Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
Today’s prompt made me think, especially in light of all my efforts at bringing peace into my soul the past few days. I’d love a holiday that encourages people to sit back and drop their antagonistic thoughts toward “the other” for a day and work together to create sensible, rational solutions to the issues that conspire to keep all of us from having the chance to live meaningful, productive lives.
I saw a belted kingfisher and a bunch of fish jumping today!
I predict my holiday could lead to arguments over the meaning of peace and the relevance of rationality. But I can dream, can’t I?
Some of us live in peace and safety, like this little buck. Most of us live in a world full of deer feeders fattening us up to feed someone else.
I’m cynical today. Sometimes the news makes you feel even less optimistic than others. And this is after hiding in the woods for a few days. I’m still in the woods, but it was a long work day. I’m happy my office setup works so well. It’s really freeing to be able to work anywhere you have bandwidth.
I was busy as two bees on frost weed.
I’m ready to get home and take care of the animals myself. I hope Apache’s new meds arrived and will work out. I hope humans work things out, too, but I’m betting on the horse.
What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
Here’s a prompt I was interested in. I was really stuck on a career path until I was about 26 and realized I didn’t want to write about little syllables at the ends of Japanese words the rest of my life. But I loved the teaching of linguistics. I love teaching anything.
Todays illustrations are cool cloud formations from today.
The first path I should have considered was getting a degree in music education so I could teach choral music and sing in choruses. That seems more likely than making a living in folk-rock.
Another path would have been to switch my college major to biology once I realized how good I was at it. I could have gotten to do field research and written marginally more interesting scientific papers…or taught biology. Still, I’d get to hang out in nature for a living. But I’d have ended up specializing in maggots or something, knowing my luck.
I could have done forestry and become a park ranger? Right now that’s my vote, especially if I could ride horses in the forest.
I seriously considered a career change in mid life to work in a yarn shop and teach knitting and design patterns. I enjoy doing that still, but I’m not creative or driven enough to actually make a living at it. I sure admire my friends who do it, though.
Someday I’d like to write a book that’s got a plot. Obviously I have a lot of words in me. They just need more structure than a blog! I do write for my job, but honestly, I’d be writing every day no matter what. Maybe I’d write letters. Maybe I’d write poems or songs. Who knows? I just enjoy making sentences. That’s not a different me; the writer is the real me.
I don’t think photography is a potential career path.
One of the odder things I do in my job is record myself talking about software. It’s nice and low-tech, using a fairly nice headset and inexpensive recording software (Audacity). I’m not making a fancy podcast or recording music, so this works fine.
I listened to her all afternoon.
Of course, I have to edit the recordings, which requires a lot of listening to myself talk. I’ve gotten good at just pausing when I mess up and starting again at the previous place where I paused, so no one can tell I edited the recording. You have to use the same pitch and volume to do a good job. Sometimes I don’t.
Just like sometimes my photos are dang blurry.
Over the years I’ve trained myself not to gasp before I talk, not to make clicking sounds between words, to put ending consonants at the ends of words without sounding overly precise, and to vary my pitch so people won’t fall asleep. Doing it right the first time makes the process much less tedious.
My friend Melissa taught me all that.
I write out a script, so I won’t forget important details, but do my best to write words I can say naturally. My love of parenthetical expressions doesn’t get to come out much in the scripts. And I keep my sentences fairly short, as much as I can with talking about computers.
The best outcome of recording training videos is that I’ve become comfortable with the sound of my own voice. Like many people, I used to cringe at recordings of myself, because it didn’t sound like my voice does in my head when I’m talking. But now I think I sound fine. It’s sorta southern, but just a bit, not like my informal voice. I’d probably cringe to hear a recording of me telling a story like I did tonight at the Master Naturalist Meeting.
My fancy recording voice is like my shadow self. It’s very bland.
