It now has (part of) a floor.

Do not be fooled by that picture. It is still mostly this…

I have been avoiding this project for actual years because 1.) I couldn’t find flooring I liked, and 2.) I knew what an extra large pain in the ass putting this floor in was going to be.

There were a lot of good reasons to install wood floors in here (and there was a minute where I almost bought some click-lock floating laminate as a “temporary” floor for both the kitchen and the crazy-pink-tile rooms) but, at the end of the day, I’m not ever going to take my boots off in this part of the house, and tile felt like the right choice for all of the (literal) shit I track in on a daily basis.

Then, instead of continuing The Hunt for Perfect Kitchen Floor Tile (which has been going on for, again, actual years) I just said fuck it and bought some tile through Home Depot online without ever having seen it.

I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it, and it’s not plywood. So. Good enough.

Hilariously, this is how the tile was delivered.

That’s the delivery truck speeding away after leaving my tile in the middle of the road.

This is me, with two tractors, trying desperately to move the tile out of the middle of the road before someone came driving down it. (Also doing it by myself because I was exposed to covid a few days earlier, which, sure enough, started kicking my ass 24 hours after this.)

Every day is an adventure, right?

Anyway, Covid knocked out my plans to get this done in late December, then I started a new job, and somehow in the middle of all of the craziness I decided it would be a good time in my life to spend a month eating off a hot plate. Again.

(Couldn’t even find the actual hot plate I own for times like these…had to use my camp stove.)

In these wonderful times we live in where all possible information you could want on any DIY project is available on YouTube, I won’t spend a lot of time talking about tiling itself, but, two things to note:

First, this orange underlayment I used is the Schluter Ditra uncoupling membrane.

You cannot tile directly over subfloor, and Ditra is the underlayment I found that adds the least possible hight to the tile (only about 3/16″) which was important to me because of the crazy hight differences between all of my floors. (Also, the cats love it, obv.)

Second, the clips you see between the tiles here are the Perfect Levelmaster tile leveling system.

I highly recommend this system for any large format tiles, especially on a subfloor that might not be perfectly level.

And that is it for my tiling advice today. This post is mostly just an excuse to put up a solid before-and-(mostly)-after pic of the kitchen…

As a total aside–and in the spirit of that thing I’ve been preaching about on this website for actual decades… telling an authentic story–I’m struggling a bit (a lot) with what the next chapter is going to be for me, and the farm, and where my life goes next. And as much as telling stories–especually about where I’m stuggling–has been a part of my life, I still have very mixed feelings on telling stories on The Internet these days. (Maybe I’ll go old-school and write a book on actual paper? Who knows. I’ve been hand-writing correspondance recently like a proper luddite, so I wouldn’t put it past me.)

Posts here will continue to be sporadic until I figure it out, but at the very least, all of you who have been on this journey with me for a decade or more deserve to see that the actual kitchen has an actual floor.

(Also, speaking of things that are old and sporadic, if you receive these posts/updates via email, the subscription service I’ve used for years is being shut down, and this will likely be the last post that comes through to your email this way. I’m going to transition to a new system and all of you who are on the existing email list should be ported to the new one, but if you don’t see anything else come via email in the next couple of months and still want to receive new posts, make sure to check back on the actual website for updates, or re-sign-up here.)

About this time last year, I walked out to the barn one morning and found the older of my two donkeys, Doc, laying unresponsive on the ground. He was alive, but barely. The vet lives just down the road and was able to make it out to us quickly–so I didn’t have to wait long for help and a diagnosis–but it wasn’t good news. Doc had some kind of stroke or other neurological event in the early hours of the morning. He was blind, unable to stand up, not responsive to outside stimuli, and very clearly suffering. 

I’m not a person who puts down an animal easily or lightly, but in this case, there was no question about whether or not it was the right decision. And it still really sucked. 

