Greenstorm's Journal

I must have done some user manual/user guide stuff before tagging was put into the system; certainly it was before it became a popular poly thing. So in service of getting some of this down on paper to self-advocate:

1) Write it down, ideally somewhere I can find it later

2) Be explicit

3) If things change, be explicit about that too

4) Give as much warning about change as possible

5) If things are certain or just assumptions/likely, I want to know. I <3 % likelihoods (I'm 70% likely to want to go to the park; I'm probably too tired for dinner but there's a 31% change I want to stop by)

6) If you want something from me, ask

7) If you want to know something about what's in my mind, ask

8) If I ask you about something, including what you're feeling or what you're going to do, it's not an insult that how could I ever believe that about you? It's a question. I just want an answer

9) It's ok to say "I don't know" to me

10) My trust is earned through alignment between your words and actions repeatedly over time

10b) There are some specific situations where I trust people to repeat actions they've done reliably in the past even when their words are not in alignment. The way to change this is to repeat a different set of actions reliably

11) I have a ton of different tools, ways to interact with people, ways to talk, ways to think about what they're doing. Because I have such a big library of tools it can take me a long time to find the right tool for a specific person. Be patient, and the more explicit you are the easier it will be for me

12) I will not reliably know that when you say "x" you mean "y". Just say "y"

13) I like to play. My play looks like co-creating things and thinking together. I only play with people I trust

14) Don't self-harm under the guise of humility or humour around me

15) I need time alone

16) I need space that is my own, both indoors and outdoors

17) I assess conversations on the triforce of communication as an internal tool

18) It's often hard but good for me to take space or levity in a hard conversation

19) As I wrote earlier, don't make assumptions about my actions or feelings. They will be challenged

19b) If you aren't ok with the above, just... spend time with someone else. There are so many other people who will get along with you better

20) I super enjoy deconstructing behaviours, thoughts, and actions

21) I generally end up one step further "meta" in the conversation than my conversational partners

22) I still ask "why" and "what's going on" all the time, I never outgrew that

23) When something stresses me or overwhelms me, my mind shuts down or deflects

24) I don't always know what's going to bother me in advance, but I can guess

25) I like escape routes

26) I like plans

27) I like contingency plans: the best time to make stressful decisions is when there aren't also environmental stressors occurring

28) I know that not every eventuality can be planned for so I won't waste energy trying to cover every possibility

29) There are ways of speaking with me that make things much easier for me and ways which make things much harder

30) I work through things in language, preferably talking to someone, though I can sometimes write too. This process isn't a commitment to anything I say within the process

31) I really like knowing little things about what you think or what happened to you

32) I can't do routine but I can do habit and periodicity

33) I like data

34) I generally like people

35) I generally don't trust people to make decisions for me; no humans are good at knowing what will work for me or not

36) I'll always like plants more than you. Sorry. They'll also always be more important to me than you are, think primary partner-style

With Tucker gone and work back to the office all my socializing is occurring off of Threshold in public spaces. There's a very real shift in how I feel and behave in private already; I'm more pushy, more contrarian; my thinking is more nimble but has more momentum: it's harder to stop or turn a thought. I'm starting to think internally using my own mind again, if that makes any sense, rather than the hybrid thinking/socializing tool my mind had become. I have more patience and time for some of my inner workings and so they subside into mystery and I can allow them to do so: I can sit and wait out something that's occurring in the back of my mind even when I have no knowledge of what it is and I can follow instincts without first identifying and then analyzing them.

I'm going more wordless now for awhile and my mind feels like a shape moving through pondweeds in murky water. I can feel the stirring of its motion but who really knows what's in there?

I think that's ok for now. It's the thing I was worried about, losing touch with humanity. Not long ago I wrote that I have a foot in both worlds, plant and human, and that's one of the reasons I feel so inhuman. Now I have maybe just a toe in the human world and the concept of inhuman, well, that's outside my current frame. Maybe the marker of a human is wondering if they're human enough.

