Maybe my favorite thing about facebook is the updates I get on my friend’s daughter, who happens to be one of the most fascinating people I know, at just the tender age of four. The things that come out of her mouth are astonishing and funny and bizarre, and never fail to entertain.
Her Joy School class was recently learning about goals, and her mom quoted her declaration on facebook: “My goal is to set a turtle on fire.“
Any other kid, and I might be worried. But this one, I suspect no malice, only a perennial, outlandish curiosity about the way the world works, coupled with a hefty dose of the absurd, as only kids can mix up.
And, my, isn’t a flaming turtle just quite the image, anyway? As goals go, it’s not a bad one.
My horoscope will tell you that I’m quite the goal-setter myself (despite this week’s revelation–). I’ve got more goals than I can handle. I’ve got categories of goals:
The big turtles in this pond are those more far-fetched goals, the sort that would best be met with a little time-travel and a few do-overs: instead of that Humanities degree, I’d get a science degree, and spend my days with a smudged field notebook and dirt under my nails. I’d have gone to graduate school in any one (or two, or three) of several disciplines, and become a teacher or a journalist or a professional advocate, knocking heads together to reform Farm Bills or environmental regulations or access to healthcare. I’d have auditioned for a traveling Shakespeare company, and tread the boards in cities I’d only see at night, and as the dawn bus pulled away. I’d have apprenticed myself to woodworker or blacksmith or weaver, and generated an income with strong, nimble hands.
Though fruitless, I can spend hours daydreaming about any one of these paths. I’m living vicariously through all my other selves, if you will.
Then there are the still-possible goals, the ones that come up in conversation every now and then, the ones I can’t entirely rule out. I may yet still go to PA school or midwifery school, train in acupuncture or energy healing or holistic nutrition, and spend my days bringing healing to people who need it. I may yet build myself a lucrative byline, and make a living doing this here thing I so far do just for fun. I may yet feed people for a living, whether as professional farmer or restauranteur (small-café-eteur, really, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring).
Does everyone do this, build an army of alternate selves leading imaginary lives?
The Man Friend recently tried to elicit a plan from me. Nothing fancy, just a plan for the next year or two about how I thought we should spend and save and move toward where we want to be.
I balked at this word, plan. I told him I had a vision, always a vision, but never a plan. A person with a plan knows what she wants, when she wants it, and precisely how to go about getting it. Plan sounds like I know what I’m doing, that I’ve chosen one of those goals and excluded all the others. Plan is maybe a little too real, because it involves doing more than just daydreaming.
He–rightly–became a little exasperated with my semantic sidestep.
The trouble that plagues me:
Setting goals is easy as pie.
Setting out after them is another matter.
The map of all my other selves is one I could study endlessly. But all those paths never taken, those sidestreets and detours and scenic overlooks, never actually take me anywhere. Walking in circles is a way to remain in motion, but it’s no way to make progress.
So with life, so with this blog. I’ve tried holding the door open to all possibilities, so that it can be, from one post to the next, about anything at all. This approach has its appeal for one so disinclined to say no to any topic or whim, but isn’t what serves this blog–or its writer–best. So I’m promoting this forum from end to means. I’m taking the cul-de-sac and tying it in to the road system, so it can actually go somewhere. I’ve stagnated a little here, whether it’s been noticeable or not, but this should change things.
I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know some very basic things about how I want my little family to live. There will be a lot of work going in to taking that from vision to plan to reality, and I can’t think of any better service for these pages. I’ll keep sprinkling in some of my poetry and other shiny bits that catch my eye, because you know what they say about all work and no play. The focus, though, will be on two people of modest means building a sustainable homestead in the Blue Ridge. If you’re at all interested in green building, off-grid living, building codes, real estate, growing your own food, and general DIY-ing, you should find something to keep you coming back.
That’s it. It’s simple, obvious, constructive. It’s a plan. Oh my.
There is soooo much in this big ole world that is interesting and worthwhile.
And while I know whatever you pursue will be of that ilk, perhaps you might
remind yourself that the pursuit of one or two of these as your primary focus does NOT exclude the others – delay maybe, but not exclude.
Your interest and enthusiasm is inspiring!
Hey Jessie, It was great reading your musings. One thing has struck me when reading about sustainability and doing better for the planet. I see many people/families going it alone. Many seem to have the idea they need to be totally suf sufficient and refuse , for lack of a better word, co ops. Politically, I am a Socialist, oh no, I am out to destroy America. Far from it. The hippies had it right when they started their communes, where the expertise of one was shared with all. I am also a firm believer in the barter system. On the other hand, co ops, and communes succumb to prtty squabbles. But still, why sould thousands of people be without power in America in the winter? The technology is there, and God knows the money is there, but private enterprise has its focus on profit. I wish there was a way to somehow store electricity gleaned from the sun into something that would not slowly drain if not used right away. As I ramble, I think what I am reying to say is we need to be more reliant on each other, and not on the Corporate States of America.
Pinkos are welcome here!
Indeed, there’s very much an anti-capitalist bent at the heart of our plan, and we envision hooking up with like-minded folks in a larger community of fellow laborers, because the Rugged Individualist is a delusion. The purist form of our fantasy does involve completely turning our back on the world–being 100% off-grid, etc–which is, in a lot of ways, more than a little silly. But the impulse is understandable, no? So maybe we’ll be tied into the grid and making our minuscule contribution to a Different Way… I’m okay with that. Joel Salatin isn’t going to take down Big Ag single-handedly, but he’s changed how a good number of people eat. Likewise, I with my little blog and all the other families out there trying some version of the same thing are making our own little waves, eroding grain by tiny grain what is Normal. At the very least, I can sleep at night.