My only consolation is that it was the best case scenario in a shitty situation. If the stroke happened in the middle of the night and I came out to find a dead donkey in the barn in the morning, I never would have known what caused it (and then would have been in a full-on panic about whether or not he got into something toxic, or if there was some kind of electrical hazard, or all of the million other scenarios I would blame myself for.) Or if the symptoms had been less severe, I might have held on longer than I should have and he would have suffered needlessly. 

And he was, in fact, an old donkey. An old donkey who had a good life here causing trouble and escaping fences, and generally giving me a run for my money in the “who can be the grumpiest old man on the farm” contest. 

So, losing him was fucking sad. 

It was two hours of pure crisis, adrenaline, sorrow, and then, when it was over and the vet was driving away, I turned back to the barn and realized… it was not actually over. Because there was a 300lb dead donkey in the barn. In December (When the ground is typically frozen… i.e not ideal for farm burials.) 

Let me say again, for the record, how fucking sad this was. And, also, a completely different set of logistics than when, say, a beloved family pet like a dog or cat dies. 

Anyway, my mom showed up with a case of beer and we got the thing done, but, let me just say… not the most fun part of farm life. (Possibly related note: I own a set of bucket forks and have access to a backhoe tractor attachment now.) 

So, that is the very sad part of this story. 

It’s also relevant to note that at this point in time I was just maxed the fuck out on “tasks”. There was almost a whole year of life there that just felt like a neverending set of tasks that sucked the life out of me and brought me no joy or energy. (Probably worth analyzing, but not in this post.) Finding a new donkey to integrate into the farm was an endeavour fraught with tasks, when my tank was already running on empty. 

At the same time, donkeys are social animals (you can’t just have a single donkey in a pasture by itself… that’s torture.) 

So–ignoring everything else going on in the world in early 2020–even just on the farm, both Parker and I were struggling. 

Initially the way we handled this was just by opening the gates to the pasture and letting Parks hang out wherever he pleased… 

When it was Parker and Doc together, the pasture escapes invariably ended up with me chasing both of them back from down the road like a crazy person (and, on one memorable occasion, getting dragged through a field by a donkey on the run, true story) … but Parker alone just wanted to hang out and be closer to the “action”. (i.e. whatever I had going on) 

(In another life I would definitely have a pasture closer to the house and more integrated with the back yard. Donkeys like being a part of stuff.) 

But, come summer, I couldn’t ignore that Parker needed more donkey friends (and that getting him donkey friends was going to mean a lot more work for me.) 

One of my good (human) friends found a donkey rescue about an hour away, and the director of that donkey rescue convinced me to adopt 3 new bonded donkeys. 

That’s a mom (Marianne), her boyfriend (Guy), and her daughter (Zoey.) 

Parker was super excited to meet them at first. But they had been spending most of their time in a pasture with 20 other donkeys, so they were actually more excited for wide open spaces and grass, than to hang out with Parker.  

Also, Parker took a liking to Marianne, and Guy took exception to a dude hitting on his girlfriend… and I had a regular donkey love triangle on my hands. 

It became clear, quickly, that all of them could not share a pasture. Also, there was a fencing shortage in 2020 because… reasons. I guess everyone was building fences and using a lot of toilet paper in quarantine? 

I rigged up two different versions of a “fence” that the donkeys basically just laughed at and jumped over about 30 seconds after I thought I was done. (Did not know donkeys were jumpers before this… fun fact for me.) Then my mom took over with the help of my neighbor and rigged up, well, this thing… 

And I’m going to say it was 67% effective, because one third of the donkeys figured out how to do this… 

You really have to watch that thing to the end… it is astounding.

(If this post is starting to feel like an epic saga, imagine what it was like to live the thing.) 

Anyway, efficacy of the fence notwithstanding, I needed another shelter (aka run-in) for the donkeys, since they all couldn’t share space in the barn without a lot of aggression. Which meant this mess had to go… 

I built this addition/annex to the chicken run back in 2017 when my chickens were being mysteriously killed. (By, it turned out, a dog that lives down the road, and was slipping the fence when the batteries on his electric collar went out.)It looked a lot better then. 