Meanwhile my cat loves me more. He's been climbing onto the back of the sofa, hugging my shoulder, and purring for hours. From this I learn that I'm deeply conflicted about one of my strongest recieving love languages, which is demonstrations of joy in my presence. On the one hand making someone happy is such a joy; on the other it's a demand where I feel that if I fail I'm deeply impacting someone else's happiness. Of course that's not how it works but it's interesting to see it so clearly laid out; Whiskey is a great teacher that way because my interactions with him show up my reactions more clearly than the complications of reactions to humans. I know that what's going on is, in fact, all me.

Yesterday was a very social day. The landrace gardening zoom call was in the morning and I was a bit of a focal point of that. Over noon was the local seed swap at the library; the last seed swap I attended there was my last pre-covid social event years ago. I chatted with one of the big gardeners from a gardener family, with one of local herbalist friends, and with a person doing the local CSA (which sold out in 11 hours). It was nice, I got some tomato seeds out there, I got some locally grown seeds and some seeds to put in the garden here even if I don't stay, and we're going to have another one closer to the last frost in late May. I'm going to plant a couple more tomatoes to give away there.

I also reconnected with my neighbour, the one the dog bit, and gave them some eggs. Apparently he likes duck eggs so I gave him a bunch of those. He's seen the fox that lives at his place and there's also a big mink that I don't think has eaten many of my animals but it's something to keep an eye on.

Despite so many contacts and so many events yesterday it felt more spacious than expected. Probably not making time to socialize closely or intimately with anyone helped there. When I woke up the light was strange so I looked out and it had snowed: the sun was rising in a clear bright sky and reflecting off the fresh coat of white everywhere. It was nice to be able to go back to bed and ignore it for a couple hours.

Now I have today for cooking, for thinking, for petting my cat, for planting tomatoes and peppers, and maybe for setting up the pig fence.

Maybe the activities sound the same as normal but they don't quite feel the same. I'm doing them while I float, submerged, beneath my surface. We will see what comes next.

Dealing with seedlings makes me happy

I suck at tea because it's a multi-step process; I should try to find more hot drinks that are pour-stir-drink instead of pour-steep-return because I never return. Canning fruit concentrates or making shrubs in season (hot shrub is probably vile?) might help with this

Putting a little sugar in my pancakes, thus not needing to put messy syrup on them, lets me eat them with my fingers which helps a lot. I used to do this but stopped; I should start again

Spending lots of time with the dogs helps us all

Avallu is strongly motivated by coyotes

Doing plant breeding work is the best kind of NRE. It feels the same in my body but happier mentally

I need days to myself sometimes

Sunlight is good for me

I like plants

Alright. I'm not used to having a normal experience of something, but I may be having a normal experience of autism, now, as an adult, that many people are more used to having their whole lives.

So a meme went around a bit ago. The text was:

people think taking things literally is just like

-not getting jokes and sarcasm

when in my experience it's more like

-thinking you have to fulfill 100% of the exact requirements for something, when everyone else apparently knows it's actually a bit flexible

-SAYING something with a literal meaning and others interpret it figuratively

-following instructions to a T but not knowing how [you're allowed to] modify them when something goes wrong

-doing EXACTLY what someone asked of you and them getting mad that it wasn't what they meant or actually wanted [this feels very gaslight-y]

-being terrified of people's empty threats or hyperbole without realizing they didn't actually mean it

-[learning] all the connotations of different words so you can use them as precisely as possible, getting frustrated when others are inexact

A lot of this aligns with my experience.

For the longest time my work was pretty unambiguous. I worked hourly or by piecework, I did the thing, I got paid for it. Now I'm in this union environment which is not designed for folks who do either knowledge work or fieldwork, and the way folks deal with it is by being imprecise, by saying there's no flexibility but knowing there is, but knowing there's not too much flexibility. There are a ton of, I don't know if they're empty threats or not, but I suspect they are. And no one can speak plainly about it because when I ask literal questions they're figurative in response.

