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2022 Frozen Tundra Farm Report

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sKePTiKal:
Phew! A relatively quiet morning today. Up & down weather - Tuesday morning it was almost zero degrees... and I've been out barefoot this morning, it'll be 70 something today but wind is kicking up to gale force again. Out like a lion, I suppose.

I have a new weird idea floating around in my head, and given I only have my perspective on it thought I'd throw it out for feedback. After talking with my F2F folks around here, about how difficult our early lives have been - for various reasons - it SEEMS universally accepted/understood that the most uncomfortable, anxiety-motivating life conditions are when we are reasonably secure (in our homes, income, expected daily routines), and there are no major stressors or "projects" going on in our lives. When we've got nothing to really complain about, ya know? Emotionally pleasant times... no unfulfilled expectations... no regrets about the past - whether paths not taken, or those we did and struggled with. Maybe it's that "waiting for the other shoe to drop" phenomenon... but nowhere in nature does it always follow that bad things happen in equal proportion, or EVERY time, something good happens.

People also seem to handle that "fear of happiness/contentedness" differently. Some actively seek out external "causes" to become passionately involved in... even at the level of "OPP" (other people's problems). Some despair, and fall into a black hole of hopelessness/futility. Some simply seem adrift... vulnerable to whatever crosses their path that hooks their attention, even if it's only for a day. As if there is no coherent "self" with it's own interests, etc. to pursue, master... or just enjoy in gratitude & bliss.

And it manifests differently in the different stages of life, too. Hol & I have been talking about this more lately. She and I have a different (we think it's healthy) attitude about death... as in, it's an absolute given part of the cycle of life and fearing the unknowns of it instead of seeing it as an adventure of exploration & discovery doesn't really make a lot of sense. That's not to endorse a reckless disregard for life, mind you. But the idea that when we were born, we were already committed to dying, is just a part of nature and fearing or avoiding it at ALL costs doesn't always make sense. Worse is when someone subconsciously RESISTS the reality of that fact of life, methinks.

An obsession with that fear can turn into a dysfunctional passive life pattern - and I don't mean anti-socially; hermiting. To me, it's as if a person spends so much time, energy and financial resources on trying to guarantee their own security that there is simply no room anywhere in their consciousness or lives for any "nutritious" activities or interactions.

[Note: I acknowledge that fear of loss of others in our lives is a completely different animal. This idea of fear of happiness is almost linked somehow to the fear of the LOSS of it. So, if one is so afraid of feeling that happiness/contentedness that one shuts it off... and simultaneously, is fearful of losing it... it seems like one traps oneself in a self-destructive negative feedback loop. All the "if, thens" send that person from one uncomfortable state of the duality to the other... ad nauseum.]

Maybe I'm missing something, in that understanding. Maybe it's not quite ready "for primetime" - to express & share; maybe it's just PART of a bigger idea. I dunno. I can only see it from where I'm at - and other people will see it differently. So I thought we could throw our ideas at it like spaghetti at the wall... and maybe everyone move their ideas/understanding a little further down the path we're on.

Your turn!  :D

Hopalong:
Those are such interesting, worthy speculations, Amber. And maybe not speculative but true according to physics or even metaphysics. Both of those are way above my pay grade but your post sparked a lot of thoughts and recognitions. Thanks!

Anxiety is so complicated. Sometimes when I was immersed in the extreme high stresses of various crises over the years, I'd be too numb to name it, but my body would still play it out. So though I did have moments of ecstasy, I mostly wouldn't often be happily distracted or immersed in a contented flow as you describe, but instead, marinating in adrenalin. Day to day, simple living and regular routines have always been a struggle because of the ADD, so the shame-cycles of that would spark new anxiety spurts. Tried meditation and anxiety would spike even more, though I still am certain meditation would be helpful if I could maintain the habit.

I think some of it, actually a lot of it, is not incorrect thinking or analyses but what my thoughts and feelings mean to me, looked at all together. Early inclinations and religious training supported my basic nature (like my father's) as mostly an empath. Just a jittery, poorly-regulated one. Codependency lurks just beyond the borders of loving and caring. But that doesn't make the loving and caring not worth risking. An impulse toward meaning gives purpose, even when one feels ineffective. As does love.

