Coming Alive - What Next?

For the most part of my sixty years I have suffered from bouts of depression interspersed with generalised negative thinking. Fortunately, I've always also had brief encounters with happiness, and with  joy, euphoria, or what Abraham Maslow called 'peak experiences'.  (Time to re-read this man's work.)

When I first experienced these euphoric moments I tried to find ways to make them happen more often, but then, because my general outlook has been so negative, I quickly became fearful of the power of this joy, and learned to suppress it. I have always been an emotional person, and as a child my mother tried to teach me to suppress emotions: I remember being punished and sent to my room for getting angry, which I can understand because my anger was pretty loud and often violent. But I also remember being sad and being sent to my room until I cheered up. Worse still, I remember being sent to my room to calm down when I was skipping and singing happily. So I guess it's understandable that I learned how to be expertly unhappy when depression moved in at puberty!

Never mind - I'm almost grown up now, and I've not only decided to cheer up, I've learned how to do it. It's hard work, but I really am happier than I can ever remember, even though nothing much has changed in my physical, 'real' world. Furthermore I have rediscovered the magic of euphoria - and when I'm alone I can take myself there again. It could get addictive if I'm not careful!

With the increasing feeling of well-being I am learning all kinds of things that most people probably learn in childhood! I have learned to accept the the past instead of constantly brooding on everything I did wrong, didn't do that I wanted to, didn't do because although I didn't want to do something then, I now wish I had, just always thinking about the wrong moves. And then I'd think about all the people who did me wrong and all the people I did wrong to - and so it would go on.

There are things I'm a bit sad about still - I don't know if I'll ever not feel sad about not learning to dance, and about not having a partner who wants to learn now, when it's way too late to do that sort of dancing with anyone other than my partner. However, I am okay about it now because.......

I've realised that if I wrote down all the things that I wish I'd done and all the things I still would like to do, there are way more than I could have achieved in a long life if I'd started the minute I was born! Sure there are things I'm too old for, too unfit for, not talented enough for, not educated enough for, but there are more than enough to keep me busy, excited, stimulated for longer than I wish to be alive. I'm starting another list of things I want to do, in my Journey Book, (which started out as my depression book, but which has evolved.)

Make cheese.....make sourdough bread......dance in the rain again......travel to Golden Bay and to Stewart Island......get stoned like I 'should' have done in the hippy days of my youth.....write happy poetry.......visit our friend in Australia.......die, not in my bed, nor by my own hand, but blowing bubbles.

A Summer Morning at Secret Waters

What a glorious day for a yeoman farmer! It was quite autumnal when I got up, not a cloud in the sky, but that crisp, cold freshness that usually comes later in late March and April. Great weather for scything though. Scything is best done in the morning before the dew has dried, and the grass toughened up. I am getting better at scything, and did around twelve trees before hunger drove me inside for breakfast. If I keep this up, then this year we should be able to find all the feijoas as they fall on the ground.

 After a larger breakfast than usual - I don't usually do an hour's hard labour before eating - I went out harvesting. I have only ever had one good year of garlic before but this year I have more than enough to keep both the vampires and most of my friends at bay for the entire year.

In my eager anticipation of our trip to Alaska in June 2011, I forgot about buying garlic bulbs for planting until I was checking emails while in Fairbanks, and found one from Koanga reminding me. The wonders of the internet - I ordered some online and they arrived the day after we got home. I ordered lots, assuming I would, as usual, only get a few to grow. Wrong!

Koanga was also offering tree onions, which I had never heard of, let alone grown. They too have flourished, and if they taste good, I'll plant more this July. And this year I will have plenty of healthy specimens to use instead of ordering in.

 

 A couple of years ago I bought a mini green house to start our seedlings in inside. It came from The Warehouse and only cost about $60, so we were surprised that it worked so well, and didn't fall to bits a month later. Now I have found a new use for it. Without it's plastic cover, it makes a great rack to finish drying off the garlic and tree onions.

 It was hot out there in the sun, so I gathered my lunch.

 And after a shower, I ate them with home-grown honey, and store bought yoghurt - must go and start some home made yoghurt now, using the raw organic milk I buy locally.

Then I'm going to settle down and do some work on my Apicultural Knowledge course.

Many people tell me "Oh! You don't work? I couldn't bear that, I need the mental stimulation of my job," just as they used to say the same thing when I was a stay-at-home homeschooling mother. Well, I find my life quite stimulating enough, thanks! Particularly in this wonderful era of the internet, which allows me to talk to distant friends and family in the evening, and of easy travel, which allows me to go to Auckland tomorrow night to spend an evening listening to really good jazz. The life of a modern yeoman farmer is a good one!

Weed or Wonder?

A few years ago a visitor to Secret Waters told me I must immediately dig out the agapanthus growing on our bank. Well, there were/are too many other things needing doing so the agapanthus remained.

