Keeping the Faith

My full time job at present, which is building my home, does not earn me any income.  It only takes money, precious savings carefully stock-piled before taking this leap of faith into another mode of life for myself.  Yet as the stockpile dwindles, it becomes harder and harder to "keep the faith" in my "leap of faith".  Old anxieties rear their ugly heads, tired patterns tempt before new ones have time to fully take hold, like weeds resuming their summertime strangle of flowers after being beaten back from the patch earlier in the spring.  Yet if I don't "keep my eye on the prize," which is a warm dwelling this winter, and allow myself to get side-tracked by pursuits with more immediate reward, I'll risk not being able to complete the most important job I've ever had.

Some of the most critically important jobs in the world earn no money at all.  Examples, outside of home-building, include fathering, mothering, even sistering, brothering, mentoring and encouraging others.  It is difficult in a world that values inordinately the material and anything with a price — that relegates spiritual and emotional sustenance to off-duty or weekend endeavors rather than valuing them as core pursuits — to retain in the fore of one's mind that some of the most important jobs require far more money than they earn.

How will I feel in a warm home this winter?  How will strong walls affect my mood, and my ability to think and be in touch with my creativity?  What does security do for a person? 

The answers to these questions, and to so many others that laborers of the unpaid positions could ask, are priceless.

The Privilege of Writing

I over-did the unloading of some lumber last autumn and developed "frozen shoulder" syndrome in my right shoulder.  I'm still trying to work it out, and oh! is it painful!  Some mornings my arm aches so horribly I cannot write at all, not before doing a half hour of stretching exercises that convert the grueling ache into a painful soreness that's somehow easier to handle. 

In fact, writing is feeling like quite the privilege these days.  In truth, it always was.  If there's not the physical pain, or depression, creating obstacles to putting thoughts on a page, there was the cold, and frozen fingers at the typewriter, or too many fumes from the gas heater.  I HAVE spent many-a-morning sitting in my tent at the computer with a vapor mask on!  And before all that there was the overly hectic and stressed work schedule that drained my time, energy, and creativity dry.  It's a great privilege to be able to write; even simply to connect to one's emotions enough to write is quite the accomplishment.  For long swaths of my life that was not the case, or the environment was unsafe, a place where private journals were stolen, raped of their content, read without permission.

Now I live on a dime in order to write.  I live in the woods for the peace, and the quiet.  I build my own home so I can work part-time instead of lending full-time devotion of my energies elsewhere. 

I rise before dawn, before the birds stir the air with their cheery communications, and I say to myself:  TODAY I get to write!  NOW I get to write!  And I know the privilege of it all, and as time goes by I understand and appreciate it, the gift of it, more and more.