And none of this is about the actual work product. It's all about "is it ok to start lunch 5 minutes early and end it 5 minutes early" which is such bullshit to be worrying about. I'd rather worry about the fact that wildfire and the biologists have conflicting requirements for how much wood is left on a block and how to reconcile that, but instead I get resentful that I get my teeth into a project and if I take 10 minutes into lunch to complete something I can't just come back after lunch 10 minutes later without using vacation time, but sometimes I can, but we're not supposed to, so don't do it often because we're not supposed to but it's ok to do it a little bit but really we shouldn't do it but sometimes we do. So then PDA kicks in and says that since they don't care whether I'm working well or efficiently, why should I bother? I can sidestep the demand of having to work because my work is useful and often interesting, but having 8 to-the-minute time demands per day is defeating me (start, lunch, two breaks, and end time).

Then I do some spiralling around it because I'm not doing good or prolific work and it feels like a shitty use of my time. So, ok, I'm having poor mental health and I know some things to do about that: some grounding things, journaling, taking time to really root into my life and pay attention. But then more ambiguous rules stuff strikes: if I'm having a truly awful mental health day and can't work, does that count as sick for the purposes of sick leave? When they send out emails a couple times a month telling employees to do all these grounding exercises and whatever to care for their mental health, do they mean on the clock? Probably they mean "don't do it, it's not ok, but it's ok to do sometimes but not very often but it's actually allowed".

Which basically means it's something you're not supposed to talk about, which is isolating.

So, yeah, if autism is a thing where folks don't follow social norms right (among other things) then one of the big ways it presents for me is in interpretation of ambiguity. In a lot of cases I can throw the ambiguity out and society's ok with that: modern gender stuff, for instance, makes less sense to me as an actual thing than older more defined ones, but I can throw out the whole thing and folks are more or less ok with it. Mononormative relationships? Make no sense to me but I just don't do them.

Highly unionized (read: prescribed) work environment where folks socially kind of work around poorly worded rules? Crashing. Burning.

And it's making me think about how autism is supposedly also an issue of emotional regulation. The idea is that autistic folks can't regulate like neurotypical folks and they melt down or shut down a lot. But if you put anyone in a situation where they aren't allowed to know what they're supposed to be doing, what they're supposed to be doing is actually impossible for them, they don't know whether or not there will be punishment in any given second for not doing the thing they don't know what it is and can't do-- and then stop them from doing the mind or body things (stimming) that soothe them. Well. I think you get meltdowns and shutdowns, fight or withdrawal, and all the normal trauma stuff that autistic people evidence to the point where we do not know what autism looks like without comorbid trauma stuff.

So that's my weekend thought. Also some farm stuff but that gets its own post because it's happy.

My body is my link to the present.

My mind is the link to the future.

The land links the two.

Let's return to my body for awhile.

I've been eating fairly well lately. It's often so hard for me to eat; the fact that I need to, or that I like something, or especially that I've put love and anticipation into something, trips my PDA. I also have tended to have a scarcity mentality around food, and especially food that (I now realize) is ok for my senses. Plus, I'm sensory-seeking with food: I use it as a "stim", a way to get from my head into my body, a way to stabilize mood, and so I come to feel like I "should" eat food that will make me feel better rather than worse. And of course sometimes I just can't handle some part of the sensory experience of food, or the many steps required for it.

So all that aside when Kelsey was here we ate well because making food she liked together was fun and eating together is one of my favourite things. Plus she didn't eat in the mornings, so I could focus my attention on making nice evening meals. Over the holidays I ate well because Tucker was here and there were snacks around; I could always pull something together for us, he helped cook a lot and especially in mornings. I've been carrying that on recently, plus I've had a windfall of some instant meals (freezer & fancy ramen) around the house that I didn't cook, which makes them much easier to eat. Finally I've been allowing myself to eat in "luxury" mode more and more over the last year: if I eat something I'm allowed to spend money to replace it if it's a money thing, if I raised or grew it I cherish it and thank it but don't try and keep some back in case I need it "later". So: I've been drinking milk and having fresh veggies, plus I've had some truly lovely duck & potato dishes and some equally lovely ground pork & rice dishes, all interspersed with something microwaveable or a bowl of cereal (also a luxury).