For the most part, since the dog was secured, the chicken run (and annex) have only been used periodically. And, in the meantime, have collected a lot of weeds. So… 

Goodbye chicken run annex. 

So many “helpers” on the farm.

There’s some old barn foundation in this area so I used tapcons and the sheer force of my will to hold the posts in place for this build. Then tied it in to the existing barn “framing”. (I use that term loosely because that barn is older than all of us.) 

Still holds up though. 

The roofing I used on the chicken run was basically corrugated asphalt, which I know, sounds weird…but it’s cheap, easy to install, and good for scrappy farm structures. For these purposes I want general shelter, but nothing needs to be weatherproof obviously. 

Not going to lie, it takes a soft (and accurate) touch with a hammer to install this stuff, because if you miss the nail it’s super easy to put a hole in.)  Perhaps best installed sans beer? I wouldn’t know. 

Fun fact about corrugated asphalt roofing… I guess it’s delicious? 

I wouldn’t know, BUT THE DONKEYS WOULD. 

Generally I have no complaints about this roofing except for one thing… between the time I built the chicken run and the time I built the addition, they changed the size of their sheets from 4×6 to 3×6 (and also were straight out of the color gray this summer.) So I ended up short a panel and also now I have a multi-colored barn roof. 

Normally this shit would drive me nuts, but honestly… 2020 was exhausting. 

This run-in has one wall open to the north, and the west side was finished off with pine planks. 

While the intent was to provide shade and shelter in late summer and fall, it’s not appropriate for an all-season shelter in Michigan. 

So while that was a good weekend project last summer, I also had to do some modifications in the barn to have a split stall. 

This was the existing set-up: 

Although just for reference, this was the setup back in 2013 when I first decided to adopt donkeys: 

So, marked improvement. 

But it was not enough space for ALL the donkeys, particularly ALL the donkeys that did not get along. So. 

The back wall came out, and I created a flexible “stall” by adding a fence gate (so the barn can be one stall or two, with a second entry through an old man-door on the north side of the barn.) 

Let me just say, it required a lot of “creative” engineering… (creative = beer, just FYI.) 

So, good news, it kind of worked, in that all of this effort did manage to keep my one lonely donkey separated from the three larger donkeys who wanted to bully him. But it didn’t work in that the whole point of this endeavor was for Parker not to be One Lonely Donkey. 

Marianne, Zoe, and Guy would be incredible donkeys for anyone who either had an established herd or were just adopting those three alone (they were super friendly and great with people… also, hilarious) but, in this case, were not good friends for Parker, and also (if it wasn’t clear) a metric fuckton of work for me. 

Honestly, the thing that is obvious now (and really should have been obvious then) is that you can’t bring 3 bonded donkeys into a space with one single donkey and expect everyone to be friends. After two months with only increased aggression toward Parker I decided I couldn’t foster the 3 larger donkeys any longer, and instead sent my mom on a mission to find one other lonely male donkey that might be less aggressive and more likely to bond with Parker. 

So… 

Meet Nigel. 

Nigel and Parker spent 3 weeks in separate pastures, but are now living together on the farm like a couple of grumpy old men. (Which makes three of us.) 

And listen, dealing with donkey drama really was the least of anyone’s concerns (including mine) in 2020, but still, it was exhausting.

Anway, we got through it…

Welcome to the farm, buddy. 

. The metaphorical kind, not actual tape measures (although I’ve written plenty about those too.) And while I used bodies and physical aesthetics as an example, that is really just one of many ways Other People’s Measuring Sticks show up in our lives. 

The way people portray perfect lives on social media is another. Or the way we place value on money, and job titles, and social status. (And I suppose in this day and age we should add “likes” and “followers” to that list.) 

Also, while I don’t (and won’t) have kids, don’t get me started on the measuring sticks we create for mothers. I can’t even with that shit. 

Some days (maybe on my worst days) I think that all we’ve managed to accomplish with the stories we tell is creating a neverending string of no-win-scenarios… both for ourselves and for each other. Because the vast majority of the stories we tell are curated to show something that isn’t authentic. And the vast majority of messaging in our lives is targeted to make us feel just a little bit bad about ourselves, so we’ll spend just a little bit of money trying to feel better about it. 

