"This is going to be some day..."

Much has been written about mindfulness and there are various books, blogs, and classes out there in the ether, and in reality. For some it is a daily practice and complete lifestyle. One of my favorite books is World Enough & Time by Christian McEwen (Bauhan Publishing) and certainly worth another read–I can't recommend it enough. A favorite blog is called "Zen Habits" published by Leo Babauta and I had to laugh when I read his recent entry, "Three Habits for the Overwhelmed, Stressed, Anxious" because that fairly well pegs it right now. Then there is anything written, or said, by Jon Kabat-Zinn (who happened to be the colleague of a family friend, who was also doula for my first child back in 1988, **Ferris Urbanowski. But that is another story...), and certainly Thich Nhat Hanh who composed the lovely Zen calligraphy that I've shared here (a small representation of his work).

Lately I've been struggling with accomplishing basic every day tasks and larger ones related to my writing and potential writing projects. Putting my health first is also a challenge and I've never been very good at "giving myself oxygen first." As I answer to no one, except myself or the flow of the day, this is harder than it might seem. While my time is generally my own––if not involved with making a meal, overseeing a medical issue for a family member that can be all encompassing (like right now), or taking kids to school and back––it would seem that I should have no excuse. I really don't because I can be my own worst enemy when it comes to time management. Even the 2-4 round trips to our boys' school (18 miles each way), which used to translate into 2-4 hours a day sometimes, have been removed because one of our boys is now driving his own car and his brother, too. You'd think with all of that extra time I've have MORE time but it just seems like it's falling through a sieve. [Bouts of depression do not help, either, but fortunately there are pills for that.]

I blame this fleeting time/time wasted phenomenon that I am now experiencing partly on my age and circumstances. A person in their mid-50s has easily lived more than half of their lives and there is no guarantee on the rest. The old adage about "it's all down hill from here," after one turns 50 is apt: after all, one accelerates as they go down hill, while trying not to trip or crash, and time certainly seems to be doing that, too.

I also have two very independent young men in the home–one of whom will be off to college in August and the other with two years still in high school. Yet I hardly see either one of them! Between school, and activities, and driving themselves now, and their after school jobs, it can be a revolving door and they don't need me so much. I'm on the edge of empty nest all over again having gone through it once before when my daughter stayed back in New England, at 20, when we moved here. Then another mini-bout of it in 2012 right before I turned 50 and when she lived here with us for about six months and then headed out west for a new job and new life.

It was Ferris, actually, who said to me something I have never forgotten. When my daughter was born, Ferris said, "She is no longer yours and the rest of your life will be a continued journey of 'letting go'..." That resonated then and even more so now. Empty nest is a real thing but so is each milestone of a child's life: eventually we let them go into the world, but every day when they leave the house we are letting go, too, and hoping that they will be alright. Then one day you wake up and realize they are almost grown, and gone.

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, 1931, MOMA

So there's that. Meanwhile, in my 20s, life seemed limitless and boundless and that I could do anything with it. At some point the reality creeps in that maybe you can't do everything you want, or wanted, to do. As someone with so many different interests, and an innate attention deficit issue, this can be cold comfort.

I have often written about my Old-Order Mennonite friend Anna who has been my primary glimpse into the world of a certain kind of mindfulness. She lives very much in the task–whether it be laundry (no electricity), baking, quilting, or gardening. Yes, she ponders but she primarily lives in her hands and is rarely idle–much like the Shaker saying of "Hands to work and Hearts to God." I get that but like so many things that I fully understand it is often the practical application that is the hardest. My mother is another person who always likes to be doing something–like gardening–and I have few memories of her actually sitting down except at the end of a long day. Both women are productive "do-ers" and it never ceases to amaze me that my mother worked on her feet five days a week as a nurse and then came home to care for three teenagers and her mother. And here I am, with no full-time job, fewer mothering tasks, and nothing but time all around me.

