way with the ultimate goal of turning it all into a book.

     But as plans often do, it failed. Life got in the way I guess. Those little daily tasks that absorb so much of life and never seem to go away began taking up the few hours I had left each night after working. During the days I got so caught up in actually doing the things I was suppose to be writing about that I never did get around to writing about them. Before long days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and... you get the picture. Pretty soon a year was gone.

     I guess in the beginning I did actually try to write about things. The only problem is it was never in one place. I had a little journal going on my computer, and there was a notebook in the farmhouse I’d stop to write in if I got too overwhelmed to do anything else, and some nights I’d end up writing in my actual journal. As time went along, though, I began writing less and less, and eventually not at all.

     When I think about it, it was sort of foolish to think I could keep up the routine of writing about everything to begin with. To routinely do anything you don’t have to do requires a lot of discipline. Even brushing your teeth, which takes two minutes at the most, and most of us much less than that, doesn’t get done every day. And there are other factors involved as well.

     For me, writing is a labor filled activity. The thoughts I have in my head require time and effort to get transferred into words in a way I’m even halfway satisfied with, and here on the farm time seems to be in limited supply. There are always a hundred other things I could or should be doing, so taking the time I need to write about things rarely gets put at the top of the list.

     Furthermore, I’ve found my creativity and ability to focus seem to disappear when I’m surrounded by disorder. For example, any time I sit down to start doing a bunch of homework, that’s when I decide it’s time to clean my room, not that I’m trying to procrastinate doing the work but because I can’t focus on doing it if the room is cluttered. To say that this farm is disorderly is what they call an understatement. It’s a junkyard in some areas and a landfill in others. I can’t help but believe that has impacted my desire to write. I have realized that I’ve felt little inspiration to write anything since coming here. And even if I do, I rarely get any further than the first couple paragraphs before giving up.

     Something inside me has changed, though. I’ve missed writing. I’ve missed seeing the words as they appear in front of me, and I’ve missed the experience of creating something and watching it grow into something uniquely beautiful. I don’t want my experience here to fade away into nothing, and I think I’m ready to do something about it.