Starting From Scratch

It's 2015. I wouldn't mind a big year full of nothing. No excitement. No problems. No pleasures. Just routine. Work. Milking cows.
...but that's not going to happen, is it.

Oh well, ...act now, cry later. That's how I deal with things. If I cry at all. I over-do the happy side of things sometimes because I'm afraid to let my emotions show. So when they do come out of hiding it's more like an explosive network of bombs.... unraveling each issue I've been bottling up since who-knows-when.

I suppose it's all a part of the growing up process. Problems help bring out our worst so we can see it in the daylight and figure out how to address it and move beyond it. I remember from drivers ed, I.P.D.E. ... Identify. Predict. Determine. Execute. Sounds like a good strategy for dealing with life issues.... not just automobile experiences. As General George S. Patton said, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

The point is that one should have a plan. Any plan. Yet, nothing sounds interesting to me right now. I have 500 projects I could work on. Things to create, things to make, participate in, accomplish, clean... you name it. ...but the center of my schedule, the one thing that was always sure, was my job milking our cows. It wasn't just a job either. It was my identity, my purpose. 

Just a few weeks ago I was talking to an old homeschool friend and we were discussing careers. She'd just graduated from University, was about to marry a guy who'd also graduated from University and they were moving to the big city where their careers would take place. What was I doing? Milking cows. Of course that didn't sound very lofty to my friend and it didn't matter to me what she thought of my occupation because she didn't understand that though my vocation sounded humble the cause was noble. It seems to me that people don't understand farming much unless they've truly come into contact with farmers or participated in agriculture.

I never imagined myself to be a career chick. I never cared to be out there in the work force, to be the bread-winner. In fact, I thought I'd get married young and have a bunch of kids. It sounded like a nice life plan and it didn't have the big, red debt score to add to the "I do" list. Since the marriage thing didn't happen, I focused on milking cows. Well, I focused on milking anyway because I enjoyed it. It could be difficult, challenging and yet equally rewarding and satisfying. I liked the routine, the passion, and the bigger purpose for dairy farming that reached beyond our little farm. Making food for the world. Now that's something big. Though being a milkmaid sounded menial to others it did not bother me because I knew my worth.

Then, yesterday we took my job, took my purpose, put it on a trailer and sent it down the road to someone else, somewhere else. 

What am I now? 

I am starting from scratch. Scraping together my desires and looking for some all-purpose super glue, in hopes of re-purposing my purposeless being.
 
O.K. ... I'm being a little extra gloomy. It's not as bad as I'm making it sound. I know I am pretty lucky and maybe in my next post I'll be able to tell you just how lucky, fortunate and successful I am. As General George S. Patton also said, "I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom."

Right now it's about not dwelling at the bottom end of things. It's about getting up and carrying on. Winston Churchill said, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

So I am searching for the courage. The courage to try new things. Searching for ambition and searching for purpose. I know it's all waiting out there for me... at my disposal. Time to bounce back and advance into the future. 
It's the idea that things happen for good reasons and the best is yet to come. It all hinges on hope... that mere thread of possibility.