Well, that's enough pondering and "living in my head" for one day. Only so much we can do in the world (and what a world it is becoming) so it's always best to focus on the home front and what's right in front of me. Life is good and I am very blessed, despite the occasional glitch or hurdle (like getting in my own way).

Back to the spring cleaning! And it helps me to listen to a favorite album like "Big Science" (1982) by Laurie Anderson while doing so. One thing at a time, one moment at a time. It is all that we have.

"This is going to be some day...this is the time and this is the record of the time."

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

PS I have often thought about **Ferris through the years and have not seen her for almost two decades. She was a big part of the lives of my family for many years as she worked with my mother, a former nurse, at Whole Health Center in Peterborough, NH where Ferris was a counselor. In the 1970s, not far from our family farm, Ferris built a small off-grid cabin in the woods along with a like-minded community of other cabin builders well before it was the trend. She drove a school bus while putting herself through graduate school and raising two daughters, one of whom went to school with one of my brothers. She even put in a good word for a great job in public relations at Antioch New England back in the day, where she had studied (yes, it is about talent but I've also discovered it can be about connections–which is probably one reason it has been so difficult for me to get non-writing jobs in Kentucky).

She was also right beside me, and my mother and former stepfather, when I had my daughter, all naturally, on a hot June day in 1988. Long before her work in counseling and mindfulness, Ferris was featured in the natural childbirth Lamaze work of Elizabeth Bing when she lived in New York in the 1960s. I knew she had struggled with a brain tumor in recent years and could no longer find her website when I looked last year. I just Googled and found this video that she posted last fall. I can't tell you how it means to hear her voice across the miles, to hear about her struggles and continued triumphs despite obstacles, and to realize how her words mean the world right now. I encourage you to listen, also, to the video below and you, too might find magic–and more mindfulness-in your life.

"May we come home to our hearts."

Do Not Name Your Livestock if You Will Kill Them

"Big Red," front and almost center, in a recent photo of Eli for a project he did on oak trees for school.

Let me tell you about Big Red. He was a handsome steer, filled out, solid, sweet and kind. Last summer one of our boys had named him and, over the past few months, I had grown fond of him, too. He was among the cows we were keeping, because they will make fine bulls, like Edgar (whom I named after my husband brought him––cold, muddy and abandoned––from the knob pasture after Christmas), or "39" (because of her ear tag), Tess or Angel Clare who are all, or will be, great heifers. "39" will even let us pat her and come up to her in the pastures. These traits are good in cattle, especially if you are developing your own herd. You don't want a cow that is skittish or fearful or who might charge you, unprovoked, in the pasture. You also don't want a cow that will all too easily abandon its calf. Turns out, there are great mothers in the bovine world just as there are really lousy ones. You can never trust a bull entirely but if you have a gentle heifer or steer and continue to treat them well, you can maintain a kind of trust.

Big Red developed into a 968 pound beef cow in the past year just as his temperament was unusually kind and friendly for a pastured cow. There is no saying what kind of bull he would have made but I expect, as with Edgar, that he would have been fairly mellow. At first Big Red was being raised for our own freezer but then I got involved, and attached, and, well, to be honest, we all did. He was such a presence, even ham-like for photographs.

Last month a beef buyer was on the property and made a comment that Big Red would fetch a good price at market. We went back and forth as a family and last week my husband broached the idea again. I said, no matter what, I can not put him in the freezer and transform him into our simple farm cuisine. 

"Well, let's let the boys decide, they have raised and named him," I suggested, not willing to decide myself. So my husband did. 

While I was away at a few days respite and the Kentucky Women Writers' Conference in Lexington, I got the phone call.

"We put Big Red on a truck today."

I was digesting a lovely meal and about to see (what would be an unsettling few hours of cinema) The Master at the Lexington Theater with our daughter. The irony was not lost on me.

As the hours, and movie, went on I could not stop thinking about Big Red. What was he thinking? How was Edgar taking this? Why can't we keep them all?

Tess and Angel Clare, a female calf born on the Summer Solstice in 2012,
both have stays of execution on our farm because they can reproduce––and, I named them.