Sometimes I speculate that more of our feeling states and thinking patterns are biological than we understand. And others are flabbergastingly mysterious, for which I can only scrape up the word "spiritual." Experiencing hypnosis and having my life saved by it, was one crack in the universe that let in a different light. That deep life force I'd always thought of as an abstraction was palpable then, and it changed things. It was mystery and positive, not fearful.

Ime, anxiety seems like this:
panicky thought cycles
biological and chemical reactions to events or sensations
chickens and eggs arguing over which of these came first

I don't fear death itself. In some ways I look forward to it but that's just residual hope from early religion. Mainly, I think of it as something that nature knows how to do and I don't, so it's something I'll be able to submit to in trust. Just as babies submit to being shoved down the birth canal. When I watched my father's face transform to pure wonder as he died, it was comforting. I don't know if he went down the tunnel to an amazingly beautiful other dimension of energy that contains him still, or whether after a huge whoosh of last light and the brain bringing up deep beautiful stored memories or images, he winked out forever. (Hence, agnosticism.) And I never will know until I'm there myself. Meanwhile, instincts seem to urge us to keep living as long as we can.

I do fear loneliness and suffering before death. I am not afraid to go pretty deeply into where emotions can go as that leads to creativity at times, but I'm also a physical coward with a low pain threshold. I've spent so much time with the very old that I recognize that acute loneliness, neglect and suffering may become the norm for some of us. On the other hand, some very-old do seem more contented than folks a decade or two younger, and that's interesting. Maybe by then one is more at peace with the outcome and it just gets incorporated into the present.

One factor for me that may never change is that losing my only child (and family) changed my attitude toward fear of loss. She's not dead but I don't expect to ever see her again. For me, I don't expect to ever experience a greater loss (unless she died), so I doubt anything will possibly ever hurt as much. So I don't feel anxiety about that any more, as it proved something profound about releasing the outcome. Or accepting that the outcome is entirely out of our hands. When there's no choice, you do what you have to do as much as you are able. Or just keep breathing even if sometimes you'd rather feel nothing.

Although I'll grieve as I lose friends one day, I will be raw-heartbroken when Pooch goes. But my belief is that unconditional love is as close as the next animal or human (or cause) in need of  it, though, and I'll always need someone to love.

Ramble, ramble.

Not a very coherent response to your very coherent essay, Amber, but I enjoyed it a lot. If I could start every day with a deep think like this, it'd be awesome. Must create a To Do list.

hugs
Hops

sKePTiKal:
To-do lists are almost irrelevant these days to me, Hops. I know to feed the cats or they'll pester me till I do. I reduced the size of lists to the 2x2 post it size. Then I lose the damn post-it! or something comes up that I need to address that makes me forget there's a list at all. My anxiety revolves mostly around things I can't control - and I finely defined the few things I WANT to control, or attempt to. There is a mostly physical anxiety I have in response to clutter - and it hardly needs "managing" because when it hits that threshold, I'm feeling it and can't escape it until I've put things away. My brain needs empty surfaces - walls or tabletops - to deeply relax.

I do keep "plannng" journals. I have one for the garden, one for the property in general and a design notebook for drawings & notes about the things I'm envisioning some day in the future. These only get updated once or twice a year and there are no dates -- it's becoming impossible to predict when, for instance, the steel for my roof replacement will arrive - so that the rest of the materials & the work can scheduled. We have agreed on a general target timeframe. When I'm inspired - or someone else has a good idea - those go in the planning notebooks.

So more often now, I "do" based on when I "know" it's time. The kids seedlings are a couple weeks ahead of mine - but I kinda knew spring and reliable consistent warm temps were going to happen a little later this year. I don't know how I know; I just know. Same thing happens with purging or organizing. Without any apparent stimulus - it's just "time" to tackle that one thing. Sometimes, it involves letting go of stuff that's all woven into my early life conditions.

That kind of stuff is less intellectually centered; more intuitive, I think. And that's a new (inner) landscape for me to live in. It probably comes from the solitude; B tends to support it most of the time. Holly, is slowly starting to understand - and deal with her own processes.

Hopalong:
I think it sounds like a beautiful way of entering, accepting and supporting your life, Amber.