The only reason I wrote this blog entry is that it’s what was passing through my mind as I was about to fall asleep from another busy day. I guess I dragged whoever reads this through my sleepy thoughts.
Drew wanted me to write about his new browband. And that his head is healing fine.
Oh my. If you’ve known me for the past few years, you’ll probably have a good idea what my favorite hobby is. Or you’re saying, “Wait a minute, how can Suna choose between knitting/crocheting and horses?”
A crocheted horse, maybe?
You’re right. I can’t choose between my two favorite activities, which I’ve consistently loved since early childhood. I think I liked horses the moment I popped out of the womb, and I was knitting in kindergarten. I’m not one to stray from things I love, which does lead to “clutter,” I guess.
Current temperature blanket progress. This is September. Still hot. The next row will be better!
But I’ve given up on caring if people judge me for my collections!
Note that reading and hanging out in nature are not listed among my favorite hobbies. That’s because they are necessities, not hobbies.
What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?
I was going to be flip and answer this one with “golf.” I thought it was boring and elitist when I was young, and getting my head cracked open by a golf club in bad ole 8th grade didn’t help (when I mentioned this earlier I forgot to add that as I stumbled my way alone and bleeding to the school nurse, I rubbed blood all over the exterior of Plantation Middle School, to express my disgust with my situation. They never did golf again in middle school PE. However, I’ve come to enjoy watching golf on television and have fun at Top Golf.
No golf photos, but here’s a painted lady.
My more serious answer is that I’ve changed my mind about Christianity. I have gradually come to realize that I am not fond of institutional religion in general, not just Christianity. Also, I realized that what upsets me most about certain Christian sects is how bizarrely they’ve distorted the message of peace, kindness, and caring that the historical Christ preached into a war-mongering, cruel, and disdainful way of enforcing power over the masses in favor of a privileged few.
Snow on the prairie looking elegant.
It turns out that there are Christians with whom I agree very much and whose ideas I’m happy to incorporate into my life, along with wise people from other traditions. So, I am still quite unimpressed with many versions of Christianity, but I’m very comfortable with the teachings of Christ (not Paul’s version).
A bee I’d never seen before. ID not confirmed.
Enough of that. Huzzah! Today was the day! Pleasant weather arrived! I even had to wear a sweatshirt getting Drew ready to go to a horse clinic. I just basked all day and couldn’t make myself stay inside even after I got home. I wandered around taking pictures for the pollinator BioBlitz that’s going on.
Texas nightshade (Solanum triquetrum) is a pretty plant that only grows in one spot on our property.
The nice weather made the clinic lots of fun, even though Drew was not on his best behavior much of the time, because he was very distracted by a beautiful mare (I don’t know what makes a mare beautiful to a hormonal gelding, but she is very pretty.
I love her. What a butt!
Eventually he settled down, but not after I had to trot him in a circle so many times I was getting dizzy. He was distracted. Once we switched to obstacles, he did better. We jumped! And we went around a corner backwards. There were challenges due to my lack of skill, but I got through the day.
I’ve got my eye on her.
It was funny that all three horses in my group were gray. Drew’s the tiny one that doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars. But he is just fine.
Brilliantly, we separated Drew from Luna for the photo.
Hanging out with the horse gang again was just great. I’m glad summer is over so we can have fun and learn more. There’s lots to learn!
Sara got this picture of Drew not grasping the concept of sharing space with Aragorn.
I have a healthy amount of Imposter Syndrome going on, stemming mainly from feeling so horribly untalented at what I went to grad school for, even though I loved it. But mostly I’ve been able to blend in, make conversation, or at least get by in whatever situation I get thrown in.
It’s because I meditate.
I admit I felt uncomfortable during the years we were studying real estate renovations and investment, especially when we got labeled as “big investors” and getting invited to special receptions and events (like a sky box at a football game—I couldn’t do rich people small talk so I sat in the seats and watched the game. I’m good at football watching. I grew up working class or barely middle class, so I missed out on rich people issues and topics. They talked a lot about taxes when just a year or two before mine were easily done by Turbo Tax.