As our oldest son Henry said, with rhetoric and wisdom beyond his years, "Are we operating a cattle farm or a 'friendly' farm, Dad?" He has a point. We can not keep all of the animals that we raise and we clearly can not name them or pet them all, either. No wonder kobe beef is so expensive: all of that personalized pampering and attention.

Back at the hotel, I called my husband, now even more troubled by a strange and haunting, excellent, movie. I asked if he could reconsider Big Red's fate, knowing it was too late. You can't really buy back your own cow at an auction. You can, of course, but think of the scrutiny and the paperwork. Besides, Big Red would never reproduce and would be a 20 or so year commitment to feeding. Even if he and Edgar had seemed to form a relationship, it was not to be.

My husband said that Edgar let out a long moan as Big Red went up the road in the cattle trailer. I don't doubt it. We've heard cows mourn their dead on our farm in long, low, pitiful wails.

Cows are curious, sometimes friendly creatures, and more intelligent than we realize.

Raising cattle for meat, no matter how humanely they are treated and how free to roam our pastures, presents a great conundrum for me. I can not eat what I befriend and so most of the cattle are just that in my mind: cattle, livestock, black and brown dots grazing on pasture. It's a schizophrenic proposition. Unlike many women who raise chickens, I have not named one of my own. But some of the cattle I have named and if I've learned anything about farming it's that you do not name your livestock if you will kill them.

Big Red commanded $1,100 dollars at auction. I know he will help pay for many things on our farm but I can't help feeling like a mercenary meat eater, a master of destiny, a fraud.

You come back when you're ready! 

Catherine

Bloom Where You're Planted

Big Edie Beale in her ruinous home, "Grey Gardens," c. 1975,
in front of her younger portrait.

Something I've accepted at midlife is my complete ability to fall prey to the blues and for no particular reason. Little things (especially with many details) seem more complicated, transitions more weary. There is a constant restive state of not fitting in, not feeling at home (no matter where I seem to be), and yet a kind of disabling inertia. It's like I'm back in that adolescent fugue state of chaotic expectancy, only without the span of decades of unknown future ahead of me. At twenty-five, half my lifetime ago, there was that poignant wonderment of what was to come.

Now I feel like I'm on some kind of teeter-totter, not sure how or where things will land. Whatever it is, it's a bit wobbly and disconcerting. I keep telling myself that my mind and soul are preparing for 50, that seven-year cellular change at 49 (every seven years the body is supposed to slough away itself, as well as the psyche), or maybe even the confusion of early Alzheimer's. (Hey, there are days!)

Our garden gate in Kentucky with "Golden Glow" from our New Hampshire garden and mint from the Gray Goose Farm (via Sawyer Farm) further on. I love to bring plants from former homes along with me. [The garden is in transition and I will use it to free-range some "Cornish Cross" chickens.]

We've been here four years this week (full time, pending the sale of our house in September 2008, back in New Hampshire, which it did, bittersweetly, despite the complete and total economic collapse that ensued that week.) There are days that I feel completely at home here in Kentucky and there are other times when I want to return to the homes that were. I suspect I would feel this way at this point in my life no matter where I was living. It's more a state of mind than a state of place but it is a state of being with which I need to reckon.

"Home should be an oratorio of the memory." 

Henry Ward Beecher

My broody chicken mama and one of her chicks.

Like any woman or person who enjoys nesting, I like to feather my place with mementoes, favorite books, photographs, things that have meant something along the way. Many of these things are still in boxes and my fear is that they might remain there if I don't go through them or if we never build that "dream farmhouse." Borderline hoarder am I but I prefer the title, "curator of collections." After all, I have a museums background in historic preservation and I sought a vocation that came from my collecting avocation. But this "stuff" is also cumbersome.


Here, surrounded by the natural and private world of our farm, I find I feel at home with the little things. Discovering a bird's nest, admiring volunteer morning glories that have emerged along my chicken house from gardeners past, seeing a Mama chicken and her brood enjoying the yard for the first time, the lowing and bellowing of cattle. Farm life is hard and uncertain but nature provides a backdrop of what we can count on each year: the renewal of the world around us. Nature seems to make herself at home wherever she is and there is a constancy to that and a comfort.

