Moving the woodpile
On the pleasure of concrete progress
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Moving the woodpile
I started the day feeling stumped, stuck in a rut and marginally overwhelmed. Why? I’ve set some outrageous goals. I’m writing four books in two years. And doing this while sending daily content to all ya’ll. I am committed to sending this darn thing every day. It’s odd to think of not taking a break or finding some excuse to interrupt this streak. The notion of ‘ongoing’ can become overwhelming.
And?
Ongoing is what living is all about. Ongoing is what parenting is all about. Perfection happens once something is complete. Your life is perfect once it is complete. It is complete once you’re dead. Stop trying to be perfect you suicidal mother fucker.
When it comes to life, parenting, writing, work and pretty much everything else, I’m simply foolish: Love sets the tone. Love is the way in and the way out. and the way out is simply love. Love assumes good intentions. Love. Energy. Attention. Focus. Action. Love powers both the magical and mundane.
And? The ongoing responsibility of parenting can be overwhelming. There are times, when struggling to find my ground. I have know idea what the heck I’m doing. I feel as though I’ve been cast into my lifelong fever dream. In this dream, I’m tasked with moving an entire beach a grain of sand at a time, using chopsticks. What’s worse? It’s really difficult to tell if and when I’m having an impact at all.
Every now and then, I need to see progress. Physical. Real. Material. Progress. I want to know that I’ve actually done something. It is easy for me to to kill a day taking wood from a pile right here:
Then making a whole new woodpile here:
So much satisfaction.
When we work with ephemeral things doing something concrete can be really rewarding.
What concrete tasks are a part of your life?
How do they keep you from losing your ground?
If moving a pile of wood was a metaphor, what pile are you moving?
One Derful Thing
Animal voices.
We talk to animals in our house.
Foolish?
Youbetcha.
What’s worse?
We also love to reply for them. Each of our pets has a unique and distinct voice as determined by each of us.
In our house each of us has a different idea of what our pets sound like. They all get ‘voiced’ differently by each of us.
With that in mind, I’m certain that everyone with a pet has their own ‘voice’ for how their pet sounds.
Now? Time to mess with the voices in other peoples heads.
Go to a place where humans and likely dogs are hanging out.
When you encounter someones dog, speak to it and reply as if you’re that dog. Create a voice for them.
Carry on a long delightful conversation with the dog. Play both sides. Have fun with your voice.
Where does this conversation take you?
What do you discuss?
Now that you’ve eaten the kitten, how does it reply to you?
Life is about your choice of woodpiles and wood piling methods.
When my Mom died, I was given the task of refurbishing a neglected home and selling it. I was determined to do as much of the work myself and to use the almost daily visits to the house to "move grains of sand with chopsticks" and to grieve the loss of my parents and the only home I had lived in with them. It took about 18 months. In the end, the home was what Mom had requested, "Ready for another young family to move into and raise a family". As the house was taken apart and rebuilt, so was I.
There was a good cord and a half of wood - some cut and split hardwood, but a lot of pallet wood that had been cut down to wood stove size. My folks were young during the depression and shaped by it. Why would you spend good money on fire wood when used pallets were free and cutting them up kept you fit?
My husband wanted to borrow or rent a truck and move the wood in one go. That seemed surgical. I needed a shaman. Healing takes time. The house and I needed to heal.
I put an empty paper box, yes, that holds 10 reams of office paper, in the trunk of my subcompact. I could have fit two, but this was going to take a long time and groceries happen.
Every time I visited the house, a box full of wood would come home with me.
How do you move a woodpile?
Who cares, as long as it gets done. But tell me how you do it and I will know more about who you are than your resume can say.