Those measuring sticks are not always easy to identify as not being our own, and so many of them are based in fear. 

That desire to portray a “perfect” life on social media is so very often motivated by the fear of people seeing that our lives are not, in fact, perfect. And so many of the things we’re conditioned to buy are sold through fear-based marketing. (I could spend thousands of words just giving examples products that are sold this way– anti-aging products, cars, fashion, the type of coffee or alcohol you drink, and, yes, a shit-load of products in the DIY/home design industry–all telling stories about how we’re “not enough”.) 

And the most irritating thing is that that shit works for a reason. 

For many of us, our most basic needs– food, water, shelter, safety– are already met, and so the easiest way to “trap” us is to create fear-based scenarios that, in turn, motivate us to make fear-based decisions. (Fear-based decisions are great for survival– also great for reactively spending money– but, if we’re being honest? Generally not great for kicking ass.) 

The art of not being careful is simple: Lean in to that shit. 

Lean in to fear, and discomfort, and consequences. But (if I haven’t said this enough yet) when you’re weighing the consequences of things you may or may not do in your life… make sure you’re using the right measuring stick. 

I was raised to have profound (and deeply ingrained) respect for the consequences of my actions. (i.e. You better really fucking think about that thing you’re about to do, because you’re the only one who is going to be paying the price for whatever comes of it.) And, that belief can very easily translate into a whole list of things not to do. Maybe even manifest as decision paralysis. 

But, there’s a flip side to that story. Which is that you better really fucking think about that thing you’re NOT doing, because you’re the only one who is going to be paying the price for that too.

I very often think more about the price of not doing things. The actual price of being careful. Yes, I am a nearly-forty-year-old woman who builds a lot of shit while drinking and not wearing proper PPE, and I do know the price I might pay for it. (I could lose a finger… or an eye. That shit does happen.) But the consequences of not doing it are so much greater (according to my own measuring sticks)… I could be living a mediocre life, perpetually in fear of what could go wrong, and wasting a lot of my precious time waiting for other people to do things for me instead of figuring out how to do them myself.

Let me be clear… there is absolutely nothing wrong with living a safe and careful life because you know what’s important to you. Because you’re secure in your own measuring sticks. 

But it feels like a specific kind of tragedy to live a safe and careful life on accident. Because we don’t have much cultural precedent for living a different way. We don’t tell stories about the price of safe and careful. And we’re very much conditioned to view “life” in terms of quantity, and not quality. 

When I say Kick Ass or Die, it’s not a metaphor. One of the best quotes I’ve read in the last year came from this book: Adventure calls to those who care more for living than for their lives. 

For me, sometimes that means drinking beer and building shit. Sometimes it means taking on incredibly large and complicated projects in my professional life. And sometimes it means climbing mountains in my spare time. (Or, if not actual mountains, then packing up a bag and heading out, by myself, into the kind of wilderness that–if I haven’t planned appropriately, and don’t make good decisions– may very well kill me.) 

In essence, I have to kick ass, or literally die. And when faced with that decision, the honest-to-god truth is that I am more interested in living (and living a full, adventurous life) than just being alive. 

I don’t expect people to understand that (especially the people who love me most in the world) but I still think it’s an important story to tell. Some people choose quality over quantity. Some people choose risk over safety. 

And, it is (almost by definition) not easy. Even I occasionally think I’d be a “better” person if I was more careful, or took the opinions of my loved ones in to account more. (I mean… I wouldn’t be doing nearly as much awesome and energizing shit, but, also, it would certainly be easier on the hearts of the people who love me most in the world if I cared a little more for life than for actually living.)  

But… that’s not my measuring stick. 

At least, not right now. 

The beauty of having your own measuring sticks is that you don’t have to just pick one and stick with it for all of time. What’s right for me right now will definitely change in the future. (I know that because I have eighteen years of my life documented on this very website, and that shit has changed a lot over the decades.) 

