Year's End

[wayfaringwordhack]

Have you ever felt like you should post something but just don't know how to start, how much to open up, how much to put out there?

I have an uncomfortable feeling that after the year that was 2020, there are likely many more people than I am happy with having my same feelings I am.

My dilemma is that I do not want to be defined--nor have my year defined--by so much crap that has happened.  I want to rise above it and declare myself joyful because joy is not happiness, and it is not dependent on circumstances.  However, the Crap and hormones are trying to rob me of my joy.  Can you feel the tension inherent in the thought of having to fight to be joyful?

Let's do pjthompson 's meme instead of dwelling on it.

My first entry of 2020 came in June: 
Today* we welcomed a new bird to the property (and three potential others, more about that below) :  A Khaki Campbell drake, the titular Mr. Brown.

We have since eaten Mr. Brown. :(


July: 
An OS update, which I thought I had installed weeks ago, put an end to my horrid keyboard lag problem, and I can now type freely. Color me happy.

Nothing for August, so this is from September: 
What follows will be long and quite possibly uninteresting for anyone not into growing food, but I wish to get a copy of my thoughts and observations of this growing season (as well as a few comparisons to others) in one place where I can refer back to it. 

From the same day because it was my birthday:
 Birthdays when you are young:
Let's do ALL the things and have a PARTY!

Birthdays when you get older:
Please don't make me do anything, and party, meh. Let's have cake and call it a day. 

October: 
We've been having a very wet and windy week, actually almost two weeks.  

November:
(They're Alive...). My bees that is.

December:
November 29 began like the other mild days we have had thus far this autumn, but by afternoon a London fog had settled on the landscape.  

Comments

[asakiyume]

I identify so strongly with not wanting to be remembered by my misery--in fact, in a reply to a comment in my most recent entry, I was talking about that, and how it ended my diary keeping. I just couldn't stand--felt very judgmental of--the self I felt I was revealing in my diary. I've had this problem for all my life: feeling very judgmental and dismissive of my past self. Not my whole self, but aspects of it. ... Doesn't strike me as very healthy, but I have to own that it really is how I've felt and sometimes still feel. And that's what I hear in your comments here: dissatisfaction with yourself. And I have empathy with that because I feel it too, about myself! But I want you to try to do what I'm trying to do and not be so hard on that poor person of this past year (or past day or past hour or whatever!) If we can be forgiving and gentle with other people, and patient (... and, okay, we can't always, but we have it as a goal, right?), then we need to try to be that way with ourselves.

And also, what about when life genuinely sends us very hard stuff? Because life has sent you very hard stuff. And the fact that you've suffered and been unhappy and have craved help and understanding, that doesn't make you bad! If anything, it makes you someone who will be very kind and empathetic when you encounter others who are going through similar, because you no know what it's like! You won't be one of those people who furrow their brow in bewilderment when someone talks about how hard it is to try to capture personal time when parenting and educating three children and also trying to maintain a homestead. YOU WILL KNOW.

But wanting to get away from all that, wanting not to dwell on it... I understand that, too. I guess the thing I want to say most is that you're a wonderful person, and I'm so glad you're in my life, and you're not likely to be satisfied with yourself, and in many ways that's a good thing but in some ways it's a painful and even harmful thing, but don't worry, we're together--remarkably!--in this strange wonderful awful beautiful gift which is life, and we'll keep walking together, even though we've never met and live an ocean apart.

[pjthompson]

Both of y'all, be good to the good people that you are. Having said that, I often have to say to myself, "If you knew someone who talked to others as you talk to yourself, you'd call them a heartless bitch an eliminate them from your acquaintance." So, there you have it.