The large heart-shaped leaves of the heirloom "Grandpa Ott" morning glory
are as lovely as the purple-magenta blossoms. They "volunteer" themselves
every summer on my hen house fence and I love to see them until frost.

We just moved our twenty-four year old daughter back to Kentucky for a transitional time before her fall job. I was amazed by the amount of stuff she had accumulated in four years but realize that when I was in my 20s, I, too, started on that path towards accumulation.

With each progressive move I have had more, not less. At fifty, it seems that we should start deaccessioning things, stuff, the past, old boxes of useless crap. That is my intention: reorganize, reshuffle, pitch, sort, repeat.

Little Edie Beale, in front of "Grey Gardens," c. 1975, East Hampton, New York. 

Little Edie Beale, who returned to her childhood home in her mid-20s and stayed on there with her aging mother, said it best: "It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It's awfully difficult." [As quoted in the Maysles documentary, Grey Gardens, 1975.] My daughter and I watched this documentary the other day for the first time together: it was sad and haunting and we laughed at how things might be if we co-existed together for all of those decades! [I hadn't watched it since with friends back in New Hampshire in 2007: here's a blog post about that viewing.] Unlike Big Edie, I believe in theory that children need to leave the nest and find their own home in the world, too. But as Robert Frost wrote, "Home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in." [From the poem, "Death of a Hired Man"] And we've all had to be taken in from time to time in our lives before going out into the world again.

"But whatever else home is–and however it entered our consciousness–it's a way of organizing space in our minds. 

Home is home, and everything else is not home. 

That's the way the world is constructed." 

Verlyn Klinkenborg, "The Definition of Home," 

Smithsonian, May 2012.

Life provides that constant tussle between feeling at home where we are and longing for what has been. But as I approach fifty, I realize, too, that home can just be in the presence, or mere thought, of a dear friend or family member. A friend back in New England still visits the former homesite of her ancestors: the old house where she spent many summers is long gone but the site is still there, on the shoulder of a mountain, and family members still gather among the ruinous columns and gardens that long ago naturalized into the hillside. While visiting a few weeks ago, she treated a friend and I to a picnic there. In that very special spot it was a tonic to the soul to be able to breathe in the mountain again, the surrounding landscape, the distant hills to the west, and the company of friends on a glorious summer afternoon. For that brief time, all seemed right with the world as we connected with the place and each other.

My children and I outside of Stan Hywet Hall
in Akron, Ohio (built in 1915 by my
great-grandparents, F.A. & Gertrude Seiberling).
Now they love to come here as much as I do.

In Ohio, I return each year to visit the museum home of my great-grandparents and to pass by the home, and other houses, of my childhood. There, in this perfectly preserved museum home, among the photos and the memorabilia, I feel a strange connection with my family and a past that even I did not know. Here in Kentucky the "homeplace" is a revered spot of hallowed ground where a family member once lived. Even if the house is no longer occupied or falling into ruin, it is kept as is, in a kind of stasis, while the fields are mowed or cultivated around it.

Home is as much a place in the mind as anything else and as much comfort as we might have in the world. We can visit former homes in our dreams, as I often do, or in our daytime wanderings or make a home wherever we are. We can be lonely in our homes, surrounded by loved ones, just as we can be homesick for the idea of home.

I suppose it doesn't have to be so complicated and yet, it is.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

During the Storm

Heading up the hill towards the farm to feed the calves: timing not so great.

The water tower on our ridge, about a mile from our farm.
This was that funny, pinky sky you hear about.

We realize our good fortune in escaping what could have been a very dangerous bullet. The storm last Friday, March 2nd that thickened and swelled and danced over our farm went on to create a large funnel over Somerset, our Pulaski County seat ten miles to the southeast of us, and then turned into a killer tornado less than an hour due east of us in Laurel County.