But right now, in this moment, it’s important for me to tell this story. The one that isn’t often told. That it’s okay to choose a life that isn’t careful, as long as it’s awesome (according to your measuring sticks.)  

This story isn’t right for everyone, but… it is everything for some of us.

These are strange times. And recently, in talking about These Strange Times, I said that a sign of being an emotionally intelligent adult is being able to hold two opposing feelings in your body, at the same time, and still function. And, I don’t recall, but did I also mention that holding two opposing feelings in your body at the same time and still functioning… fucking sucks? Because it definitely does. 

In many respects this has been both the best and the worst year of my life. Sometimes for the exact same reasons (which, for the record, is maddening.) And, also, for none of the reasons anyone else in the world seems to be happy and/or miserable. And, also, for none of the reasons I myself would have expected to be happy and/or miserable. 

It is almost impossible to make sense of it. 

But, when I really do the work of analyzing how I’ve felt, what mistakes I’ve made (and there were a few life-alteringly big ones this year), and where I want to put my time and energy… I’ve realized (again) that even when I’m not living up to my own expectations, the times I feel the best are when I’m using my own measuring stick to evaluate my achievements. And the times I feel the worst– the times I’ve been the most lost, and miserable– are when I’m judging myself using other people’s measuring sticks. 

I’m going to pick on the diet/weight-loss industry for a second, because honestly? Fuck that industry (and anyone who tries to make money off people feeling bad about themselves.) This is the best personal example I have– the first time I became aware of the toll other peoples measuring sticks can have on my own ability to kick ass and do awesome things–but if discussion about weight loss or eating disorders is triggering to you, skip down until after the ***. 

For most of my life–up until about 10 years ago– I would have told you I was largely oblivious to the diet industry or cultural messaging around body size or weight loss (mostly because I have an irritatingly bulletproof ego, but also because up until that point I always had a nondescript body-type. Not small enough or large enough to merit comment, one way or another.) However I also, completely unconsciously, bought in to all of that messaging. I equated less body fat with being “healthier” or “more fit”. When my friends suggested they needed to lose some pounds before a vacation, I may have mentioned whatever fad diet I’d heard about recently. I weighed myself every day as part of my routine, and ascribed a “good” or “bad” value to the numbers I saw on the scale. And I’m sure many-a-new-years-resolution centered around “eating healthier and exercising more.” (I even documented a weight-loss challenge one year on this very website once, which I am absolutely horrified by now. Those posts are gone, but it’s the thing I most regret ever putting out on the internet.) 

Then, after the two years I spent living in a garage and building a house , which meant a lot of microwave meals and take-out (but didn’t actually have any real impact on my body-composition), I decided I was going to “get healthy.” (Because that’s what the messaging says, right? Regardless of how you feel and what you’re accomplishing, takeout and tater tots must be a diet that needs correcting.)  So, I did what they say you should do. Researched diets, came up with a strict meal plan, and lost a fair amount of weight in a short-ish period of time. And then, all of the sudden, people started commenting on my body. All kinds of people… a lot of coworkers actually. Totally unsolicited. (You’ve lost weight! You look so good! What’s your secret?) 

(Looking back on it, I often think, if no one had made any positive comments on my body during that timeframe, the “diet” probably would have worn itself out after a month or two. I would have taken on another big project, would have started eating normally again, and never would have thought twice about it. But, what happened instead was two years of full-blown eating disorders. the end result of those two years–a decade later– is a far more (physically and emotionally) stronger version of myself, but I still wouldn’t recommend it as an optimal path for personal growth.) 

At the time, I felt like I was winning something. Like I’d figured out some secret to life. And the unsolicited, positive feedback from people was reinforcing that. So, when my body burned through most of its fat stores and was like WHAT THE FUCK, WE NEED MORE FOOD, (which meant more cravings, and less control over my carefully planned meals) I felt like I was losing. 

