Greenstorm's Journal

Well, now.

Last night it snowed. I'm not ready but then I never am? The snow may not stick out the week yet and I may have a chance to rake before the snowblower.

Yesterday I was given notice; the company isn't waiting it out till the sale. That removes some of my decision-making load anyhow; I have the less money/more time offer in my back pocket and I'll move forward with that. My life will be changing. Last day of work is Friday the the 18th, federal election is the Monday. The following week is hunting/butchering with Josh. Then I will start the new job.

This week Tucker is at his parents'. He's... it's hard that he's on the other side of the continent right now, it's hard that he's seeing his other partners and not me, it's hard that he's not prioritizing time to talk to me over there. But, except, well. So this is someone who actually really does the work. In the couple years that we've been together he's been setting boundaries, striving for things, enjoying things. Being back there is like flicking a switch; we talked a little last night and the depression/self-loathing was turned up to 11, enough that it was very very difficult. Every couple sentences there was an insinuation that the relationship would end, that I was stupid and horrible for liking him, that he was going to do all sorts of deliberate self-harm that was just deniable enough that I wasn't sure what to say.

I don't know how to handle this. I am out of my depth. There's no way to argue with someone's self-loathing, and I'm too far away to get a blanket and offer tea and snuggles and a rewatch of The Last Unicorn. It triggers all my worries about being *inconvenient*: when my presence is treated with such indifference and I have to push hard to have time made to talk to me at all it's a struggle not to back right off. And maybe I should back right off? It has the effect of putting me in my abused place, in walking on eggshells and disappearing as much as possible.

And of course my emotional resources are so low right now. I'm losing my job, I'm going to be worried about money for a bit, my partners are far away and can't support me through this right now, my community has mostly been my work people & I'm losing those too. I haven't been sleeping well with one thing and another, mostly from just being busy.

Luckily I have a whole bunch of beets to can/ferment. Such a concrete gesture of hope for the future coupled with visible achievement always helps me.

I mean, I'm also hopeful about the new job, about having time to myself, about creating a domain and running it in reasonable and orderly fashion, and about doing so in service to the environment (my current position has been so removed from the ecosystems I work in, really). I'm excited about my hunting/butchering week. I'm enjoying my harvest so immensely and can't wait to take down notes on what varieties of which I'm growing again and how I'm organizing things in the future.

Things are really mixed right now. I'd like to have someone bring me a nice cup of tea with milk and honey and pet my hair. I'd like to rewatch The Last Unicorn while snuggling, and eat jam on sourdough english muffins (the sourdough is such an amazing compliment to fruit). I'd like to cry some and have that be ok.

Given a sufficiency of time everything will happen.

Things are exciting here.

My site at the company is trying to be sold. I may or not lose my job when the sale goes through. There is some government intervention that is leading to uncertainty about the outcome.

Tucker may or not stay in my town to live but he doesn't know, and if he moves I may or not move with him.

There was this bear.

12 new piglets (10 surviving) and they are adorable.

It's been raining for the last month.

And Tucker's found a new person. Last year about this time he started something like 5 relationships in 2 months, was pretty dishonest about some of them, violated some agreements we had, and got angry at me for my boundaries around it all. I was pretty trepidatious this time. It started the same: "oh, I'm going to go see this friend I don't know well" beforehand and transitioned into "actually we've loved each other for twenty years and need to talk every day" after the fact.

I mean, at this point that's what I expect from folks new to poly. It's so hard for me to get off on the right foot and really enjoy the other folks' relationship when everything feels evasive and hidden. Don't get me wrong, I've felt poly guilt and struggled to tell partners things, and it's taken me time to be able to realistically assess my relationship patterns to have a sense of how things might proceed. Still. I do like to have some sense of what's going on if we're going to talk about it at all, and even more importantly I need to not be misled. Stepping away for some months and letting the NRE sort itself out, my preferred method, was not an option here.

So I tried another tack this time: get real clear on what I needed from the relationship, focus on that, and be honest about my terror around repeating the last experience and still not feeling heard about it. It feels especially rough when... that all happened when I was evacuated from the fire last year, and this year it's now that I'm losing my job and trying to decide whether to leave Threshold and my town. I just don't have extra bandwidth to be present and level.

The reason I stay in a relationship with Tucker, especially as close a relationship as I am, is that he does the work. It can take him some time but he certainly does not often use "let me work on that" as a way to duck out of responsibility and buy time: he actually does work on it.

