Four years ago this weekend, my friend and her daughter arrived for a visit from Seattle. Initially, the weather was bright and sunny, but Seattle missed them, and almost immediately, the dry heat shifted to mist and rain. No one minded, as we’d been in a season of drought.
But it meant we ended up spending a lot of time in the outbuilding I’d been slowly converting to a “studio.”
I put studio in quotes because had you been there visiting with my friend, you probably would not have labeled it as such. It was one of two outbuildings on the ranch that had long been used as a storage shed, but unlike the other building, which had a dirt floor, this shed had a poured concrete floor, and in that, I saw promise. So, over the years, we’d tinned the roof, added a small lean-to greenhouse, replaced the ancient, impossible-to-open garage doors, and put in a wood stove. While aesthetically it still looked more like a shed than anything else, calling it a studio no longer sounded aspirational, and my friend and I spent many pleasant hours knitting and spinning wool together that week.
I’ve written about this studio before, as well as that visit. Four years ago, in fact, this is what I wrote for my column: “I’m a person with lots of ideas. Too many ideas, it often seems; the capacity of my imagination always bigger than the time, energy, or resources at my disposal. This tendency leaves me feeling that no matter how fast I run, I am always running behind … But, between ranching, mothering, and my work as a writer and musician, I actually can’t hustle any harder — I’m already overextended.
The real work of my adulthood, it turns out, is not learning how to do it all. It’s about learning how to joyfully leave work undone. It’s about looking at an unfinished project and seeing all the progress instead of all that’s left to do. It’s about carving out space in the relentlessness of my own expectations to be still.”
What good advice from my younger self! It’s advice that I have wholeheartedly ignored far more often than not in the intervening years. That “studio” space? It has since hosted a weekend-long fiber workshop, an herbalism workshop, and this past weekend, a writers’ retreat, not to mention the continued updates on the shed that have resulted in it looking steadily less like a shed and more like an actual studio.
All these undertakings are obviously very labor-intensive. And, just as I wrote four years ago, it is still very easy for me to see all that is left undone instead of noticing the progress that’s been made. Perhaps that’s why my mid-adult shift to a life in agriculture came naturally — year after year, the garden must be planted and then harvested, the sheep reared, sheared, sorted and moved around from pasture to pasture. Round and round the circle of the year we go, newly arriving at the same old, undone work.
But, while my need to keep moving hasn’t dissipated, I HAVE changed. All I need to do is remember my friend’s visit to experience the difference. Back then, I tried so hard to relax into enjoying her company, but mostly failed to do so. This weekend, however, cooking, cleaning, and prepping for the writers who came to the ranch, there was no time to be still, and yet I finished the weekend with energy and joy, somehow feeling replenished by the labor. In the midst of the hustle, I enjoy myself immensely.
My younger self was very wise in so many ways, but it wasn’t the wisdom of experience. She had much to learn, including that stillness of the soul can look very different than stillness of the body. Yes, this weekend was a lot of work, but I have never felt so at home in my labor. It’s possible that the capacity of my imagination is not too much after all. That, at least in this season of life, it’s exactly the right amount.