So, in order to “win” and stick to my rigid eating (or not eating) regime I stopped going out with friends (because I couldn’t control my calorie intake at restaurants). I tried exercising as a punishment for eating (and, as a side note, was not capable of doing 5 push-ups from my knees in a row during this timeframe). I would take Tylenol PM in the evening to knock myself out so I would sleep through being hungry and it would be “okay to eat” when I woke up again. I took a lot of pictures of myself and my body as a “reward” for “doing well.” I mentally measured my body against every stranger I saw in the street. The first thing I did every morning (the literal reason I got out of bed) was weigh myself. I have, to this day, never felt worse about myself or had more negative self-talk, then those mornings where the number on the scale stayed the same or went up from the day before. (A thing I had never cared about before in my life!) 

Also. I started getting horrible night sweats. My skin broke out so bad that in the last ten years I’ve done two rounds of Accutane to clear it up. My hair started falling out in actual clumps in the shower. 

Also. My weight never dropped below the healthy weight on the BMI chart for someone of my (short) stature. My actual doctors complimented me on all the things I was “doing right”. 

It never once occurred to me during that first year (the one where I was taking sleeping pills to knock myself out so I wouldn’t eat) that I had an eating disorder. Because I was doing everything right according to the diet/weight-loss industry, and I was getting positive reinforcement for it from literally everyone in my life, including medical professionals. 

(Side note: The clinical term for this is Orthorexia. Basically “eating healthy to the point of physical and emotional detriment.” You can read more about it here.) 

In the second year of this (incidentally, the first year I lived on the farm), because my body was trying every trick in the book to get me to eat enough to support my energy levels, the orthorexia became full-blown bulimia. (Although I also would not have told you I had an eating disorder at that time either, because you have to binge/purge at least once a week for 3 months for it to be a diagnosable condition. And I knew the “rules” so I deliberately only ever toed the line of having a diagnosable condition.) 

This, I believe, was the first and hardest lesson I have ever learned about using other people’s measuring sticks. 

Because here’s the truth. Literally every person who was not me, was telling me I was “winning”. I was measuring up, according to the ruler they were using. Because I took up less physical space than I had before. Because I hit a certain number on the BMI chart. Because they found me aesthetically pleasing (when being measured against… what? A lot of photoshopped magazine covers?) 

Here’s the other side of that truth. I was failing in all the ways that actually matter to me as a person. I felt physically weak. I had no energy. I wasn’t connecting with friends. Almost all of my brain power wasn’t going to projects or exciting things, but to counting calories, or the immense amount of willpower it takes to not feed a body that is begging for food. My body was falling apart. 

Because I was using other people’s measuring sticks. 

My body has done all kinds of things in the last 10 years. I let myself eat until I stopped obsessing about food. I took a year away from gyms because I could only go in with stress and the mindset of losing weight (when it turns out the actual best part of gyms–for me– is finding fun new ways my body can do strong, impressive shit and also finding really good drinking buddies. Something I’ve learned since.) I haven’t stepped on a scale in a decade. I started climbing, and summiting mountains. My body is above the range that the BMI chart states as “healthy” and my actual doctor tried to have a conversation with me about it. My body does not conform to conventional aesthetic standards, and is above the healthy BMI range, and I am strong as shit. The last physical challenge I took on in January of this year was a 30 hour endurance race in which I did not sit down for 30 hours, racked up 36 miles of orienteering in the mountains while also solving brain puzzles (including a rubix cube… blindfolded) and at the end of that event I ran two miles (faster than I’ve ever run two miles in the last decade) and also did 50 military chest-to-ground pushups inside of a minute. Above the healthy BMI range. And guys, it’s not just muscle… my body has a lot of fat. Which is totally cool. Apparently, it operates best that way when it comes to my own measuring sticks (i.e. being strong as hell, capable of doing kickass shit, and able to physically take on any challenge farm life throws at me.) 