My body is building muscle, a lot a lot of it on my traps, deltoids, and to some extent my upper arms. I've been running up and down the stairs maybe 20x fewer per day with no visitors, so my legs are resting. Physical work is feeling easier, and to ease that along more I'm going to try and do at least 20 minutes of yoga per day. I can do it during a work-break when I'm working from home; I will do it even when Tucker is visiting since I've cleared a place on the loft balcony.

I'd like to pick up free movement again but I can't, quite. Maybe when I've taken down the sausage table from the livingroom and there's more space there. Meantime I'm trying to listen to music a couple times a week; it helps.

These building blocks of life, food and movement, are fundamental to my happiness. The big picture is overwhelming. I don't know how to sort myself out of this social situation. I can't control what people around me do, which means I can expect them to filter out of my life and maybe filter back in at some other point. I want to cut down on social media consumption but it seems that keeping a phone with me will become more and more necessary for social contact as folks move away. But.

The joy I can give to myself, the care that I can give to myself, the knowledge through action that I am here for my body: that I can work towards, one day at a time, days where it's achieved can be victories and ones where it isn't can receive compassion.

It's still cold but sunlight is returning. The wheel doesn't cease to turn.

This was an excellent holiday. It had the things I love over the holidays: cooking, passive entertainment, a slower pace, special foods, family, pretty lights, regrouping for the future, some time outside. Someone even sent me a secret surprise gift (!) though that shook me a little. I took over a whole week off, and I managed that feeling of being outside of time and space.

There was some experimental baking and some less experimental baking: I made chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow pieces in them, next time I'll only sprinkle the marshmallows on top. Tucker made shortbread and reese's pieces cookies. Together we made a golden crispies cereal bar thing. He made challah. I made roast duck and got a shrimp ring and cheezies and pfeffernusse. He made french toast, and my friend sent me jam that I ate on it. I still had plenty of aged eggnog from spring (Islay was the best booze; rum and Canadian whiskey were the least good, adding ceylon cinnamon-infused booze was also good) and some clamato juice and cherry juice and tea and fancy hot chocolate. Lovely.

I was feeling a formulaic show (no real anxiety about people dying or getting hurt because that's not the formula) with folks who had each other's back and a writing team that respected their characters rather than using any of them, even bit parts, as the butt of jokes. I'd managed to forget the first season of Leverage where there's a terrible heteronormative dynamic around drinking and nagging, so watched a bunch of season 2 and 3 with Tucker -- it's one of his favourite shows so there was room for me to analyze it a little bit while watching. I think last time I had a holiday that felt nice like this we watched Gentleman Jack together.

Josh was up here the week before Christmas, and Tucker was here more-or-less the week between Christmas and New Years, with some breaks. I like these long stretches with people where we can dig in to being together; either a couple hours or at least a couple days works for me, but the middle space I can feel the grinding of gears and never quite get settled ("trouble with transitions" says descriptions of autism). I felt close and loved and there was time for some conversation and doing stuff together as well as just being together.

I did end up getting a tree. My beloved fibre-optic tree was thrown out when I left New Westminster back when (I lose so much stuff in moves) and it had been pretty difficult to find a fibre-optic tree since then. I finally found a little one on sale, the greenery isn't as nice as my last one but it has gold glitter and a little urn-thing as well as fitting on a side-table. I really enjoy watching fibre-optic threads shift colours, specifically, and being able to sit on the couch and watch the tree has been excellent. For some reason strands of lights or other colour-changing lights don't do it for me; just the tree.

I'm cementing in my head what will be done this year: a gate cut in the upper field, some variety trials, a bunch of potatoes grown for starch and thus clearing out my laundry room boxes to build a potato cabinet, some fencing, front deck redone, maybe a re-cover of greenhouse, maybe my aspens dropped, and a quote for fixing the shed with the wood foundation and the collapsing root cellar (I will not be able to afford to fix the shed or add on to the house but those are the two options I'll need to consider to make this place really livable for me). There was a potato infection in the maritimes so seed potatoes will be light on the ground this year; I need to order those soon. Aphrodite has also asked me to plant her a rose garden, as she did the summer I started and then stopped living with Josh, so that will be done this year. I guess my first garden will get roses in that imported soil where it's visible from the deck; it already has the one. I don't know whether I'm supposed to make a mandala/maze type shape or what; we will see. The wild roses do grow well here.

