I get nervous before every rapid in the river.  The little voice kicks in, “am I good enough? Do I possess the right skills to safely and competently descend this?” The same is true at the bottom of every mountain: “am I in good enough shape to ascend this?”  This same questioning voice enters the fray before any big leap of change.

​Many of you know that I am working toward stepping back from the farm a bit to pursue a writing “side hustle.”  Working only part time earlier this year, and fancying myself a writer, I subscribed to “Poets & Writers” magazine and “The New Yorker” (did you know that comes weekly!!??).   As I work through the piles of print, not to mention my “to-be-read pile” that somehow continues to grow taller, I find lists of degrees and accolades, previously published books, teaching positions, etc. beneath the authors’ names.  The questioning voice notices the blank space that follows my name.

As I ponder this leap from the known to the completely unknown, the question, “am I good enough?” pervades my work.  But today, I decided to look to my oft-used metaphor of whitewater kayaking.  When I am nervous about a challenging rapid, I ask another question before I decide whether or not to run it, “what are the consequences if I fail?” Are they worth the risk?  Nearly always, the answer is yes.  Failure is rarely dangerous to anything more than ego.

And so it is with most leaps in life.  From today on, I’m going to look at the potential consequences, and thumb my nose at the questioning voice, say, “I don’t care if I’m not good enough (yet), I won’t ever get better if I don’t try!” and take the leap.

So, you’ll still hear from me here, and see me at occasional markets, but by the end of the year, I’m going to shift to working mostly behind the scenes at Tumbling Shoals Farm.  Don’t worry, I’m handing the reins over to extremely competent hands and I’ll be behind them supporting them the whole time.

Last week I made a lot of time.  I never realized I could do that: make time.  I thought it would require much more magic than I thought possible of my mere mortal self.  It turns out, though, that “making time” is actually more of a shuffling of priorities than true magic (depending on your perspective). You shift a few things around, decide what tasks can actually wait for another time and voila! You’ve made time.

​All that making of time is exhausting!  I arrived at Monday thinking, “whew! It’s been a long week!” before I realized it was, in fact, the first or second day of the week depending on your calendar settings.  So today, I made some more time.  I stood above the cauldron and stirred, whispered some magic sounding words, neglected the records I still had yet to enter for the last two weeks (a victim of all that making of time) and poof! I made some time to can tomatoes before it was too late.  

Tonight, I think I’ll sacrifice the vacuuming to make time to visit our neighbor.  The more time I make, the easier the making of time seems.  I guess magic is like anything else: it takes practice.  Let me go wave my magic wand around in the name of practice.

It rained.  Not as much here as we had expected, but still, we were checking all the gauges, paddles at the ready.  But then it seemed clear that none of the local rivers were up quite enough and we started doing other things-work things.  It was a Friday, after all, a harvest day before Saturday markets.
But then I get the call, 10:30 a.m.  We can paddle Wilson’s Creek Gorge (one of my all-time favorites) with my favorite paddler, Roger.  I hesitate. It feels crazy. I did vow never to turn down an opportunity to paddle with Roger, AND it’s Wilson Creek, but it’s FRIDAY! It’s unreasonable.  It’s insane.  I know I have the most competent excellent crew in our farm history, but STILL it feels crazy to let go and play hooky on a Friday.

​Then I remember the lesson I learned from Chip and Dan Heath, “never underestimate the soul-sucking force of reasonableness.”  And then, I remember my own philosophy developed, in no small part, from that same lesson: “Just say yes”.

So, after repeating those mantras seventeen times, I said yes.  And we headed off to play on the river in one of the most beautiful places I’ve been.  And, of course, we left there with our wide grins, riding high and fully energized for the work that lay ahead of us too early the next morning. 

These are lessons I’ve learned over and over again, yet still I can’t help but hesitate in the face of a decision between play and work.  It’s years of training and work ethic, but those are the things that have gotten us to the place where we can choose play over work occasionally.  And so, my friends, in case you, too, could benefit from a little shift in your universe, I shall quote Chip and Dan Heath once again, “Never underestimate the soul-sucking force of reasonableness.”

Do you ever stop to think about what exactly it is that you value?  I mean really dive deep into what makes you tick.  It’s easier than one might imagine to lose track of these things in the slog of daily life. It takes a step back, a slowdown, an arresting of the madness for just a moment to safely examine what moves us.  And then, once you’ve put your finger on that wriggling caterpillar of motive, to step back again and determine if your activities are actively pursuing those values.

​I was reminded recently of one my own core values that my recent delving into more serious matters has me forgoing.  That is the value of humor.  I love to laugh.  But I have not been honoring that value of late. And all it took was a movie to shake me out of austere torpor.  Yes, that’s right. Deadpool, once again, has reached his unlikely hero’s hand down to me and lifted me back into a levity I had forgotten to miss. 

Now that I have been reminded of the value of not taking myself too seriously, I will not entirely abandon the responsibility of the more serious delving, but also continue to reach for the ballast of joy.  Of levity.  It is not my intention to stomp so heavily upon the earth that my path descends downward into the darkness, but rather to step lightly and lithely onto the clouds, lifting others up with mirth instead of dragging them down with gravity.

As I am not immune to gravity myself, sometimes I need a hero’s hand.