Now, though, I understand horse expenses.
But the time I felt most out of place was the 1971-72 school year, when I was removed from a junior high school where I fit in, had my advanced classes, and was popular among the smart hippie kids. I was placed in a new town, which was a kinda snobby suburb. That was ok. But the school was an “open classroom.” Three grades, 6-8, were all in a giant room with lockers delineating learning areas. Black kids were bussed in from miles away and not thrilled about it. All abilities were in the same classroom, which was supposed to be just fine for learners and teachers, because we were supposed to teach ourselves, each at our own pace.
It was hell. Science class was good, because we all learned at the same time, mainly how to hurt each other with lab equipment. Much of the year, the white kids would have nothing to do with a hippie kid. The black girls were more friendly. Eventually I had friends.
But this whole system was chaos. By halfway through the year I’d finished English and social studies, so three of us would go to the open air library and crawl under a table to read plays to each other. Shakespeare was quite naughty, we thought. Probably it’s banned today.
But I couldn’t teach myself algebra, even with a friend trying with me. She was brilliant. But we needed a teacher, and Mr. Schecter had no interest in teaching, just grading papers. So my friend and I crocheted purses. Hmm. I did a lot of extra-curricular stuff.
Anyway, that was the year I fainted in volleyball and took a golf club to my head. Only chorus was fun. Made lifelong friends there!
I was a square peg in that giant round hole of a school building. I lost a year of math, too. I had to do Algebra I again, so I was behind many of my friends.
I had no deep pool to hide in.
I’m sure I drove my parents up a wall, as we used to say, that year. I felt like a complete misfit, but these memories reminded me there was plenty of fun. Change was just hard for an adolescent with severe anxiety. I didn’t even know what anxiety was. I was just “too sensitive.”
I’m glad I have my circle of human and animal friends to support me now!
I’m so tired that I don’t have much in me tonight. I had a earache all last night, for no reason I can discern. I’m not someone who gets ear infections and there’s no water in my ears. Anyway, short blog today.
Also, no exciting photos. I was trying to get good pictures of my horses. I didn’t really.
I thought about skills I’d like to learn, like painting, machine sewing, spinning yarn, or playing piano. They are all artsy skills.
The skill I NEED to learn, though, is hitching a horse trailer to a vehicle and safely conveying said horses to their destination. Oh, and parking competently. I think what’s stopping me is that I could probably drive fine, but I’m not strong enough to change tires or deal with mechanical issues, so I like having a companion.
I couldn’t get his head out of the hay.
Lee points out that two hours of horse lessons usually wipe me out mentally and physically, which is why he doesn’t mind taking me to Tarrin’s. After getting the horses and their equipment ready, the ride over lets me recover enough to do the lesson, and the ride back home gets me cooled off enough to unpack and feed everyone without keeling over.
I’m running out of hay. Not good. Need rain. Hoping for tonight.
I’m more athletic than I once was, but now age is creeping up on me. It’s better than the alternative. My financial planner says I will have enough money to make it to 2051. That should do, though I did want to live to the age of 100, if human civilization makes it to 2058.
In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?
I’m not going to answer a prompt every day this month, but at the end of today, I knew the answer to this one.
Hard work that leads to growth is fulfilling to me. Work for work’s sake, well, it’s a chance to practice mindfulness at best. I can mentally go to my happy place while doing drudge work.
Happy place (Hermits’ Rest woods)
The work I’ve been doing the past few years with horses has been hard, really hard. It’s pushed me out of my comfort zone both mentally and physically. Horses are beautiful and smell good, but they are weird and unpredictable (even for people who know them well).
You never know what we’ll do next.
I was just chatting with a fellow student of Tarrin’s tonight, and we were commiserating about our setbacks this summer and how hard it is to regain confidence when you feel like you can’t trust your horse. We both know we will have to work hard on it, but we pointed out how many obstacles we each have overcome so far. That helps, reminders from others!
