Yesterday, or earlier today, or at some point before I got going this yesterday morning… scratch that. Starting over: I re-set my clock for daylight savings time. Or I thought I did. In reality, I set it an hour behind when I was supposed to set it an hour ahead – looked about the same to me.
I’m used to going to sleep at about 1-2:00 am, which at this moment also happens to be the “real” and correctly adjusted time. Until I discovered my error a few minutes ago, clock time at my house was set for two hours earlier. My brain knows I’m not here now. My body disagrees. My body wins. I’m going to write for some amount of time equal to less than two hours, and then head to sleep.
I’m inviting whoever reads these things to come along for a little trip inside my thought process.
Pea Planting Time
Ed Hume, regional gardening great, was on the TV exactly a month ago saying that early February is the perfect time to make a first planting of snap peas and garden peas in my area. The weather was uninspiring, to say the least. Sleet, wind, rain, more sleet and frozen sheets of goosh on the streets, and Ed said it’s time to plant the gems of my early Summer.
These are last Summer’s sugar snap peas. Yummy!
I always want more peas, as early as possible, so I took Mr. Hume’s advice on trust. That day I bought seed and checked out the pots that had been stacked and waiting since last Fall. The very next day I planted the first peas. Six pots of possibilities now hang from my eaves; I see them every day and am encouraged.
Blogging is like that for me: I started on faith in uncertain weather. Before I started blogging here someone suggested I get going before I know where I want to end up, and use my explorations to build a readership that can support where I go with this in the future. Making content without a purpose or a target audience was counter intuitive, but “readership” sounded like “community,” and a few posts later the writing bug bit.
Blogging tonight is like that, too: the opportunity was different than the plan. I wanted to go to bed early(ish,) but life handed me a couple hours and I’m here getting this done instead, and I’m not obsessing about how to get creativity out of my tired turnip head and onto the page: I’m getting it done.
Have I turned a corner? Tomorrow I’ll dig up a couple peas and find out: if they’ve sprouted I’m on the right track. If not, I’ll need to look at if I’m just unlucky, or if I’m swimming against the current. As for the writing and identity-building I wanted, I feel like I’m making progress: I’ll know better after sorting through some seeds of ideas and ideals.
Solutions And Their Counterparts Are Everywhere
I like to grow my snap peas in hanging pots up and away from hungry slugs. Living in the Pacific Northwest means I get endangered native slugs, ravenous European interloper slugs, and small gray mountain climber slugs that I’ve regularly seen as much as four feet up off the ground.
Hanging my pots of peas doesn’t eliminate slugs; it does limit slug slime to whatever critters are already living in the dirt. Also, I know from previous experience with hanging pots that slugs tend to hide out in the damp dirt at the bottom, just inside the drainage holes. They commute from those holes, usually emerging at dusk, traveling up the outside of the pot to the foliage above. They’re not as good at climbing up and down a hanging vine, and slugs at eye level are easier to pick off and toss. Regular slug picking comes close to completely cutting out slug slime, which brings a nice, pesticide-free peace of mind to my treasured Summer morning snap pea munch.
Addressing any barrier to productivity is a little like moving slug picking up to eye level.
When natural conditions and goals don’t match up, barriers to achievement are like the sea over a sandcastle: something has to give. If natural conditions for growth are also natural conditions for undesirables, no amount of dedication and hard work will make the undesirable parts go away.
Find And Use The Flow
I can’t undo my error of setting the clock behind instead of ahead. I accept that I do that sort of thing sometimes. I chose to treat the outcome like a two hour bonus instead of a two hour setback, and I can sleep in tomorrow, whatever “tomorrow” is at this hour. This isn’t as much about having a positive attitude as it is about being an opportunist: I have been staking a claim.
I feel better now.
Good night, world. 