We had been storm-watching all day (see Before the Storm blog post) and by 6pm it seemed imminent. We still had to feed our two bottle-fed calves and went over together to our farm to do that (our doublewide, sans storm shelter, is across the street). I dropped Temple and Eli off at the cattle sorting building and waited in the car. As I did the sky darkened to almost night-like and the rain started. Then it hailed. Temple came out and told me to move the car under the shed (which was in vain–he had to do it!). Then the storm passed almost as soon as it started. I was glad to see the moon.

Before we got hammered.

We returned home after taking some photos and gathering some hail (Henry had done the same at the doublewide). The house was dark as we'd lost power so we sat with our flashlights for a bit, had another brief burst of wind and rain, and then decided to go see if our Mennonite friends, Melvin and Anna were OK over in Casey County. They were fine and had experienced more of a blast two days prior when they had a hard hail storm. We returned home, able to sleep a bit easier, but unaware of the tragedies that were unfolding in other parts of Kentucky and Indiana.

I will always be fascinated by tornados but I have a healthy respect for their power and randomness. It is possible to observe and see the weather here before it arrives, to be as prepared as possible, and to enjoy the awesome beauty–and ferocity–of nature. It is exhilarating in a strange way because you realize that, despite our best intentions, we are not in control.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Definitely trying to be a funnel cloud: view of the clouds over the southern part of our farm.

Trying to be funnel clouds.

All of our farm buildings were spared: we really just had a bad hail storm.

The cloud formations were amazing and all going in different directions and at different speeds.

The bad storm that hit us and moved along to the east.
The background was so black it appeared blue.

I was glad to see the moon above us, even as the clouds continued to move around us.

The view to the west after the storm at our farm: this passed over us.

Thickened tornadic layering over our knob after the storm passed through.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Before the Storm

Thickening cumulonimbus clouds over our
knob field, to the south, later in the afternoon.

It began with a "7" on the Dr. Greg Forbes' now infamous TOR:CON scale. Before bed on Thursday I thought it an unusually high number for south-central Kentucky. By Friday morning, Forbes had bumped it up to a 9 out of 10 and we were clearly in the bulls-eye for what promised to be a dangerous and active weather day. A "9" is a 90% chance of having a tornado within 50 miles of your location. Not only was this a high number but it was March 2, not April. Tornado season had arrived a full month early, capping off the oddest winter in recent memory (for everyone, it seems).

My adrenalin was already going full-tilt and would remain that way for the rest of the day and into the evening. All of my life I have had recurring tornado dreams, left over from being truly terrified of their possibility in suburban Akron, Ohio (where, really, they are extremely rare) and the realization that, unlike a hurricane or large-scale snowstorm, they are random events and still unpredictable. We can only predict the conditions and the potential. It's like waiting for the angry fingers of something on high to come down and randomly play with us, poke at us or sometimes create complete devastation and chaos. As the local Lex 18 weather station kept repeating, "Stay Weather Aware!" That's really all you can do (that and watch Weather Channel like an obsessive, hyper-aware crazy woman!).

Since moving to Kentucky four years ago and following spring weather outbreaks more closely, I've never seen a 9 on the TOR:CON index. During the morning hours Forbes further predicted the potential for "dozens" of tornadoes and several sustained tornadoes of longer duration (and above **F-3) before the day ended on Friday. You have to take this kind of prediction seriously and Dr. Forbes is always serious (after all, he studied with Dr. Fujita and helped develop the famous **Fujita scale of tornadic wind speeds that were devised after the "Super Outbreak" of April 1974, which also severely impacted Kentucky).

All day it was blustery, balmy and filled with gathering cumulonimbus clouds. Most of the time it was even sunny with patches of blue sky. It was hard to imagine the potential for severe weather because it wasn't even hot. In reality, the advancing cold front–that cut an angular swath from the west, with temperatures behind it in the 40s–and the warm winds coming up from the Gulf provided a "perfect storm" scenario that would only develop later in the day. Coupled with the split in the jet stream, literally to the north and to the south of Kentucky, and you had all the right ingredients for a severe tornado outbreak at Ground Zero. 