I was actually cracking a joke about a To Do list...I haven't gotten even that together. Thought it was funny to think of a list that has at the top every day:

1) Deep Think.

You know, it's not a bad idea. I did The Artist's Way morning pages for a short time, and remember really enjoying it. And I haven't journaled, other than here, for many years. Maybe that would be a much better way to launch a day than hours of news, eh? I might try it. Baby steps.

I kept a huge journal/sketchbook for a long time when I was younger. From front to back, I wrote journal stuff. Oy, relationships, dramas, trying to sort out who I was. But from back to front, I wrote my dreams.

The process was so amazing. The physical act of using cursive and writing down anything at all that I remembered. Even a scrap of an image, a few words grabbed out of the dark before the light washed it away. Doing that every morning, with the journal in grabbing distance, and in a couple of weeks I was writing page after page like a complete movie. I found it amazing, just to open a door a crack and through the physical act of writing/recording, not thinking, finding a whole nether world of my mind. I think that's maybe a hint as to why hypnosis actually worked for me, years later.

It wasn't just that it released me from smoking. It was that I learned inner encounters are real. I was interested enough in my deep hidden self that I was able to call on it.

'Bout time I did that again, I think. Wish me luck.

And meantime, I will think of the planning notebooks with awe. Beautiful in a whole different way.

hugs
Hops

sKePTiKal:
I usually revisit those notebooks or update them, twice a year Hops. It's just a place to hold my ideas about this place - and not all of them get executed and definitely priorities change so much it's silly to think of them as a to-do list. Just like the great room redecoration project - it's in my head, measurements noted as to space... sketches... and it's just waiting for me to have the time to revisit and see if I still "want" to do that. The house functions pretty darn well with the pieces I brought from the beach.

I'm chomping at the bit to get out in the dirt - and the next couple days are gonna be warmer, so I might start with the kitchen beds & prune the raspberries. My seedlings are definitely looking for dirt. Kids are busy with vehicle maintenance and the greenhouse project; and I think I may have to give Hol a hand with the greenhouse. S is working a lot so isn't around.

B is still waiting to hear from surgeon; still waiting after a month of leaving messages for a call back. And this last round of steroid shots put him in the ER with a severe hypertensive reaction. It's taken him 3-4 days to recover from that. He already has two recommendations that the dosage is way too high and the frequency/number of shots is too much as well. I'm more than a little unclear how his insurance can all of a sudden insist he get these shots - or lose all his coverage. Sounds like blackmail - and if he's got two other docs saying it's unnecessary and even dangerous - then why let the doc coerce him into an appt he didn't ask for?? Just say NO, right?

But my insurance is mess too. I was going to completely lose my private insurance when I turned 65 - UNLESS I signed up for Medicare. I looked at every available option in the private market for my state and they all required medicare. Signing up was easy enough to do online. But then the big surprises started. My private premium dropped to about 1/3 of what I'd previously been paying; but Medicare more than made up the difference as my premium was adjusted upward to reflect my income. So not saving any money; it's kind of a wash. Until we get to Part D - which I just got billed for. I have Rx insurance from my private insurance who've partnered with Express Scripts. (Mind you - I don't take ANY rx's.) So this month's medicare billing has doubled for Part D and the mailings I've got come from 3 different offices and say 3 different things. Now, I can read and get to the bottomline of complex contracts. But these mailings are intentionally written to contradict themselves and confuse, as far as I can tell. I'll be working the phone today to try to get this sorted out.

I guess they think everyone 65 & older just sits around bored all day and have all the time in the world to untangle their web of BS. I got news for 'em.  :rolleyes:

And of course, my taxes are more complicated this year, since my longtime investment advisor moved on to another bank... and we qualified for the covid "employee retention credit". It's potentially a big credit for each employee we kept and paid full wages even when we barely kept net income in the black.

Yeah, I got nothing to do all day long; days on end.  :rolleyes:

If there wasn't a move on to stop taking cash patients at docs & hospitals, I'd be tempted to cancel all that insurance and just bank that money - it works out to about 15K annually - and I only use it for glasses every year. It just seems like all insurance is a racket; con game and when a catastrophic event does occur - there's a little clause in the fine print which lets the insurer off the hook for paying out anything; much less replacement value at today's inflated prices.

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