I was going to reduce my mocha/scone-intake. I was already selecting the smallest size. Today, I see that Starbucks is planning to raise prices on drinks in my area. Thanks, Starbucks!

Winter means, for me, having a few weeks off from work, where I can catch up with all the loose ends I had neglected during the semester. The cold is worth tolerating for that.

There are floors to vacuum, a shower to scrub, cat claws to clip, pies to bake, gifts to wrap (for the very few people I shop for), and reprioritizing that needs measuring.

These last three months have been rough and have sucked out my ability to get certain tasks completed. My work, while I enjoy it and it provides a somewhat flexible schedule, also requires a lot of me…not physically, but mentally. My clients have questions and concerns to bombard me with, and thanks to the new norm of providing students with an email address, it means these demands do not end when class does. I like responding to questions and feeling helpful, but not always at 8pm on a Saturday.

In a few days’ time, I will be able to fully breathe again.

I inherited a trellis from a previous gardener. In the three years I have had it, this structure leans closer and closer to falling down. After Hurricane Irene buzzed through here, I expected to see it scattered on the ground. It stood. A few boards were moved to make it stand straighter. Last month, after the strange snow storm, I expected the tree above to have lost heavy branches, toppling the trellis. After a week, I visited the spot, finally able to deal with the destruction. Nothing. Not a branch hit the ground. This is following a storm that knocked branches and trees onto cars, roofs, and even, I believe, at least one person. My fortune was part luck, but I think also part sturdiness. The trellis was not a readymade creation from a garden center, but something a gardener constructed herself, perhaps with help from a husband. Not everything is made to fall apart immediately.

More and more I feel like I am living in the wrong century.

Within the current movement that claims to want to address economic disparity, I find some activists treat most people with suspicion, even though, if they believed their own rhetoric, they would be trusting 99 out of 100 people.

I do not have a cell phone. I can go hours without being in contact with someone. This does not make me feel scared or lonely. My days are not filled with fretting over potential emergencies.

Right now, as Southern New England recovers from a “freak October snow storm,” which I fear is going to be more of a norm due to climate change, I find myself growing less patient with the amount of whining I am surrounded by. Although almost 100,000 homes had power restored in 24 hours, people feel like this is not fast enough. Seriously. Given the amount of destruction, the rate of restoration is pretty amazing.

And it would not hurt most of us to just slow down anyway. It’s barely cold enough to warrant turning on our furnaces. Hot meals are nice, but we can survive on boring things if need be. It is like I hardly know the people around me.

Someone I know who works in the mental health field is going to be doing screenings specifically for those affected by the storm. This is necessary. I feel like some people are losing perspective and are not mentally healthy. Instead of seeking shelter with friends, family, or even at an emergency shelter, they insist on this “individualism,” which, really, is not very beneficial right now.

Moaning about one’s problems to the general public all the time is unbecoming. There is no reason to force those not suffering to suffer through complaints.

I was built to “be okay when everything is not okay,” as Tori Amos sings it. I am not always okay, but I’d like to think that I have some perspective when it comes to natural disasters. We control what we can, cope with what we can not. If we lose power and have our neighborhoods barricaded by trees and live wires, no amount of grumbling is going to improve that situation. That’s time to talk with neighbors, find out how others are faring, and if possible, make a few phone calls to alert the right people that there is a problem that we need help solving. And then we make the best of it.

This storm means that I have gotten a few vacation days. I will need to make the work up somehow, but after being sick and rundown for weeks, this has given me a much-needed break. I have had more time to spend with friends, to write, to cook, and to just sleep later than normal. It gives me the opportunity to photograph subjects that would not normally exist.

The photograph above is of a farm that sometimes operates on the honor system. I “discovered” this recently and found it quaint. And nice. Very nice. In a time when we have self-checkout lines and sensors that loudly announce when an item is accidentally placed on the belt without scanning, it’s nice to have a place that trusts you will weigh the food, pay the correct amount, and not take money out of the open basket. Pessimists would never operate this kind of system.