When Jim Cantore is heading to your state, you know it's going to be big.

At one point in the day the radar map looked like this: Kentucky seemed like
it was safe with the winds and bad stuff all around it, or coming up the Ohio River.
One of us said, "But there's no clouds here!" I said, "It's more like the eye of the storm."

I worried about our cows but most seemed to find cover in low areas.

Early in the morning we had a hard thunderstorm with much rain and a bit of hail that came in advance of the cold front. The rest of the day there was almost an electric quality to the air, like you knew something would happen. My husband and I had just made the decision, around 11:30, to get our boys early from school (based on the predictions) but the school (and other schools in the region) beat us to it. By 12:30pm the boys were home and we were all on the farm doing necessary chores and some yard and porch stuff (that, frankly, I should have done last fall). The breezes and winds were picking up to the south but there wasn't a storm cloud in sight. We battened down the hatches, secured gates and doors, and we waited. I even unplugged my computer and put it in a canvas duffle bag, along with some other stuff, in case we had to leave quickly (we have no cellar and just a small storm cellar to the east of our doublewide).

Looking north towards Carter Ridge, and Mintonville, just over the line
in southern Casey County. Green River Knob is off camera to the left.

While watching the local and Weather.com coverage and radars, every hour or so I would drive around our knob field and over to the lookout from our ridge towards the northern part of our county. There I can see Green River Knob (the highest point in the state, west of the eastern Kentucky mountains) and a ridge that divides Casey and Pulaski counties towards Mintonville: this is often the dividing point for severe weather as it had been only two days before on Wednesday when we had another bout of tornado weather that skirted us to the northwest (and caused hailstorms in nearby Casey County). Five years ago, in early April, there was a tornado that danced through the Mennonite valley in Casey County, hopped around Mintonville and on down Carter Ridge, a mile as the crow flies, just to our north. 

The view towards Mintonville a few hours later.

I will write about the storm itself in my next installment. This is not to minimize the major, catastrophic events and tragedies suffered by others in the state and in other areas hit by this storm, but to share our own experiences, which were blessedly safe.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Connected

Image of a woman writing at her desk from www.louisamayalcott.org

I have been going through some cathartic times in the past few months. Call them midlife gurglings, spoutings, truths or triumphs. Call them growing pains or upheavals. Call them the grumblings of a cranky, perimenopausal middle aged woman who, like Howard Beale in the movie Network, is "mad as hell and isn't going to take it any more!" A few weeks ago this was originally going to be a blog about giving up blogging (or at least shelving it for a while). Lately I've been questioning why I blog. You see, my first blog, In the Pantry, was started after I got my first book deal–a bit backwards, yes? And I haven't really written much, aside from many blog posts or the occasional paid article, since the publication of The Pantry in 2007. Throw in a major move and other stuff, and, well, here I am: on a ridge in Kentucky. Writing, farming, adjusting.

My early writing mentor and friend, children's author

Elizabeth Yates McGreal at her home in New Hampshire.

The book, and the blogs, have brought me many new friends and acquaintances (and all but one have been wonderful and true). I have always been real with my readers but I'm tiring of the false pretense put forward by so many bloggers: I'll call it PWS (Pioneer Woman Syndrome). Real bloggers don't do it all, and can't possibly. We blogging women––farm bloggers, Mommy bloggers, Christian bloggers, homeschool bloggers, style bloggers, book bloggers, writing bloggers, food bloggers, craft bloggers––are putting our wares on the table and hoping you'll notice. I believe that true authenticity shines through the best blogs and sometimes it is hidden by glimmers that one wants us to see. But I was getting weary of the show circuit and just wanted to go back to my desk and my chickens (and my family, of course, when they are home), without its more immediate connections to the world. To write and communicate the old-fashioned way.