***

Also, when the pandemic hit (and even before that, after I had a death flu that knocked me out of commission for weeks in February, and that I don’t believe I fully recovered from for a full six months) I didn’t have the extra energy I usually have for workouts and climbing. I didn’t have a hiking adventure or a big endurance event on the calendar to train for. And so I didn’t. I used the energy I had for other things. My measuring stick wasn’t about physical strength or the next big physical challenge (or even the next big thing to build on the farm). My measuring sticks became about finding work that felt more meaningful to me. About managing my mental health.  About supporting the people I love who were taking on incredible challenges in their own work and personal lives. 

And even owning those measuring sticks–my own measuring sticks–I failed. A lot. Sometimes I lost sight of what was most important to me. Sometimes I just had to bear down and grind through projects even though I didn’t have the energy for them, and I was one cranky asshole because of it. Sometimes I felt bad just because I wasn’t getting the adrenaline rush of climbing mountains or doing some other incredible physical feat. Sometimes I didn’t take the time to reach out or make genuine connections with the incredible people in my life because I wanted to wallow instead. 

But (and here’s the key) at least when I felt like I wasn’t “measuring up”… it was because I wasn’t measuring up to my own stick. To the things that really are important to me, in this time and this place. And I think that’s okay… that’s the kind of thing that will make me better, stronger, and more aware of who I want to be in the future. (Instead of just tired and hungry and miserable.) 

And, incidentally, when I sat down to write about “measuring sticks” it was not my intent to write a 2500 word essay on the eating disorders I had a decade ago. And, also, I have tried to tell that story no less than a dozen times in the last decade and could never get it out, because it feels like a story that needs to be told correctly, and I never knew exactly what that meant. 

Which is a weird thing about stories. Sometimes they simmer inside of you for years, until one day (15 days after contracting covid–I’m fine, btw–and trying to write a story about measuring sticks) the words just come to you. 

This isn’t about bodies and how they look, but about what we do with them (because your body is, in fact, the only vehicle through which you will do all the awesome things you do in the world.) And, during this time of year, at the end of the strangest of years, when we’re all trying to figure out what we want out of 2021, I hope the words that come to you are: When I set goals for myself–when I look at who I want to be in the future–am I using my own measuring stick?

I did build the deck stairs, and one time wedged myself through this tiny hole to fix a broken hose spigot…  

1.) Yes, that bigass boulder is a part of the Lake House foundation. And, 2.) I legit dragged my mom’s hair dryer through that hole with me… if you’re ever having a hard time loosening a threaded copper fitting? Hair dry it. And try not to feel like an idiot while you’re doing it. Good luck.

Other than the stairs and the hair-dryer incident though, all the credit for how good the Lake House is looking goes to my mom.  

Here’s the house when we bought it 2 years ago… 

The roof was about at the end of its life, so my mom hired a roofer to replace it. And, while she was at it, to create a new little porch with a gable roof: 

The old overhang was starting to sag and get in the way of opening the door, and it didn’t provide much protection from the elements (for people or for packages.) 

She also had a new front door put in. And a new garage door. And started painting the house and the garage. 

This is what the garage looked like when we bought it: 

The wood siding is old. Not crumbling (or being eaten by chickens, like some houses I know… ahem) but enough to require a lot of scraping and caulking.

And, also, (according to my mom) a very tiny paintbrush…

For real, I’m up on a ladder finishing up the other half of the front of the garage and my mom says something like, “I can’t believe how fast you paint” and then I look down and she’s basically using three hairs taped to a stick as a paintbrush. 

However… she did get all the cracks real good, so you can’t blame her. See? 

She’s still in the process of painting the actual house, but this is the color palette she’s working from: 

I believe she gave herself an “end of 2021” deadline to have the whole thing painted, so, stay tuned. 

There was also one new addition to her front yard… 

This is a dwarf, self-pollinating (or self-fertile) peach tree. (Fun fact for people who haven’t been tending an orchard for the last decade: A lot of types of fruit tree require at least two trees to cross pollinate in order to bear fruit, but you can also find a number of varieties that will self-pollinate so you only need one.) 