For a long time, I’ve called myself a “realist” rather than a “pessimist,” as sometimes I’ve been accused of being. And I don’t know if I can say it is always true, but I find myself more of an optimist in certain situations. We will all get our power back. We will all get our heat back. Our way of life is not permanently changed.

In the meantime, we can treat this as a relaxing vacation, or, we can stress ourselves out about it.

Can we trust ourselves to remain human when all of our materialistic trappings of the 21st century have been yanked so suddenly from us? Are we afraid to be alone with our own thoughts for longer than two minutes?

There will be taking of several more leeks tomorrow, as I prepare my garden for winter. We are expected to get a bit of snow this weekend, most of which will likely melt off the next day. In any case, I have a few stragglers to rescue.

I was a serious child. None of this trajectory seemed unpredictable.

For years already I had retreated into the arts — fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, and film — but never in a way that would establish myself as an authority. I took the wrong classes and read the wrong books. To this day, when I am asked if I am an art student, I laugh. Now, of course, I am also laughing because I have been a student of no kind for years, aside from the general designation of “student of life.”

It’s because I am a generalist. I’m neither here nor there. Too much, too little. Considered artsy by those who have no concept of art, but likely considered ignorant by those who have done art school, who have been trained.

There are worlds I have never understood how to break into. I sneak in. Sometimes I walk in. But I always feel like maybe I am in the wrong place.

I have had amazing access for someone with no professional credentials in this way. I could be either more professional or scrappier. There is this feeling that my approach is never the easiest, but I get in the door.

My art is in words, mainly. I need to stop obsessing over what I thought it would look like. Painting with oils, knitting, sketching…those things will likely never be mastered. I have words and mediocre photography, the latter of which I could hone if I bothered with classes and patience. I don’t need to feel this splintering anymore. Life is replete with interruptions. It’s what we do after those pauses that matters, not whether or not our paths were smooth.

Remembering that my kitchen was stocked with local, organic potatoes and leeks made everything better. The potatoes came from the CSA share; I grew the leeks.

I grew the leeks!

Eating is a necessity. We gather food from many sources and can have equally satisfying meals, but having something that I raised from seed is fulfilling in a different way.

I have been reading Just Kids by Patti Smith and it provokes me to think about creation in ways that I have not bothered to think for over a decade now. Making something from hardly nothing. Cooking feels like that. The leeks look like thick pieces of grasses. They are water, sunlight, air, and soil. That’s simple. That’s infinitely complex. I fed them compost produced by the worms in my basement bin. I wrapped their stalks with mulch. And the potatoes? Someone else put that care into them.

My hot bowl of soup served with pumpkin bread and asparagus — an out of season indulgence — is more than a comforting dish on a cold, dreary day. It’s made of stories created out of the ground, the sky, and the rain.

The specifics do not matter for the purpose of this site, but family drama was foisted upon me and I had to make some major changes in my living arrangement, as well as how I viewed and interacted with every member of my immediate family. For the record, this turmoil did not originate with me. In all this, I think I qualify as the sane one.

So, instead of photographing vintage outfits and reflecting on my CSA subscription, my attention span mimicked that of friends who are new mothers, unable to concentrate on anything. There were a few days where I had trouble forming complete sentences within my own thoughts. It is selfish, but one of the most trying parts in this was my inability to really write while the most intense changes were taking place. Writing is my thing. It is what lets me know I am still breathing.

After weeks of adjustment, I have seemed to regain my ability to complete a thought and to enjoy a little social life again.

~~~

When I began this site, my plan was to write about an environmental action every day. Just over two years later, such a plan seems overly ambitious and narrow. Two years ago, I was maintaining another blog somewhat regularly, but without a large audience. Now, that site has grown exponentially and without any real explanation. I know that is where my focus needs to be. But that site also has a narrow focus and sometimes I like to write about broader subjects.

What I have in mind for this site now: more photography. Thoughts on living more sustainably, whether it means vermicomposting, learning bicycle repair, or finding new uses for old things. It will also be a space for a long-time guilty pleasure of mine: fashion. Other topics might get thrown in too, but I promise, if I write about my cats, it will be in the context of environmentalism.

Welcome back! Thanks for reading!