We've also finally been getting snow. Cold without the snow feels especially perilous; even with all the snow blowing everywhere and obliterating my hand-shovelled pathways it feels safer to have cold with a blanket of insulation. It's been hovering around -20 +/- 10C, a good temperature for all the snowshovelling I've been doing. It's been good exercise. A big dump of snow last night means I'm going to get someone to come in and plough all the way back to the chicken coop for me since it's between knee and thigh depth now and I am not hauling water and feed back through that in the -37C we have forecast. I have not fixed the snowblower yet, obviously. We'll see where all this goes. I'm wondering what it would cost to get a blade for the truck; it probably isn't cheaper than the snowblower but it's one less engine to maintain, and I bet it would be a hilarious learning curve figuring out where and how to push snow without destroying things or leaving inconvenient piles. We're deep, deep into solid waste territory with water: parkinglots are all full of giant piles waiting to be taken away to snow dumps.

Awhile ago I posted about an illustrated apple encyclopedia on fb, and the other day it arrived at the post office with my name on it. The return address was the address of the PG post office; the shipping label was printed on a computer and correctly made out to my PO box (there isn't street mail delivery here, so just because someone knows my street address doesn't mean they know how to mail something to me). Someone clearly paid attention to me liking it, knew my address, bought it, opened one book to admire it and left the rest in wrapping, then sent them on to me. I'm- it's a very thoughtful gift and I spent a lot of time crying about it because it's a really caring thing to do but I feel so alone up here, I want someone with that kind of attention and caring to have conversations and mutuality with but instead they're secret and I can't talk to them. It's- lotta feelings there.

Meanwhile I can go back to cataloguing my seeds today, carry some water and feed, and slowly pull things out of the way of where I hope the plough can get to. The truck is starting up super well with its new battery-and-battery-blanket (though I haven't checked to see how much electricity that's burning). The dogs got a ham for Christmas and now I need to manage Thea down from guarding Avallu out of the area by the house. The dishwasher is going. My aerogarden has given me dill and I think I'll make borscht or gravlax out of it. I have some korean ground pork and noodle recipes I'm looking forward to. The new year is a continuity from every other year, building and folding on times past, and I am grateful to have it.

This morning was lovely and snuggly and loving with Tucker.

Today I stepped outside and drew in a deep breath of probably the last real rain-scented air we'll have this year. It was lovely and I felt connected.

I got the work truck and fishtailed in 4hi down the Leo Creek road for 27km to get to my worksite. There was no real danger of going off the road but it was a medium-alert sort of driving situation. The road was bad enough that it was closed to logging trucks but it was tense.

On site it rained steadily, warmly, and peacefully while I scrambled up and down over trees fallen like a spilled box of toothpicks, measuring the diameter and length of each one. There were more trees than fit on the data collection card so I used multiple cards. The new podcast was playing, warning off bears and keeping me delightful company. I was dressed right and worked peacefully and methodically in the kind of situation I feel at home in: I was at peace with the world, interested, and my sense of self could take a break from the walls it needs to maintain in the human world and just rest peacefully.

Back at work I did data correction and sorting, fixing numbers on cards and maps and peeling wet rainproof paper apart. It was absorbing and just annoying enough to be satisfying.

I came home trepidatious and checked the gasket on the woodstove. Last night it had leaked and smoked, I'd opened the door and swept a piece of bark that was caught out of it, and it seemed ok. I wasn't sure if permanent damage had been done. It seemed to be fine and I rekindled the coals until the smoke came in invisible heat ripples up through the catalytic burner and up the chimney, then banked the stove down safely for the night: from anxiety to peace and contentment.

