2021-06-02 — My Dear Tractor

It’s been… a really good day today. 🙂

Well, of course it has… every day is a good day: it’s just good in different ways. 🙃 So I guess I’d say, today was the happy, lighter type of good day. 😊 I’m grateful for that. I still feel like something outside of myself is probably helping to lift me, to give me strength in these really hard times for me, so though I’m trying to fill me life with good and uplifting things, I’m gonna give some credit to Captain Universe and all the uplifting universe energy and prayers y’all are sending my way.

Thanks. 😊

Dreams. As any of you who are regular readers know, I’m not a dreamer. Well, I’m a massive dreamer, a utopian thinker, but I man those things that happen at night. I don’t dream often. But last night, I did! I dreamed a bunch. It was pretty nutty because in the dream, I knew was dreaming, and I felt like there were lessons to learn from the dream, so in the dream, I was trying to keep track of the various lessons, memorize what I was learning in each experience within the dream, but upon waking, it fled so quickly I was only able to get a handful of things written down and not much of anything meaningful in terms of learning to take away form it.

But I tried, and that’s all that matters. 🙂

And I learned something interesting just randomly. Did you know that meat and dairy increase the likelihood of having nightmares?!?! No, this isn’t me going on a militant vegan tirade. That’s… not me, though I do highly encourage being veggie or vegan for a number of different reasons. But, no, I’m not the kind of person to try to push it on you.

Anyway! So I was just doing a quick search to see if meat increased the likelihood of dreams, as, though I’m not buying any new animal products, we’re still eating down our meat stores in the freezer, and last night I had some pork, and boom, dreams. So I was doing some searching, and one of the first things I came across was a study that Burger King actually did, and it showed that dairy and meat increased nightmares. (granted, I didn’t read a whole bunch of studies or check to see if they had a well-designed study, etc., so perhaps more study should be done before I make any concrete claims, but… well… there you go.)

Speaking of sleep, I slept for like… 12 hours? That was soooooo nice. It’s 9:33 right now, so I’m a good bit late to bed again, but with all that sleep, it might be hard for me to fall asleep tonight anyway.

Anyway, the day started off fabulously. After chatting with the Big Guy and trying to write out what I remembered of my dreams, my friend Cory called, and we chatted for about an hour and a half about gospel stuff, and it was fabulous. It was one of my favorite types of conversations–the kind where you just sort of process through, ask each other questions, think, posit ideas, increase in motivation and excitement and energy.

I. Love. Those.

😊

So that was loverly. 🙂 Oh! And I walked the trails for like an hour with nary a tick or chigger issue. So that was good, too. Oh, and we’re halfway through the worst of the tick season, I think? I think May and June are the worst?

After that… I chatted with my friend Brittani who was having a really rough time. It was interesting because the roles are usually reversed. Usually, I’m the one who’s struggling in this particular kind of circumstance, and she’s the one who’s trying to lift me, but today I had the opportunity to try to return the favor and do some lifting myself. Gratefully, with some strong effort on her part, we were finally both able to find ourselves positive and happy–singing uplifting songs being one of the triggers that lifted our souls. Yay. 😊 (I sent her a video of me loudly singing a hymn while driving the tractor 😁)

Can I just say how nice it is to just choose to be okay with whatever happens? To choose to be happy through it? It’s. So. Nice!!!

I know that historically, I’ve swung back down eventually, but I feel like I’m learning more and more, and I’m growing more and more, and so I feel like there’s hope that the lower times will be fewer and fewer and further and further apart.

Okay, I’d like to write more, but it’s almost 10. Journaling takes so long! But I am grateful for it. Soooo grateful for it!

#1. I’m grateful for tractors. I got on the tractor today, turned on my uplifting “Hymns of Praise” from the Gospel Library app, and belted out songs with my headphones in while trying to fix the driveway from floodpocolypse a few weeks ago. It’s been a great year so far–insane crazy cold, floodpocolypse 2. It’s been… fun. 😊 Anyway, I’m grateful for the tractor, that piece of equipment that goes like 4 miles an hour and just… feels so nice to be on. This crazy fast-paced world running like mad all around, and I on the tractor puuuuuuuuuttiiiiiiiiiiiiiing aaaaaaaaaaaaroooooooooouuuuuuuund.

🙃

I so love the slow-paced country life. It’s my favorite. Not that it’s not hard work. There’s tons of hard work, but it’s just… different. Give me land and a tractor. Any day. Love it.

#2. I’m grateful for the conversation with Cory, after a while of talking about various things, we were trying to come up with a phrase that captured the challenges that we often face, and what came of that conversation was this little phrase that I’ll be incorporating into my life more and more: This is my perfect moment.

It’s a great little phrase. Truly, every moment of every day is packed with opportunity. Opportunity to learn. Opportunity to become. It’s our perfect moment. And in my life, it’s my perfect moment. This is my perfect moment.

😊

#3. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be there for Brittani today. I’m grateful for all she has done for me, and I’m grateful to return the favor.

#4. I’m grateful that I noticed that the tractor had sprung a hydraulic fluid leak before it had leaked out a ton. There’s a busted hydraulic line that will need to be patched. I was able to pull off an access plate and find the ruined line. So… that was good.

#5. I’m grateful that I took that in stride. I… wasn’t really bothered at all. I wasn’t able to finish repairing the main road. So what? Life goes on. We can still drive around the ditch. Its just time and money. Not that big of a deal. Life goes on, fabulously. 😊

#6. I’m grateful to have been able to take so much time off work and to be okay. I chose to stay home again today and just… take a load off. It was really nice.

#7. I’m grateful that I found the missing pin for the skid steer. Guess what?!?! If I’d just cleaned up my trash, I’d have found it. Where was it? It was in the bucket that I took off the skid steer. Funny thing is, I’d looked in the bucket, under the bucket, etc., but the pin, which isn’t small, was wrapped in a single blue shop towel, but wadded up in such a way that you couldn’t tell it was there. It just looked like a crumpled shop towel. And even when I’d dumped the bucket out, it lent no clue that there was a huge 1 1/2 inch diameter 4 1/2 inch long solid steel pin inside a single blue shop towel. Go figure. How did I find it? Well, the bucket was full of water from the rain, so I’d tipped it over, and when I tipped it back, the shop towel that was around the pin had gotten soggy and assumed the shape of the pin.

#8. I’m grateful that I figured out how to equalize the volume on my phone calls. I record all of my phone calls, and sometimes when I have really good conversations like the one that happened today, I don’t just delete them, I save them, and I wanted to save this one and then send it to Cory and Brittani, because it was just cool stuff, but the audio quality was stinky, Cory’s voice really quiet, and mine normal. But I found some people online who knew how to fix that, so I put the audio file into my sound editor, messed with the compression, and badda bing badda boom, I had a decent file with fairly comparable decibel levels for both of us. So I was able to send the file for both of them to listen to/enjoy, and that was loverly.

I almost laughed out loud when I saw the blue cylindrical shop towel.

4 hours. I think I spent four hours looking for that thing. I bought one from online not being able to find it. My mom went and got one for me from the local Bobcat supplier, just in case I got the skid steer job I was thinking I might get. So… funny. Moral of the story? Clean up your trash–all off it (I’d cleaned up some of it, but not those shop towel wads in the bucket. I was like, I’ll get those later.

😆

Whoops.

Daily Accountability:

The Positive

1. I’m feeling really good about staying positive. I’ve got some potentially super hard things right in front of my face on the horizon–absolutely gut-wrenching things, but I’m choosing faith and hope and optimism and focusing on what yet can be and not on what has been lost or might yet be lost. Oh, yes, I can feel the negativity right outside every door and window of my house wanting to come creeping or bounding in, but so far, I’ve been able to just keep choosing the light. May I continue to be able to.
2. I was able to stay upbeat even when things went “wrong” today (like with the tractor).
3. I’m clean another day! We’re at 9 days right now.
4. I’ve continued to be able to let work just take a back seat to my spiritual and emotional health.

The Needs Improvement

1. 10:25… journaling takes a long time. 🙃
2. There was once today when I should have dropped to do pushups and I didn’t. I can’t afford to be casual in fighting off *any* negativity encroaching in *any* form. No. No. No.

So, all you wonderful people, you. 🙂 It’s time to chat with Pops and drift off into dreamland.

Loves and hugs! 🙂

Lift the World.

~ stephen