GM. It's 8AM. Everyone still asleep. A day off from the mail trail. Space to write, read, and think.
Before I got the morning fire going I went outside, threw a few alfalfa flakes to the animals and hooked the battery charger up to one of my spare mail vehicles.
It's cloudy. Flakes seem to be falling here and there. A chickadee sings in the distance. It seems springy. Not sure though. It's only 16 out there. We're finally above zero again. I can hear a bluejay calling outside as I write this.
I work 5 to 6 days a week. Usually it's Tuesday through Saturday. I have been doing this for close the 3 years. I never imagined I would be. Back in my early 20's I made up my mind I wanted nothing to do with a career. Back then I was a logger living with my grandparents. Late adolescence. If you buy the theory that your one until your 25.
I'm 51 now. Still trying to figure things out. I rely heavily on books and podcasts for ideas. Mostly podcasts now because I spend most of my waking hours in a jeep delivering mail and packages to my community. I feel lucky to say that. No one covers more ground in my community than I do. And I get paid for it.
By the time it gets to the end of the work week things feel scarce to me. There's not enough of anything. I used to get this way in my early 20's while I was logging and saving money to get ahead.
Being older I have learned over the years to stand back and allow this to unfold. In other words, there's more to the story. I am not those feelings. I am having them. In my early 20's I didn't know how to deal with it. It would freak me out.
Back then the feelings caused me to search harder and deeper. I didn't want to be on medications or end up in a nuthouse. I knew I wanted a family, but how could I feeling depressed and anxious a lot of the time?
This was the early to mid 90's. So Prozac was big and such. Depression as a clinical condition was marketed heavy and there were pills to cure it. It could've had something to do with how I was feeling. We never really know. That's why I am sitting writing this close to 30 years later. Or actually it's writing itself.
Like I said, by the end of the work week this wants to be let out.
The book that blew me away at the time, and I've always kept at the forefront of my mind was Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It's part of a trilogy of teaching novels.
The main character in the novel is a gorilla. He speaks to a disgruntled child of the 60's telepathically. The gorilla speaks for the Community of Life. In other words, the nonhuman world.
And here I was going out in the nonhuman world daily with a chainsaw making a living . . . and a mess! As you can imagine.
What Quinn taught me about that world is that it was governed by laws put in place by something competent. Call it God, the gods, or whatever you would like. It doesn't matter. The laws, or to say it scientifically mechanisms, are in place. Think of gravity. It's a force we abide by and adapt to.
Yet, unlike gravity, the human heart is activated when we talk about the Community of Life. There's spotted fawns out there in May. Chicks in nests frantically calling for their parents to bring them food. Black bears sound asleep underground in winter.
In short, I fell in love with that community after reading Quinn. Or I got deeply interested. But don't we do that when we fall in love? We want to know!
I would like to tell you I was healed in one reading and live happily ever after. Anyone who has been through any kind of emotional hangup knows it's always there in the background. It more of a falling away.
The deeper I tried to understand his teachings the better I felt. I also felt more alone. No one around me was thinking about this. There's bills to pay and such.
So in a lot of ways the depressions and anxiety were a gift. In order to lift I had to understand the Community of Life.
I remember telling a friend in high school that I was moving up north to live with my grandparents and log with my grandpa and uncle. His response: "There's nothing up there."
He's done well for himself financially. I'm happy for him. Sometimes, especially now in the second half of life when it's getting harder physically to work, I wish that I would've focused more on a career. Yet something tells me everything was as it should be. I had to experience the woods the way I did. There's different ways of being in the woods.
I will get to that some other time.
I got my day to day to tend to now.
I hope you have a great day.
Morning Fire 112
2.1.26
#gm #coffeechain #memoir