I don't know what I do when I'm asleep, but I almost always wake up the same way. I open my eyes and the first thing I see is my tattoo, which brings a smile to my face. Next I role over and look out through a small, long window.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

How could I dig them out? They are such inspiring flowers. They leap up, throw out their arms and yell to the world:

 

"Here I am! Look at me! I'm so fucking gorgeous! Let's dance!"

Tuis in the Crimson

 
Our pohutukawa tree respected my 'we-are'not-having-christmas-at-our-place' this season and did not start flowering until after the dreaded day. Now it is in full glorious bloom and there are at least five tuis hanging out in amongst the crimson wonder.They are in and out all day, and though they never put money in the parking meter, their singing is so wonderful I don't write them infringement notices.

Unreasonable Fear

I've lived my life with a cloud of fear hovering over my head: fear of spiders and worms and rejection and people and being late and being early and slow death and pain and high places, both real and metaphorical, and being alone and not being alone and being laughed at and hurting others and hurting myself and of being happy.........

"Feel the fear and do it anyway" is the title of a book I have heard of but never read. It is also a phase that has often been thrown at me like a mantra by people who seem to live their lives by trite phrases of this kind. Those who read a self-help book, pick out little gems and wave them around in the air without actually making meaningful changes in their lives. Then they throw away that book  away and find a new one. I'm not one of those people: I read a self-help book  and mutter, 'well, that was a waste of time, that'll never work,' and go find another without making meaningful changes

But so many of my fears are not reasonable. Worms? Those amazing creatures who turn decomposing matter into the humus that in turn feeds my vegetable garden? I've worked on that one - I admire them greatly, but still don't like them. I can, however, pick one up off the cobblestones, where it is going to dry out and die, and place it in a cool shady garden where it can burrow down into the soil once more. I can even pick up a whole handful from the worm farm to show people.

Fear of hurting other people has made me do things that have harmed myself. It's reasonable - essential even - to make compromises in relationships, but not to the extent that I damage myself. A relationship that damages me is not worth having, and yet I always felt that everyone else in the world was more valuable and worthy than me, and even though I do not believe in any kind of  god, I have a huge superstitious fear that whenever I put myself before others I am invoking some kind of cosmic retaliation. The remnants, no doubt, of a hell-fire and brimstone Presbyterian minister who terrorised me as a child. I've been working on that one but have a long way to go.

Recent discussions got me thinking about why I am afraid of doing some things other people enjoy. I realised that just not doing things when my first reaction is fear, is as stupid as the 'feel the fear and do it anyway' as a way of living. Much as some aspects of paintball appeal to me, I really don't deal with pain well. I rarely notice pain while I'm doing something, but the pain of physical bruising that continues afterwards drains me: I'm not going to go play with my son and his friends in the bush. And that's fair enough: feel the fear and do it anyway? Nah! Not paintball. But other fears are not so reasonable.

I have decided that this year my goal is to take real awareness into my fear of life and to challenge the reasonableness of those fears. I'm not even going to consider jumping out of an aeroplane with a scrap of fabric attached to, or possibly detached, from my back. That is a reasonable fear - it's why adrenalin junkies do it - it IS dangerous! But I am going to work on my fear of going past the third rung of a ladder.

I'm going to invite a woman I met recently over for coffee, because she's a really interesting person, and she lives nearby and I'd really like to make a new local friend. Just writing that down makes my stomach churn with terror. Stop. What's the worst that can happen? The worst she can do is say, 'well, fuck off, why would I want to know you?' And then I will be in exactly the same position as I am now, right? Hmmmm - I know it's not that easy for me - in fact I've never invited someone for coffee until I've known them for, literally, years. It's a huge fear for me. However, unlike the fear of jumping out of aeroplanes or getting bruises from paintballs, this is not a reasonable fear.

There's nothing wrong with fear - it's a lifesaver at times. But I have lived 60 years with a raft of fears that are unreasonable, or which were reasonable once, but are no longer so.

I will examine my fears, and I will judge them, and those found wanting in reasonableness will be driven into exile. And I AM going to totally destroy my fear of being happy.

Rediscovering Berries

One of the problems associated with depression is lack of motivation, lack of energy, lack of interest. Over the last 18 months, as I have struggled with depression and spent a lot of time working to learn to deal with it, many things have been neglected. One is my berry garden.

This is my raspberry patch. Truly - there are raspberry plants in there somewhere! You can see how tall the grass is, by comparing it to the ordinary garden fork stuck in the ground.

This morning I started the renewal programme by uncovering the blueberry and currant bushes which were similarly hidden. They have been affected by the neglect: three were dead, and some of the remaining bushes don't look at all healthy - I will have to buy more this autumn - but we will get a few blueberries soon.