A Lady Writing a Letter, Jan Vermeer Van Delft, 1665-66,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

I've learned that true friendships must be cultivated in real time–not on the Internet or on Facebook, but with letters, cards, phone calls and actual visits. Social media is just a support system to real friendship while, in the worst of times, it can encourage snarky, mean, and childish behaviors (yes, I've been there). Perhaps the greatest irony of our times is that the more we connect "on line," the less connected we are to each other in real time, or the less inclination we might have to doing so. I'm more isolated here in Kentucky, by geography and circumstance (farmwife on the farm on our own lane with neighbors close enough but not within eye or ear shot…and we like it this way!), but I can't let that be an excuse for my reliance upon internet behaviors and connections: for good and for bad. I used to be a regular and passionate letter writer–it's time to return to that, at least with little notes and nibbles. After all, the U.S. Postal Service needs us! What a retro, patriotic act: to just write a letter or send a card to an old friend or someone whom has meant so much to you!

Jane Austen at her desk, early 1800s.

Blogging has been wonderfully fun. On my two personal blogs it has been like a virtual scrapbook of my life for the past (almost) seven years–or at least, aspects of it: the things that I wanted to show or to share, usually the icing. While glimpses, they have been real: my stuff, my food, my homes, my family, my world. Real 100% Catherine Grade A Authenticity. No bullshit. No pretense.

At the same time, there is just too much noise from the Internet. It's a magnet for me. I don't need to run to it when I want to "Google" more useless information to further clutter my mind. I don't need to post something fun, snarky, and sometimes negative, on someone's Facebook wall (even if they upset me) or on my own. I don't even need to be blogging! [And Lord knows I don't need more recipes...or to be spending any money right now, "free shipping" or not!]

Print by Charles Dana Gibson, early 20th Century

I'm not surprised that the Internet now has its own addiction discussion in the psychological field or that Facebook is having its own kind of quiet backlash. I grapple with this daily, or should I say have. Is there a 12-Step Program yet for recovering social media addicts? This about says it all: "The Photographs of Your Junk (will be publicized!)". We all want validation but do we need it from the entire world? All of the blogs, tweets and Facebook posts out there are really about wanting to be heard. "I'm here!" It's kind of like that Dr. Seuss story, Horton Hears a Who! ["even though you can't see or hear them at all, a person's a person, no matter how small."] Meanwhile, I blog: therefore I am should really be I live and sometimes I blog about it.

Writer Susan Sontag by Annie Leibovitz

The world that you see on my blogs, and arguably most other lifestyle blogs, is neat and tidy: it is my own free-content lifestyle magazine, so naturally I usually put my best face forward. What I photograph is real, but like any magazine shoot of someone's home it is styled and you don't necessarily see what's hidden in the dusty corners of the room. [I've been on many shoots as a writer and sometimes as a stylist: they can take a day or days to make something camera ready--just remember that! It's not worth comparing yourself, or your home, to what you see in a magazine because it is not the day-to-day reality.] And let's be brutally honest: everyone who blogs regularly knows how time consuming it is. There are the photos and the formatting, the writing, the information gathering, the fact-checking, the good design (which, to me, is just as important in blog land as what is said). Even though I just usually write off the cuff, as it is, it still takes time and then time again to format the blog and tweak it (I am, as ever, a perfectionist when I want to do something right). And this is time away from doing all of the great stuff that we tell you about! Time away from our houses, our families, our gardens, our quiet time, our reading time, our hobbies. And I don't even Tweet! Or have a cell phone! (I hardly even use the phone, however, except when necessary. Perhaps this, too, will change.)

Painting by Frans Van Mieris, the Elder, 1680
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

So because I seem to have my priorities mixed up, I'm going back to basics. My farmer husband recently attempted, and gave up, on learning about computers at our local library (and note, I have not volunteered to teach him, either: that would be like teaching your own child to drive a car). He is as aware, as I am, that the Internet has been on for most of our nearly sixteen year marriage. It is the other "man" in my life. I told him that his timing was perfect, that he doesn't need to give up his card-carrying Luddite status just yet. Meanwhile, our 14 year old son will still not be getting a Facebook account, despite his pleadings–and his mother will try to set the example by being on it less–probably until he is 18. Yet we will continue to have computers as word processors and archival repositories (a major photo project, any one?) in our home.