Everyone needed food so I slogged through the mud. My mind was sluggish and resistant: I'd determined this mud season was over and it turns out it wasn't. I felt guilty for not bedding the pigs down with more straw last night and for having them in the winter sacrifice pen which gets so muddy when it's not frozen, and for the mess it's making of my soil. They got bread and eggs as a treat and the light was dying as I finished feeding the new chickens and the old chicken coop. Coming in covered in sweat from slogging through mud with feed and water was a relief.

When I came upstairs finally the front door was open about an inch; I must have left it open last night and all day. I'm grateful to live in a place I don't need to worry about it but exasperated at myself and a little worried about my abilities these days.

Josh and I had a phone call with a range of emotions but mostly fun and comfortable/disarming.

Then I called my bank and asked why my bank card that they'd messed up on the first time and re-sent wasn't working. They'd messed up on it the second time too, and they still hadn't contacted me about some missing money. I haven't been able to access banking across the end of the month to pay bills or ensure my mortgage etc came out and I'm frankly livid. I got the number for their retention folks. I'm alternating between anger and wanting to cry out of sheer exasperation.

A friend I haven't seen in well over a decade shared a nice story with me on facebook and left me, together with that podcast, feeling connected to a community of people I rarely get to meet but like very much.

Then I looked up the first video posted by the guy who grows hardy peppers on the gulf islands. Turns out he's smokin' hot. This may be roughly 50% because he grows hardy peppers but still, I was not prepared for this. Now I'm soret of hysterical crying because I'm not sure what else to do.

I have had enough emotions for this day, please. How do I turn this thing off?

I guess I can't. This is why cups of tea exist.

Things are so busy right now.

Mom and my youngest brother are here. I'm working, and they are bush days so I can't do home things around work: instead I need to use extra time at home to prep clothes and lunches, check weather, and charge devices. I'm doing this course, which does not have the two hours of homework stated: it's more like 4 or 5 hours extra per week. I'm engaged in this communication/intimacy course with Tucker. I'm trying to get administrative stuff done, like calling the bank to figure out where my money disappeared to (done) or making a dentist appointment (involves being in front of both my work and personal calendars) or talking to someone about my mortgage which is coming due soon (Canadian mortgages need to be refinanced every 5 years). I'm trying to get soap made in exchange for the ring my friend made me, so I can send it down with mom instead of shipping it. And now my new truck needs a new serpentine belt, part of it tore off and is hanging out in there.

Basically I can kind of keep up with doing things, but not with thinking about them. I'd had a lot of space to think for awhile. I miss it? A lot is getting done but I don't get to be fully inside the activities or inhabiting them. I also don't necessarily get to arrange them how best I'd like.

On the other hand it's making for a much more bearable extended stay with mom, I'm just not home or have the bandwidth to be annoyed when she puts the lemon juicer away in the mixer bowl (?) or whatever. I can start playing "where did she put that object" when she leaves.

And meanwhile I'm taking Friday off to spend time here before they leave on Saturday.

Meanwhile days are getting shorter, mud is getting colder, there is frost in the mornings but no snow yet. Mom is tidying up a bunch of stuff in the yard, some of which is pretty welcome. The stove is keeping the house lovely warm as long as a couple windows stay cracked open. It feels like brewing and baking time.

PERSONAL VISION EXERCISES

Identity: What is your identity? How does your identity influence your desire to be a farmer?

I don’t define myself by identity in the same way that many folks on the left do nowadays. Identities are explanations after the fact for the experience of self. So, I’ve always felt more relatedness to plants than to humans. As such, my ecosystem has felt more like my family than my family has in many ways. I suspect I relate to creating an ecosystem the way many people relate to creating a family: the land is my partner, together we build a diverse and robust web of entities such that they’ll live on beyond me. Orr maybe I relate to the land as a helpmate: I assist the land in producing bounty for folks.

Turns out this sense of relatedness to nonhumans is common in neurodiverse folks.

As a poor person I’m scared to farm because I want financial stability/security. I won’t get anything from a parent’s death so my retirement is on me.