 This is the result of my morning's labours! It will compost down and then I will spread the resulting humus around the bushes.

 How could I have neglected them so? Especially when working my gardens and orchards leaves me feeling so good.

Dealing With Depression

The past 18 months have been a long journey for me - and I'm not there yet. In fact I know I'll never be 'there', because this life of mine is a constant journey. However, following a massive attack of depression in June 2010 I have been working on learning to train this black dog of mine. I've been to a clinical psychologist, read many books, explored dozens of websites, but the two things that have helped me most have  been John Kirwan's website, and keeping a journeyjournal. The latter helps me remember what it feels like to be at the bottom, but also reminds me of the things that help me - when I'm down, I find it hard to remember.

 

 

 On Tuesday night Jeff told us he and Konny had found a house in town and would be moving in this weekend. I slept badly that night, feeling sad. It's not like we have 'had' much of him the last six months, as he has been too busy with Konny and university and all the other stuff that goes with being a young adult, but I felt the loss of him strongly that night and next morning. I got up on Wednesday still feeling very sad,  and while eating breakfast, chipped a tooth. My old style was to assume the worst, that the tooth was cracked right through, was going to cause untold pain, and cost baskets full of money to repair. Instead I told myself, 'maybe it is just a chip,' and put it aside to deal with another day. But still felt sad.

I mucked about dismally all morning and part of the afternoon until I finally got myself into gear and headed into town to pick Steven up. As I drove into Hamilton I realised that I had started to withdraw into my grey bubble. I made myself look out at the world and see the same things I had seen a couple of days earlier when they had made my heart sing - the wild flowers, the stripes of young green maize in the fields, the harriers gliding over the trees, the gorgeous, wild clouds - and I saw that they were no different. It was me that was different. I made a real effort to observe and appreciate the beauty and slowly my mood lifted a little.

I got to The Base at Te Rapa (huge shopping complex) and decided to go buy myself some earphones for my mp3 player so I can have music in my car, instead of feeling miserable because my car cd player has broken. Yay! Music! I felt my mood rise a little more.

I collected Steve and headed for Auckland. Very slow traffic. Bad. Lots of time to talk with Steve. Good. I put missing Jeff out of my mind and concentrated on enjoying being with the son that was present.We got to Ceracell just 10 minutes before closing, to collect pre-ordered bee gear for me, and for Jacqueline. Good. Oh, they had forgotten to make up Jacqueline's order. Bad. Instead of getting annoyed, and worrying about how much time it was taking, I reminded myself, 'relax, there's no hurry.'

Three-quarters of an hour later......we were on the road again. The traffic was even worse. When we got to the Greenlane off ramp after half an hour driving in first gear, we decided to leave the motorway and go get takeaways for dinner and take them to eat at my sister's place hoping for a cup of tea. Not only were she and Graham there, but also her daughters, son-in-law and grandson. Claire was heading off on a holiday in Asia so they were having a Christmas dinner and presents opening for her.  So glad we called in - that bad traffic turned into something good.

Then off to CJC (Creative Jazz Club) in central Auckland. During a break between sets I turned around to ask the woman on the desk behind a question - my glasses flew off and I knelt on them resulting in a very twisted arm which meant I could only wear them if I had major cosmetic surgery on my head! I went to text Mac to tell him I would have to stay the night at Steve's place - and my phone died! It just kept turning off, even though the battery wasn't flat.

But the music was totally awesome! So I just focused on that. In the past I would have been berating myself for days. Instead I focused on the good.

Steve drove us back home to his place, and I stayed the night. The bed's not as comfortable as mine, and there's no curtain and they live next to a very busy road that trucks use as a bypass, so having gone to bed at 1.30am, I woke up at 10 to 7!  Hanging on to the joy by the skin of my teeth....

I checked my phone again - planning to pull it to bits and put it back together again - no need! It had revived!

At 9am I  woke Steve because I had to be in Raglan at 1pm. He got up and made me scrambled eggs for breakfast - what a treat!  Then off to the opticians. Having gotten a reminder two days earlier that I was due for my 2 yearly check up, I made an appointment, then produced my glasses. She was sorry but they wouldn't be able to fix them - well, she'd give it a go, but were sure the arm would break when she tried to bend it back into shape. A couple of minutes later she came out beaming and said, "I WON!"