After a day of echoes of last year (with "you always ruin my relationships" overtones) he seems to have figured out a way to be present and loving when we're together, to actually spend time with me, and things have been pretty great. He was even super supportive around the bear and being a second person as backup, which... well, we'll talk about the farm and how I feel about other people being involved in that some other time. We also still have some planned vacations together rather than all future planning being eaten up with trying to stay in proximity to people several thousands of miles away, which also helps a great deal.

Looks like the route forward with this one is "put my needs on the table and don't ask too many questions".

A complicating factor, not so related to the new relationship, is that I need to ask questions. Deciding which job I'm taking next is a big thing for me, and if I move again I intend it to be my last (which I also said about this one and that may still have been true). He's been up here nearly a year and maybe doesn't want to stay in Fort, which means that this would be the time to move. I'd really like that nailed down, or at least start the process of "do we want to share a house/a property with 2 houses" and "is there a place that covers his needs and my needs actually in the world where one need is affordability"

My hope is he'll do the work on that one too. Definitely I'm struggling with the uncertainty.

Phew.

Somewhere in there I ordered and planted a whole bunch of african violet leaves, so I must believe there's a future. I picked a mess of beans and need to pickle them. I ordered a sauerkraut crock. The seasons will turn, and turn again. I always find that comforting.

Here's to a boring winter.

It's pretty much rained all of July so far. That's great for: the grass and thus the geese, my garden, our fear of forest fires returning after last year's evac alert. It's bad for: electronics when they're taken to the field, the mud in my barnyard behind my house, people who live up north feeling like they can go outside.

I've been doing fieldwork a little and it's been great. I like the rain - I've lost my heat tolerance since I moved up here but apparently my skin is still waterproof and I don't melt. It mostly hasn't rained enough to be truly awful to enter data into the ipad. Rain makes the outdoors feel a little bit private and nicely peaceful. It tends to keep the wildlife from moving around as much so there's a little less chance of an encounter. And of course, my mind/body needs hours of manual labour a day to keep really happy and I hadn't been getting that previously.

I've mourned losing the work program I built, and I'm ready to move on to the next thing. The next thing was supposed to be production field work (which I'm terrible at, too slow!) and I started that out this week, and next week I'm mentoring some folks new to it. I probably have two months of this left before the end of the company I currently work for.

So, really, the next thing is the next thing.

Do I go work for government? It's a lot fewer hours, a little less money, and a really big organization. I can probably handle a lot of the bureaucracy. I'm not sure if I'd feel I was accomplishing much? Good pension, it seems like they can't fire bad folks to save their lives, probably some stability? I wouldn't have to move.

If the new owners want me, I'll probably stay in Fort and go into the restoration part of forestry work rather than the sampling I currently do. I've been on the fence about this type of work for awhile; often it's really squeezed for resources since folks are obligated to do it but want to meet minimum legal standards with mimimum money. A lot of women do the work, which is a sign of its status. On the other hand it's ecosystem-based and uses the part of my brain that just naturally notices things in the bush-- is it wetter here? Drier? What's the soil? Where is the underground water flowing? Where's the sun? --and using those skills puts my soul at peace. I get to interact with any one piece of land for years rather than coming through as a tourist. If everyone who works at this site now stays here, I definitely have a group of folks who'll have my back. It would be a safe place to do this work. And I realise now that my roots have grown into, not just Threshold and my little 7 acres, but into the whole district and all these forests around me. It would be working in my home. I'd be very autonomous, running another program.

I probably have the option of leaving this town and moving to the outskirts of the big northern centre for a forestry job (those might be hard to come by with the industry crashing like it is). It would, I think, be better for Tucker. I'd be able to see Josh more. I would move closer to some folks I know and like but also away from some folks I know and like. I'm uneasy about that option, about being able to afford it if Tucker and I want to stop living together.

I could also move a little south and pick up a job as an environmental monitoring tech at a mine. I'd be outdoors and responsible for my data and not for running a team or a program, which sounds super restful. The land there is even cheaper than the land here, that's pretty much as permanent a job as exists nowadays. I wouldn't make much money and I'd be probably isolated out of my current relationships without figuring out a time split.

I could move a little north and east and pick up a job for an indigenous group. It would be incredibly challenging work, it would position me well for pretty much any resource job in the future, and it might let me build a program and then run it functionally for the next while as opposed to building it and then moving on to build something else. I'd also probably be isolated out of my current relationship, though there might be a little wiggle room. I'd probably also be moving a zone colder, which seems terrible.

