Busy

I almost feel bad at times that I don't get to write more.  This fact sort of got me going and made me start thinking again.  Why do I do all that I do?  Why do I do anything?  Why do I feel I need to cram as much as I possibly can in to each and every day at the expense of sleep and eating properly.

I can break things down a little into different categories, work, family, farm stuff, teaching, cleaning, eating, reading, hobbies, and so on into inifinity.  Some things get pushed out, like watching TV.  I will watch movies or TV shows on DVD, but that is pretty much my limit.  Most of the time due to my erratic work schedule I am not able to commit a particular time and day of the week to watch a show and I am too cheap to buy a TIVO or pay for satellite TV.  I was asked to join the local Lions club in town.  I told them I would go to a meeting and then never showed up.  Then I feel bad because I said I would.

On top of all of this there I things I would like to learn to do.  I would like to learn spanish, I want to learn how to make brooms out of broom corn, to be more organized, to just be a better person.

It tends to drive me crazy at times, then when I do have things I know need to be done that can be put off I do things that I really don't need to do.  For example tonight I am writing and should have gone to bed because I have to get up early in the morning.  I worked for an hour and a half at cleaning out my shed instead of writing test questions for the final in the class I teach.  I just find countless ways to do nothing when I have things that need to get done.  I procrastinate until the last minute and then rush through.

I have tried to set priorities, to make some things more important than others.  What I want to spend more time doing I end up losing interest in and then don't want to finish it.  I end up putting most of my effort into my job because I make money doing it.  I enjoy parts of it, probably the people part of it and not the mundane details that have to get done each day. 

I look at motivation to do things, I've accomplished many things in my life that had nothing to do with anything but my own motivation to do them.  I don't think that is the issue either.  The same is true of just about everything, I tend to seek out different things or activities and then when I've mastered them I get bored with them and drift to something else.

I don't know what drives this tendency towards mediocaty.  I suppose it's fear to some point.  I imagine some has to do with having a bizzare work schedule, trying to be more things to too many people.  I sometimes feel that if I could just quit doing one thing or another it would free up time to do all the other activities that I do.  For example I used to golf on a somewhat regular basis.  The last time I golfed was six years ago.

Someday I'll sort this all out and find a way to feel less busy and still be active in many things.  It's one of those things that I sit and stew about and about six months or a year later some sort of idea pops into my head that sort of solves the problem.  If only there was some way days could be made longer...

Slow

I've been watching the fall harvest here in southern Minnesota progress at a snails pace. Usually by this time in November most things are pretty much done with. This year only about 25% of the corn crop is out of the field and in the bins. Even with good weather it will take some people until December to finish everything. The crops are not drying as well and that is one hold up. It's mainly due to the cool spring, dry summer and cold October. It's actually been warmer in November than the whole month of October.

Everything is moving slow - even my popcorn crop is only partially harvested. That's not quite so unusual since the popcorn I grow is a little longer in maturity than the normal types of corn planted around here. So I end up waiting a little longer to pick it and let mother nature do some of the drying for me.

All of this has me thinking about things that seem slower than normal lately. Why does it take as long as it does for me to change some of the bad habits in my life. When I actually have changed them it's taken much longer than it should have considering what happened around me. Why do I still procrastinate in other parts of my life? Why do I not listen to people who give me advice I ask for and then have to learn that they were right and I should have listened to. I just wish I could shake this slowness!

I probably am too hard on myself, but at the same time I probably won't ever improve myself if I'm not. I think part of my problem is that like many of the farmers who are having problems with their harvest I tend to take on more than I can realistically can handle. Like them I have a problem saying no. Then when it comes time to do those things that I said I would, I find myself outside doing some pointless thing like raking leaves, or reading some stupid pharmacy magazine or looking at things on the internet that have absolutely no bearing on what I really should be doing (like writing this blog).

The one time I thought I said no to someone was when someone from the town I lived in asked me to come to the Lion's meeting. I told him I would, but when the night came I actually forgot about it. I actually feel like I should apologize and then go to one of the meetings just because I said I would.