Home. Oh, I haven't mentioned the rain. It had been raining for abut a week.  But that day it poured. I got soaked and covered in mud as I filled the van's radiator with water, and attached the trailer. Changed clothes. Into Raglan to the garage for Warrant of Fitness checks for both. Rain. Down to Black Sands for tea and bagel for lunch. Feeling damp and a bit sad again. Just as I was nearly finished, half a dozen Maori came in, all ages, sat down with milk shakes from somewhere else, didn't buy anything. After about 5 minutes one of the waitresses asked, "would you like me to take your order?" "Oh, no thanks, we're just waiting for someone else," said the oldest woman. The waitress didn't know what to do, but as the place was almost empty, she said no more. A few more minutes and I was about to leave, when another half dozen joined them, complete with several guitars and a 6 string ukulele - and Dave Maybee, a local musician. They started singing carols and it was very cool. (And they ordered food and drinks once they were all there.) The cafe filled up with people drawn by the music. I stayed and listened and had another drink.

The van and trailer both got warrants, and home I went. Got soaked and muddy again as I did country chores.

Today I went back into town for my eye exam and yay! my eyes haven't changed, there's no sign of glaucoma, and she said my eyes look very healthy, and have great muscle tone - I didn't even realise eyes could have muscle tone!

Whilst in town I witness two very near accidents, 3 cars pulled out in front of me, and one guy stopped his car in the middle of the road to answer his phone - while I, and the driver of another car stopped in the middle of the road behind him and practised out road rage!

That's a long and boring tale, I know, but it is also a wondrous tale. Two years ago I would have been driven into the ground by the sadness, the annoying things, the horrid things. Driven so far down that I would not, no, could not, see the good stuff that happened. I would have been catastrophizing (is there such a word? my spell checker thinks not!) from the very start of the day. By the time I left that club in Auckland I would have been spiralling down into a bout of depression - over what are really very trivial things. And I could feel the pressure, I could feel the perverse desire to wallow in misery, tempting me to take the familiar 'easy' route. But I didn't. I kept focusing on the moment, focusing on the beauty, no matter how small, that I see around me every day.

I don't think I'm good enough at this happiness thing yet to cope with the sort of stuff that hit me in June last year, but I am getting so much better. I used to hate people who said, 'count your blessings,' as it seemed to me that thinking about the little joys somehow trivialised the big things. Now I realise that those little things form the anchor that keeps me from the rocks. And I have also come to recognise that this kind of conscious effort to control over how I feel about things is going to be my life's work - I cannot let up for a minute, or I start to fall. Is it my innate disposition? Or is it a very bad habit? I don't know, but I'm trying my best to overcome it, and life is definitely much much better - I can honestly say that I have been happy since June this year.

Spring Growth and Scything

Spring has arrived and with it the grass has grown swiftly and strongly, the fruit trees are blossoming and being pollinated by my bees and consequently setting fruit.

 

A pear tree, with my hives in the background....

 and set fruit.

Looks like we are in for another bumper nashi crop.

 The chooks are enjoying the growth in their run.

 The chooks enjoying food scraps and sprouted wheat, next to the korokia which has delicious (to chooks) red berries later in the season; and the fig from which we ate our first fruit last year. 

An apple tree and, behind on the fence, a boysenberry vine given by a friend - a huge mistake, as it is rampant but the chooks enjoy them.

I've never eaten vine leaves, but judging from the way the chooks keep the vine trimmed, they must be yummy! It's hilarious watching them jump straight up in the air to pluck a leaf.

We planted the pear tree, but both the avocado and the peach (just over the fence) have grown from seed thrown out with scraps, and are thriving in the rich compost made by the chooks. The avocado had flowers this year, so maybe next year we will get fruit, though I'm told it takes up to 15 years for a seedling to produce, and this is only about 6 years old.

 

The flax was brought with us when we moved here, and just dumped into the ground with no thought of where and why. Later we built the chook run around it. The chooks love the dry, shady spot that also provides snails and insect snack delights.

Mac mows with the tractor, and I used to clear around the trees using a line trimmer or bush bar. Neither the process nor the results were satisfactory. The process was loud and smelly, and often I gave up because the damn thing would stop and refuse to start again - I'm not really in tune with motors. The result was often a ring barked or damaged tree.

I now use a scythe, thanks to a workshop with The Jolly Scythers, and find it so much more satisfactory. The process is both good exercise, and a meditation practice. The results are better: I have not damaged a single tree.

Kiwiberries (tiny kiwifruit) and grapes - the scythe is so very much easier for freeing these from the grass.

 

 The Luisa plums were 'grassed out'...

 and looked better for the grass being cleared.

 My scythe.

And though the ordinary plums don't have much fruit this year, the Luisa is looking good.

 The grapevine on the chook run is looking good.

 The ugli fruit wasn't looking at all - it couldn't see out!

It's actually quite big! It had a few not-very-nice small fruit this year, but is covered with flowers at the moment, so I have high hopes for the next harvest.

Scything is hard, hot sweaty work, but I love the meditative quality of the time spent doing it, and the sense of satisfaction when I'm done. Over the last ten days I have done about half the trees, and by the time I'm finished it will be time to start again - but it's the sort of work I love, and it makes me feel like a real yeoman farmer.