I could look into getting an agricultural loan for that greenhouse. It would feel so precarious, especially with forestry collapsing everywhere right now. The owner wanted to pivot it to selling permaculture plants at least as a side business and while that seems lovely I'm not sure how much of a good idea it is. I could certainly grow hardy apple trees well there.

I do not want to go back and live on the coast, not really. The winter sunshine is nice here. The coast is terrifically expensive, expensive enough that I don't think I'd ever be completely comfortable. I enjoy the intensity of the seasons here and I like the privacy.

I guess we'll see what comes back from the applications so I know which are actually viable options.

I've been away from home for work for a couple days. There are many things afoot at work, but in general it's all going very well. There are going to be some major changes at my company. Everyone here is optimistic about it, but--

--after the company put out the announcement I got a message from a friend who had been visiting a forestry greenhouse down near Canim Lake. The owner wanted to use the seedling nursery to support a permaculture one. I'd visited them the summer I worked in the area, and we'd had a lovely time discussing permaculture, how things grow, wells, the cost of heating greenhouses, where the forestry industry was going, etc etc. They want to sell now, and they remembered me well enough to ask my friend to pass on their email address to me. It's a functioning business, it makes money, it has greenhouse and well infrastructure...

I.

.

You know, I've always been poly. When I was seven years old and reading books and putting myself into relationship with the characters, it was always with more than one at once (although generally parallel rather than kitchen table, but that's a different post). One thing poly means for me is always missing someone. There's always someone who isn't there. And that's hard, but it's worth it because I get to have so many people.

I don't know if I could make this nursery work. I have no idea. It's a gorgeous piece of land by the most lovely waterfall you can imagine and I would have my hands in the dirt all the time. I don't like running businesses, I don't like the sense that there's only myself to blame if things go badly.

I just planted so many apple trees here, and the work piece that I've been having trouble with might well get better.

I don't get two pieces of land. I don't get two lives. I don't want to move.

But I kind of want this. And I want what I have, of course, it would be a significant grief and loss either way.

But.
I.

Can you imagine me going to 12-year-old Greenie who's just spent a couple years pickaxing subsoil and wheelbarrowing manure from way downhill in the paddock to grow tomatoes, and who has saved up her allowance so she can give the money to mom to write a cheque and buy seeds from the catalogue... Can you imagine me going to that self and saying I could run a nursery but I turned it down because it felt risky?

I keep wanting to cry. I don't know if I've ever written about this, but I had a transformational event once at a pagan festival. The culmination of the rite (for me at least) involved whispering into the air. I was supposed to whisper the thing I most wanted. I basically couldn't, because I had so much shame and fear around wanting it, but my lips shaped "I want to be a farmer". I never did stop crying that night.

I worked through it, I know the job I want isn't one I can do for enough money to keep me alive. I accept it and I've more or less put that to bed. I can voice it now, at least, and not spend the day crying.

That feeling is surfacing now, the crying, the shame around wanting a thing. The inability to voice it. I fear that if I look straight at wanting the thing I'll decide to do it. Maybe I'll lose it? Maybe I'll get it? They all equally fill me with that feeling that my heart is drowning in tears, that I am at risk of losing the constraints that keep me separate from what I want.

I don't know what to do. I should email them.

My heart is doing so many things right now.

I am so glad to have my property, my home. The rest of my life has started moving again, as usual, and I enjoy and need having that stability to root into: plan for the spring, plan for the future, plant trees and shape the landscape.

It seems likely that spending more than 4 or 5 days in Vancouver is just going to make me sick, full stop. There's too much pot and other scent in public spaces, and honestly likely in many private homes. I guess that's something I can write off my list of activities.

On the other hand I may be able to be convinced that community can be worthwhile and I have a better sense of how I need to use my time. There are people who love, understand, and support me out there. Interacting with them one-on-one or in small groups is lovely and good for my soul. The internet seems to break rather than build community for me, and my attempts to spend less time on it have had really good results.

There's also a potential career opportunity coming up in the fall/winter. Nothing solid yet, but it could be good; work better suited to me and the ability to keep living in the same place.

Also lots of movement and big decisions for partners, and of course that always trickles down.

It feels like spring again, snowmelt starting to gather momentum. It's an important time to steer.

Figured I'd post pre-Wednesday meltdown just to change it up a bit.