At times in my life I have found a massive source of energy for change and growth and right now I really could use some. I don't understand how or why it came at the times it did. I summoned up the courage and stamina to do things I could have never thought possible. I was able to focus my attention and being like a laser and accomplish more than six Farmer Dan's in the present time would even dream about.

Here is where some of my problems lie - I am sort of getting the feeling that some of the nervous, worry of all the farmers and their workers are throwing off is rubbing off on me. The same worry is coming from my customers at my real job about this health care plan that is coming out. That type of energy is really good for nothing, at least I know it is for me.

I guess it is energy and like electricity it's still the same electricity whether it comes from a generator powered by nuclear, wind or methane gas. Whether or not that worry energy I think I may be feeling can be changed or shaped into positive energy for my life is something I really don't know.

I'll let you know in the morning though what I figure out, right after I get done raking leaves...

Change of Venue

I can't believe how rapidly things change sometimes. This is the scene I was watching on Sunday night. They are harvesting soybeans around my farm. It's really late for them to be doing that and unless we start having warmer weather it's hard to say if all the crops will be harvested before the snow starts flying...

Wait a minute - the snow was already flying last week! It melted in a few days, but it didn't help all the farmers around me. I guess it's supposed to snow again this week a few times, but for some reason I don't seem to care that much.

This is the sunset I got to watch last night - looking out of our hotel on Kona. Much, much better I must say. You might be wondering - why would anyone post pictures on their honeymoon? Well I went to bed at 9pm last night (local time) and woke up at 4 am and couldn't sleep. The sun is coming up now and we are going to have breakfast and look at volcanoes today. I'm not planning on posting more pictures or blogging until I get back - unless I can't sleep.

A big Aloha from Farmer Dan - see you when I get back!

Surprises

I've had a lot of little surprises lately and so far they have been good ones. I have some great (at least I think they are) pictures to help show some of the ones I happened to be able to get the camera out for.

The 1st one happened while working on my bees. I was taking off the extra hive boxes that are basically empty for the winter. What's interesting about bees is that they will work ever harded to fill up any space that you give them. In my case I was a little slow and didn't get the boxes on in time for them to really get working on them. Earlier in the day I pulled them off and let them sit next to the hives. There were a few bees in each box and I thought since they didn't have any food in these boxes that they would make their way back to the hives when it started to cool off. After it was dark I picked up the boxes and brought them to the house and put them inside.

I was just about to move them to the basement and I noticed the cat playing with a bee on the floor and thought to myself, "there must have been one clinging onto the box and it just fell off". I let this one outside and looked in the box and found that there was more than one bee left in it. My heart almost stopped. There were hundreds of bees left! They were moving very slow because of the cool outside air and their lack of food. Had I not seen the single bee scooting across the floor and looked in the box - would I have had a surpise in the morning when the sun hit the box and it really started to heat up.

I then took the frames with the bees back out to the hive and shook them off the best I could right in front of the entrance. A lot of them were still there in the morning dead. It made me sort of sad for the little guys, but many of them were young which explained why they didn't fly back to their home earlier.

The next surprise happened a few weeks ago. I woke up one morning and noticed some red on the walnut tree next to the house. I wear glasses so it looked like a red peice of cloth was hanging from the tree. After I found my glasses I saw that there were dozens of monarch butterflies hanging from the same branch. I ran and grabbed the camera and unfortunately by the time I was able to open the window and start snapping only about 1/3 of them were left. It was another suroprise that I just happened to catch.

The last picture is from a stormy fall day out here. I was snapping pictures of the sunset which I didn't think were anything that wonderful since the sun was sort of blocked, but when I was walking back in I was surpised to find the last picture. I didn't think it was going to turn out when the flash went off, but it is probably one of my most favorite pictures now.

I just get the feeling of what the 1st settlers saw when they moved out the prairie in Southern MN. That big open sky, grass as far as you could see - a sight that would make any agoraphobic person cringe.

To me the little surprises like these are what makes life so great. It's too bad it's taken me thirty years to realize that the best times in life are the quiet little surprises that only you and maybe one other person share. The 1st two are moments that I and only one other person was present for and will probably be things we talk about for years - just because they are so unique. The last is something I alone can say - I alone stood out on that odd September evening and witnessed natures beauty and felt time spin backwards.