As the daughter of someone whose parents were farm-adjacent and who left all that on purpose, I don’t have any ancestral ties or wisdom coming through my family.

I was read as a smart, pretty, skinny girl as a kid so I was not encouraged to do outdoor or manual labour things. I didn’t learn to fix things or that I could use my muscles to literally change my surroundings. I have a lot of learning to do because of my late start.

Values: What are your top values?

Security. Generosity. Curiosity. Flexibility. Growth.

Purpose: What is your personal purpose?

To maintain and support complexity, to seek knowledge and pass it on to those interested, to inspire interest, and to nourish. To connect through interest and joy.

Contribution: At a later time, when you reflect on your life, what do you hope to have contributed?

The feeling of abundance. Reverence in folks for this system we’re part of. The continuation of knowledge.

I want someone who thought they could never do this stuff to have stars in their eyes when they learn that they can.

Joy & Misery: What conditions bring you joy? What conditions make you miserable?

Financial instability and feeling like I’m producing a fungible product for financial gain both make me miserable. Identical routine makes me miserable. Lack of autonomy makes me miserable. High risk of waste makes me miserable.

Experimenting and discovering brings me joy. Generosity and gifting brings me joy. Teaching to interested folks brings me joy. Sharing brings me joy. The wheel of the seasons, relatively predictable but fluctuating each time, brings me joy. Planning brings me joy! Working towards a goal brings me joy. Periods of intense focus interleaved with periods of less work bring me joy. People who also love this stuff bring me joy. Working outside and using my muscles brings me joy, as does solving weird one-off problems with what’s to hand. Having the time to do something right brings me joy. Exploring complexity and unraveling it, but knowing the thing is too complex to fully understand, brings me joy. Learning brings me joy. Good systems - fitness of system, place, and goal - bring me joy.

Work: What is your ideal workplace?

My home land. People are there individually or small groups sporadically, and then there is time on my own to look deeply at what’s going on.

Time: How do you want to spend your time, and what is your ideal work-life balance?

I want to spend my time 65/35 inside/outside-ish. I want to always have a new project or iteration to be puzzling through. I’d like to have spikes of work intensity with long focused days interleaved with quiet low-demand days, but with a small level of constant demand.

I want to spend my time observing, measuring, and making something slightly different each time.

It looks like I'm being reminded from several directions that I need to step back from the details and do some visioning/daydreaming.

I'm super goal driven. If I can visualize it, I can work towards it. I like implementation in the service of a goal, but I can definitely get caught up in the guts of making a logical system and forget it's driving towards something bigger. Or, in this case, I get so caught up in trying to make sure the day-to-day works that I forget to revisit my larger goals.

I'm pretty happy with where I am personally. I have a reasonable understanding of how I work and what I like. For the most part I'm able to tailor my daily life to fit my self. I'm reasonably comfortable with the process of finding work and people that suit me. I have a bunch of directions to go in right now, though, and choosing a direction requires me to look at the compass of larger goals. Where do I want my life to go now? I've got where I wanted to be so far.

I'm working on the guts of emotional/commmunication stuff with Tucker. This is learning a minute-to-minute practice that will theoretically serve the larger question of our relationship by allowing us to talk about it more easily. When we first started dating we'd daydream together about the future; when that faded I'd ask for it specifically sometimes. It's basically visioning, a way of knowing we're steering in the same direction. The relationship needs this.

Little by little the daily labour of the farm gets optimized, another shed here and another parking spot there. I've been reminded to retool the inside of the house; I am now being reminded to retool my vision for the farm by the farm business course I'm taking. I haven't let myself think about what I really want from it yet because I don't believe it's possible to get it, because I've thought that security can't coexist with these other elements. Paying for a structured course, though, maybe I can just add security to the list of things I want and trust the process as someone else drives it.

Work and farm are related. My job right now is ok. Do I want to work to serve the farm? Do I want the farm to eclipse work? Do I want meaningful work to eclipse the farm? Where do I want to take this?

And of course it's all related. When three sources tell me, in a couple weeks, that I need vision statements in three different locations, I will take the hint. This winter is for dreaming.