Woodpeckers work hard in this tree.
As for other kinds of hard work, like actual work and volunteer work, of course it helps if I learn and grow from it. I am fulfilled if my efforts are appreciated or help others. That’s why I like teaching people. You can see that the students have new skills or knowledge that will enrich them. Teaching knitting really exemplifies this. You give someone a lifelong hobby!
Then they can make giant year-long blankets.
My Master Naturalist work is often hard, but wow is it fulfilling to know so much about my surroundings and it’s great to be able to help others ID plants and birds or understand more about the local ecosystem.
For example, I know these rocks, which look like potatoes to me, are what’s in the soil here.
As for today, I took a long walk in the woods, got to enjoy Apache’s previous rider, Kayla, visit with him, and rode Drew around the pasture with only a little need for reassurance. (Backsliding was having trouble bridling after it went well for a few times in a row.)
Old friends and a nice new dog friend.
Enjoy sites from the woods.
True but rude to put on our bridge. Extra loud crow that dominated my bird sound recordings. Drummond’s wood sorrelGreen poinsettia Graceful balloon vineLittle ballon’sStream flowingMy little friend, silky evolvulus Pond behind our back pond. Honey mesquite pods
Oh, gee. No idea how to answer this. Hmm. It’s a lot easier to think of traits I’d like to improve on.
Ok. I declare my favorite trait about myself is my curiosity. I’m curious about nature, people, ideas. That leads to knowledge, which leads to growth, which makes life a positive experience.
Here’s a very curious-looking insect. it’s the nymph of Trichopepla semivittata, whatever that is. A scientist told me.
I’m sorta glad we had to cancel our camping trip this weekend. I’ve enjoyed working with the horses a lot since it’s no longer unbearably hot just before sunset.
Blue dasher dragonfly that got trapped in the tack room.
I’m taking Apache back to basics, so no riding, just long walks. Yesterday we walked all the way down the road, where he couldn’t see any other horses. He was just fine. He just has trouble being ridden alone. That’s frustrating, but I’m following Tarrin’s plan and we’ll see how it works out.
I’m a nervous horsie.
Drew, on the other hand, is settling down so well. After we had a nice, calm walk at training last week, I decided maybe HE would be the horse I can ride around the property and enjoy. Sure enough, this evening we went all over the field in front of the house with no stress whatsoever. I’m going to try some other places tomorrow. I’m pleased.
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
Oh good, here’s a question that I don’t have to be as careful answering as yesterday’s (thanks for the positive feedback). I know the things I’d love to do if it weren’t for that pesky needing an income thing.
Knitting Teacher. I truly loved the years I spent teaching people to knit at a yarn shop. I’ve been teaching knitting and crocheting informally most of my life, but I really got a system going there toward the end. It’s so rewarding to taking someone from being sure they’re unable to learn something straight to competency. And once you can knit, you’ve always got something to do!
Here’s a good starter project.
Nature Interpreter. This is a real job. You share with people about the nature around them, help them learn to see things they might not have noticed, and show them the unique qualities of the place where they are. You can do it as a volunteer in some parks, but Milam County lacks State Parks. Maybe the Ranchería Grande site folks are working on that’s in this county will need interpretation.
I could show folks that they aren’t just walking through a field of weeds, but that the asters are alive with tiny fuzzy bee flies.
Backup Singer. I love(d) to sing. I like being in front, but it’s especially fun to do harmonies behind a singer. I miss performing. I miss the teamwork and cooperation of being in a band, vocal group, or chorus. And sometimes backup singers get to travel! I love staying in hotels, too!
This is the group my friend Sharon is in, the Studebakers. They take turns singing lead and harmonies.
Given a fourth choice I’d be a field worker in biology. I’d get to both be outside and explore nature AND write scientific papers! I actually do know how to do that.