There's an industry group I'm part of that has monthly meetings. It's been a really fantastic way for me to, well, network; not only do I meet people I think are neat or who can teach me a lot about the profession in a ton of different ways, but sometimes I also just have time to chat with people I've formally met but wouldn't enter casual conversation with otherwise.

So, tonight I did some networking about ethical tropical forestry. Now, last week I also followed up on this, trying to figure out where and how I could work somewhere warm, doing interesting work, without terrorizing indigenous ecosystems or populations. From that I deduce that I might want to do this sometime, just to try, maybe mainly because I want to live somewhere I can grow fruit year round and yes it's winter here, how can you tell?

Chatted for awhile with head of alumni relations, which was an interesting conversation as well.

Also got to gesticulate a lot about urban forestry, then see another one of my people doing a presentation on it, in a lot of ways overlapping what I'd have said. On the other hand, same dude said some pretty terrible stuff about homeless people and I didn't know what to do as an audience member. Perhaps I should ask my ethics prof and see how she responds to a real-world situation. She's been keeping class away from those for the most part.

I've been eating a ton of veggies from the local Persia Market, because it's cheap and a joy to shop in and they're fresh. I say this as a lead-in to mentioning that they have seville oranges and they would make a lovely marmalade mead, and my goodness I'm making a lot of booze this year. It is definitely a stress relief valve. I really have need for the future these days, just as something to hold onto.

I miss my rabbits, I just haven't been home to interact much. Still loving this set of housemates; it wouldn't be long-term sustainable but is truly lovely for this timeframe. They remain a good channel to my mental health: when I came home this evening I found myself saying "you look so cute, is that so I'll keep loving you? I'd love you anyhow, you know".

Anyhow, don't have much time, but thought I'd touch in before Wednesdaypocalypse, which is pretty reliably awful and doesn't give a representative sample.

And yes, I ran yesterday.

Edited to add: apparently I posted yesterday and forgot. Memory is terrible lately. Oh well, overlap.

The words are starting to come, in bits and pieces and fits and starts and little flashes behind my eyes. I've been running around with my arms outstretched, gathering up the world, and soon I will see if I can shape it into something.

In the meantime, in other news, here is Steinbeck:

"Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simply — the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man — when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live — for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live — for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know — fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."

TS Eliot nailed it: "...a hundred visions and revisions, ... For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

That's where I am right there. Nailed it indeed.

I am moving for the end of this month.

I am offered a place in the west end, slightly too small for me and with no deck and no dishwasher but with lovely floors and east windows and Stanley Park and the beach right there and the world outside my front door and in an apartment building so fully autonomous.

I am offered a place at Main x 41st, huge, beautiful and new, dishwasher and yard, but with a family above with kids. It's not the noise I'm worried about; it's the lack of loud sex. Close to Tenay and her family, who could share meals. This list of positives looks longer, doesn't it?

Price isn't a big difference between them. They are both the same distance to UBC biking-wise. I like both landlords.

This is a lifestyle choice. No question. Will I live more out in the world, at the park and the beach and at school, or will I nest up in my home with my hobbies? Will I have folks over a few at a time or in bigger groups? Will I fergodsakes have to rent a storage locker for my booze that needs aging? Even... will I eat more rice or more western/mediterranean (oh dear gods, middle earth, why did I just now see that?)?

I think I will take the west end one, but I am... not sure. No smoking meat. No all-grain brewing. I don't know. This feeling is the meaning of the word torn.

And no matter how torn I am, here's me walking into the future.

I've been doing a crazy amount of learning lately, and I've been surging forward full speed on a bunch of decisions. Let's see if I can get some of it down.

Sunshine + exercise + food == happy Greenie. This is no news to me or anyone. However, I'd been depending on work for the exercise and sunlight, and work right now is a source of stress and not a source of any of those other things. I had been (have been) having a rough winter; I've got a lot of changes going on, much of the outcomes outside my experience or control, and I can't afford to let this stuff slide. So, I've let my competitive instinct kick in and started doing hot yoga like Dave, just... more often. Every single day I do it I feel better for hours afterwards. I am keeping an eye on overtraining issues and not doing absolutely every single say, but it's good so far. It levels my head so well and is conveniently close. I may keep this up even after I start bike commuting.

Sunshine was really forthcoming this fall until sometime in December, which is when I started to nosedive. Exercise can compensate to some degree for light, especially since I'm being kept too busy at work to get out into the light during the week. Ugh.