But really, after almost seven years, I was tired of feeling I have to be "on" or "on-line"––what, really, is the urgency? A few months ago I was close to sending in the paperwork to be a part of the "BlogHer" network, which would have involved allowing advertising (and possible revenues, and certainly more blog hits), but in December, when I decided to take the month off from blogging, more or less, I changed my mind. Why do I care if more, or less, people even read my blog? As wonderful as these friendships are, and having readers like you who come here, I shouldn't feel I have to be here. This isn't a job: it's a hobby. If people make revenue from their blogging, I applaud them, but it doesn't necessarily make them a writer, it makes them a paid blogger or provides reward for providing an excellent delivery system of interactive content.

It is time for a reread of one of my favorite books on
writing, and being: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.

I will be 50 in October 2012 and there is still much that I want to do in my life. If you don't know about so much of what goes on in it, that's alright, too. I have children and a husband who share me with the World Wide Web and want me back. Since moving to Kentucky my virtual world has been, at times, more captivating to me than the real world around me: it's been my friend, my place to go for succor and validation, or to vent. It has been the water cooler that I don't have in my daily life. That's not really a good place to be in: a virtual water cooler? Especially one where you are not paid for your working moments? So how about a real one, instead: where I connect with the real world more often. "Only connect," wrote E.M. Forster in Howard's End. If only he could know how those words would resonate within me these past ten years where real connection has been largely lacking, where family connections have fallen away, and where virtual ones have filled their spaces.

Ultimately, and this is the plan, if I focus hard and eliminate other things I can write again for the printed page: the occasional published magazine article, and hopefully more books. I have to harness that energy into a workable body of my writing without benefit of the world watching. I have much to share and publication involves a high degree of discipline, marketing, and a willingness to tolerate rejection (or editors--even the ones you know--not always responding). The freelance life is not a friend to non-routine and laziness, or even complacency. So it's time for a drop-kick boot camp in that realm in my life. Last month, during the holidays, I gave myself permission not to blog. It felt wonderful. I felt liberated! I did post two more small posts, after saying I wouldn't, but that was because I wanted to and didn't feel obligated.

My favorite American novelist, Willa Cather, who 
had no benefit of Internet, blogs, Facebook or Twitter.

A friend of mine recently conducted a Facebook study by friending several famous authors and following them over the course of a year (living writers, of course!). She concluded that, try as they might, their (extremely active) Facebook and Twitter presence did not seem to be affecting sales of their new books. Many established and newer writers are being lured in by the false promise of social media. And where is it getting them, if not away from their real writing or craft? Probably to a pleasantly diverting virtual water cooler.

And yet...I was fully prepared to give up our Internet via expensive satellite at the end of 2011. We could use our fine county library or a cozy café with WiFi, I told myself. But the reality is much different. I have realized that I still want this kind connection with the world, right from my own cozy home. The trick is to manage it better. So now, when I don't want to be on the computer or need to be doing other things, I just turn it off.

The other day all of my thoughts about to give up the Internet, or not, were answered. Our local phone company, Windstream, contacted us about wanting two easements on our farm for DSL terminals (as I've always suspected, our farm is about half-way down our 8-mile ridge). Many of our neighbors have wanted DSL and have been asking for it, repeatedly, before we even moved here. I had it back in New Hampshire in our village home: it was fast, immediate, I could download things and upload photos without any problem. And, best of all, it was affordable (about one quarter the price for maximum bandwidth satellite internet). We are now negotiating with them to get this party started. It was almost like a strange kind of answer to something with which I'd been struggling: and isn't life often that way?

If you have gotten this far in this most unbloggy musing, I applaud you! But most of all, I thank you for your readership over these past seven years. It is so wonderful to connect here and wherever else the fates may allow. And if I don't blog for a stretch, you'll know I've just turned it off and am connecting in the real world.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine