Guess I didn’t get to the second post yesterday…
It’s uncanny how every time I try to push through everything I’m struggling with to make progress, it’s like I just get slammed.
Maybe today’s version was a good thing.
My back has been just crazy bad lately, all the nerve issues and everything.
As I was trying to clean up and organize everything, getting all the greenhouse stuff from the upper field down to the partially set up Greenhouse down by the creek, I just… hit a wall.
My body is in bad shape, and I need to stop pretending like it’s not. I need to stop pushing and pushing and pushing just because I want to accomplish things.
I have one body. Hopefully I haven’t already done permanent damage that I’m going to deal with for the rest of my life.
That’s what I’m afraid of.
And that’s partially what I’m expecting. In all of my other chronic ailments, doctors have been helpless, And it either resolves on its own or gets worse and worse and worse.
My spine and nerve issues have just gotten progressively worse over the last 15 years or so.
I’m sure I’m at fault to some degree.
But I don’t have any confidence in doctors. Doctors have never been able to figure out the chronic stuff. They do fine, for the most part, with acute injury (except for that time when I went to the ER after sliding into a base playing softball and hearing my ankle crack, and they told me it was just a bad sprain (on a Saturday), and that I could go ahead and walk on it, and then called me on Monday and told me to come back in… and it turned out my ankle was actually not sprained, and not just broken but “crushed.” And one of my ligaments had been torn completely in half.
Aside from that one, most of my acute injuries have been properly diagnosed and repaired, but the chronic stuff…
It feels like they’re about as effective as typing in symptoms into Google, putting all the results on a dart board, blindfolding the doctor, throwing the dart at the target, and having whatever it lands on be the diagnosis.
But in the medical industry today, what more can you expect from somebody who is expected to burn through a gazillion patients per hour, and you get somewhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes of their time?
Anyway, the wall.
As I was trying to carry stuff and move stuff with my back and nerve issues screaming at me… I was lethargic and tired and exhausted and starting to break mentally and emotionally again, and I just hit the wall.
I can’t keep doing this.
And I can’t live here on the hill anymore. 😕 I don’t know that I could have the self-discipline to keep myself from going out and working in ways that wouldn’t be good for my body. And I feel like a slacker when I’m not busting my butt.
That’s just… what I do. I work really hard. I don’t know how to work without just pushing and pushing and pushing.
When I start to slow down, it’s because I’m just exhausted.
I wish I had the self-discipline to just say no, that I can’t, and maybe I do. Maybe I just haven’t really tried.
The Hill is a wonderful place. I love having family all around. I wish my own blood family had something like this, but we’re all spread out–seven siblings in five states, and my dad in a sixth.
The only ones who are reasonably close to each other are my two blood brothers.
Family has been very generous here on the hill. I just don’t think I can be here anymore.
But I don’t know where I would go.
Home would be wherever my wife is, but… I don’t have one.
I think that’s part of the reason why I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. Because home isn’t home.
Somehow, in my own mind, I think I’ve made “home” be the experience of oneness with my companion.
No companion equals no oneness equals no home.
Maybe that’s it?
Just stream of consciousness thinking…
Anyway… a wall yesterday. Out there in the middle of the upper pasture picking up stuff to take down to the greenhouse area. I just hit a wall.
I’m done. My body’s hammered. My mental and emotional capacities are shot.
It’s time to go…
😕
But where?
Like I mentioned before, maybe hitting a wall yesterday was a good thing. Maybe it’s what I need. Maybe I need to leave and move on to somewhere else. Maybe this will help me get there. Maybe it’s like what happened with my heavy equipment. The cylinders leaking and things breaking. And being overwhelmed with life.
It just sort of became clear. Keeping that equipment is not what I want to do or where I want to spend my strength. Could it be a financial Boon? Yes. Do I have the capacity to handle that right now with everything else? No.
So it’s got to go. It’s too big of a source of stress and concern and worry, and I don’t have the emotional faculties right now to be able to handle it. I wish I did. Kind of feels pathetic that I don’t. But I don’t.
The equipment has been a nice to have, but having tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment as a nice to have that costs quite a bit of money to fix and maintain… And costs even more in stress…
I don’t have the emotional capacity right now.
So after working out in the upper pasture area until I hit that wall, I came down and jumped in my skid steer and tried to spread out the dirt that I had moved the other day, but I hit a wall there too. I’m just… I’m done.
I have nothing left to give right now.
I spent the next little while down by the creek, weeding a path from the spring where it bubbles out of the hillside over to the spillway where the pond runs down into the creek.
My mom came over at some point, bringing some food, and we chatted about our potential trip around the country. She’s worried about my back, and I am too. Last time we did our road trip, I was pretty miserable.
It wasn’t just once that I spent family visiting time just out in my van lying on my mattress trying to reduce the pain and discomfort.
Here we are, contemplating doing that whole trip again.
What ended up coming of our conversation was that my mom doesn’t want to go on the trip until I’ve gotten x-rays of my back to Get at least some kind of a baseline for where my body is at.
My nephew Stevie came down, and we talked about the things that we’re trying to accomplish down here at the greenhouse, and I let him know that I’m not physically up to doing the work that needs to be done anymore, and he agreed, telling me that I’ve been overdoing it for too long. I forget exactly what his words were.
In other news, the only wagon I’ve been able to stay on is the swearing. Vegan And sugar went out the door again yesterday. I just… Don’t have the tools to cope right now, and comfort food is at least a pleasurable sensation when there’s so much pain and discomfort.
Gosh, I want to break through, but I’m just… in bad shape.
On a more positive note, standing in the middle of the creek, I can guarantee that I won’t get any ticks.
🙃
And I need to do gratitude.
I’m grateful for this little spring that cascades down and drops into the creek, making a beautiful watery white noise. 😊
I’m grateful that I noticed that I had some teeny tiny ticks crawling around my legs and feet after walking through my paths through the woods.
I’m grateful that I have the flexibility right now to spend so much time here at the creek. I’m staring at it as I’m dictating this.
I’m grateful that I saw a new kind of fish in the creek yesterday. I saw a weird looking fish, very small, maybe just 3 in long or so. And I thought go hide underneath a leaf that was on the bottom, so I grabbed my little little container that I keep my soap and whatnot in, emptied it out, and managed to catch the fish that was underneath the leaf on the bottom.
🥳
Turns out it was a little bitty catfish. 🙂
I’m grateful that the part of the creek that I spend so much time at these days is shaded for most of the day. Only ride around the mid-. Of the day does the sun shine down directly onto the creek, and even then, there’s enough tree cover that there’s always going to be shade somewhere.
I’m grateful for people on YouTube who have uplifting channels. I found one today that has a million subscribers that is just about making connections.
I love that.
Hopefully, I can pivot no longer working on Hill projects into a positive step forward.
🤞
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 