I'm getting real good at eating enough, and at asking for help when I'm having trouble. It helps that my neighbour is always up for eating together and I can use her presence to put myself into a better place for food. This all gets difficult when I'm financially stressed, though the meat box and farm stuff really helps.

Sex is a problem in a bunch of different ways. I thought I had this figured out; I thought that by taking back my bodily autonomy so I didn't have to ask folks permission before making choices around sex I would fix everything. Instead I only began a learning curve totally different from the one I've been on most of my life. How do I decide who to have sex with and when? How do I deal with humans when I decide to have or not to have sex with them in general? Per instance? How do I deal with the fact that in people's eyes when I don't have a primary partner I am always on some level available no matter how much I protest to the contrary? How do I let people know the ways in which I am more available than suspected, and how less? How do I deal with not having enough sex, or with feeling subtle coercion around sex? How do I deal with sex that I want beforehand but don't want in the moment? How do I calibrate desire vs complexity and work? How much do I like emotions involved in sex and what kind of sex do I like, anyhow?

I imagine you folks who weren't in serious relationships most of your life are laughing at me about now.

I'm learning that I probably want to have sex with fewer people less often than I thought I did, because the complexities that come with it are just not worth it. I'm also learning how sexual compatibility and emotional intimacy work together for me, and how they don't always go together regardless of how much I might want them to. I think I'm learning that when something works, I should let it work, and when I need to push and work hard on something, I should probably drop the sexual aspect of it.

I don't know that my original interpretation of solo poly will end up being what I choose, after all. Especially with the time and energy I'm putting elsewhere, it may just not be worth it.

Romantic relationships aren't enough. In fact, even non-romantic relationships aren't enough. I've made huge strides lately in learning to have friends, people with whom I'm close in non-romantic, non-partnery long-term and very intimate ways. That enriches my life immensely. I've been treating my home, careful selection and upkeep of my house, with as much attention as I have in the past given major relationships. I really enjoy the result. I have decided to add my career to the mix of important stuff to give that much time and attention to.

This has resulted in my making some information-gathering dates with folks at my old school, formulating a career path, and now doing some more information-gathering from folks in the field I want to head into and (this is scary) applying to, not a technical college, but a formal huge sprawling university-temple of academia. I'm formulating a support team (emotional, physical, logistical, motivational) which I can do really well based on my previous experience with working through my diploma. I actually feel pretty confident about this path of mine, though it's me against huge and arbitrary machines within machines, which is never easy for me to deal with.

I may not be in Vancouver forever. I may stay in the Valley forever or I may not, but a million tiny roots are shaking themselves and working their way loose. I had never thought to leave, before, but in a couple of years I will be able to if I so choose.

I've been beset by flashes of an odd feeling lately: not quite at loose ends, not quite bored, but waiting. I have a million things I'd like to do, that I would quite enjoy, but instead of actually doing them I find activities to kill time (and no, not just the internet). I wonder if it's just my organizing-mind burnt out from work and extra-busy scheduling, so I have no energy left over to schedule my solo time?

I had a truly lovely weekend surrounded by all sorts of folks. Now I feel the need for quality time with myself, not just waiting but doing unconstrained by the thousand subtle pieces of compromise and sharing that happen when others are around. I need to put myself in experimental space, to stretch, to challenge. I don't do that with people much except maybe with climbing. I do it alone, subject only to my own judgements.

What does my list of desirable things look like? Perhaps just writing it down is the first step.

o fix pottery wheel & get clay
o brewing 8 top up kousa wine & rack *apple-juniper wine (or cider, for Dec 7 party?) *sweet mead *another (stronger?) batch of graff to be ready for Dec 7 party?
o sewing *stripy skirts *bloomers *stretch long tops
o knitting *cast on in the round (armwarmers)
o biking *scout a 10k loop from my house
o foraging *find a chickweed patch by my home *chestnuts?
o body *I want to climb, actually, but it's annoying to do so before I move. Running? Yoga?
o costuming for Andrew's memorial & wine & cheese

Hm. I'm noticing my enthusiasm for cooking is waning again, and I'm really not up for gardening much right now, though design is fun. I'm probably pretty burnt out in general. It seems like there are some changes afoot at work but it's hard to see how that will fall out in the longer term. My bosses really, really want to keep me, it seems.

Oh well. Take your changes a few at a time, Greenie. Don't look too far down that road.