The only reason I originally put peach trees in my own little orchard was because peaches are my mom’s favorite, and they ended up being my favorite trees on the farm. So, I thought it would be fun for her to have her own fruit growing at the Lake House eventually. 

All in all, the exterior of the house is looking great. 

And (lucky for me) the interior doesn’t need a lot of work. 

There was this little ledge between the kitchen and living room, that looked like this for the last year or so… 

And when the guys were working on her roof, my mom mentioned wanting to put a piece of butcher block in this spot to make it more of a breakfast-bar/eating area. So they called up a finish-carpenter friend of theirs, and he had it done in a day… 

And, I still have to finish the doors and trim for these built-ins…  

And that damn mantel. But my mom has figured out how to make do without it… 

I know I should feel bad about that, but, not gonna lie… I laughed. (Good thing my mother also has a sense of humor.) 

But even without the mantel or cabinet doors, things are looking great at the lake house. In another year or two we’ll rebuild the deck, and then it will be nothing but floating from here on out… 

(Ha.)

Which is how this happened… 

All I’m saying is, it has been some years since I’ve had an actual floor in my kitchen. But, interestingly, not enough years that my friends and family have given up hope. Like, for five whole years people in my life have asked very often and very optimistically if my kitchen is done yet.

No. No it is not. Because I like hosting holiday parties with this fully hot wire just hanging out of my kitchen wall waiting to zap someone. Because I am fun, goddamnit.  

Also, listen, this house is one hundred and sixty years old. Just to put that in context, zero people on this planet were alive when this house was built, and, also, there is a zero percent chance any project in a house that old will go as expected. 

Mostly irrelevant side-note: I don’t think I’ve professed my love for the book The Architecture of Country Houses by A.J. Downing (circa 1850) lately, but it was the de facto authority on building country houses in its day (i.e. the day this house was built) and absolutely worth the read for anyone living in/dealing with in an old house. (You can find the whole book on Google books, but used copies are still available today and cheap.)

From the book:  

Preach, Mr. Downing.  

Anyway, in the spirit of Mr. Downing’s “blunt and honest expression of the truth”, all “small” projects in this house are not fucking small. They are an epic uncovering of pain-in-the-ass and sometimes disgusting shit. 

Like this… 

This is a mummified mouse I found in my kitchen wall. 

But, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

No, I do not have a kitchen floor, but, in the early days of quarantine I decided to tackle a couple of kitchen projects I thought were isolated enough to handle in a weekend or two without devolving into utter madness. (Ha.) 

One of them was the opening between the kitchen and the rest of the house… 

It used to be an arch. I can tell I hated the arch because in 10 years of living in this house, and taking pictures of this house for things I write on the internet, this is the best picture I have of it. (On the left.) 

Anyway, I know people love arches, but I’m not a fan of the two that were added on to this house when it was remodeled in the 90’s. 

So I tore the kitchen arch out, and then lived with it like this for some years…

I have no shame. 

Let me just state for the record, this was a solidly built arch. These walls are 16” of masonry and there were several layers of ¾” ply as a support, and then two layers of a flexible fiber board (which was then skim coated) to make up the arch, and it was an epic pain in the ass to demo. Epic. 

Also, to make things even more fun, even once I sawsalled the shit out of the arch structure,  the underlying “framing” boards around the opening were not plum, level, square, or otherwise in sync with each other. 

And there was a lot of mouse poop behind them… 

A lot. 

(Also that mummified mouse that I mentioned.)

Once I fully decontaminated myself and the kitchen, there was a whole lot of creative shimming required to get the sides straightened out… 

Also, there was a whole lot of beer required, (and a sharpie) which will probably be evident to anyone who tears into this opening in the future… 

I used my tried and true method of determining how many fasteners needed in the blocking…

Totally legit building practice. It didn’t fall… so it must be good. 

Then I trimmed the whole thing in (on the kitchen side)… 

And used some old barn wood as a fake lintel because I’m fancy.

I did prime the whole thing but still haven’t painted it (eight months later). Not mad at how it turned out… and it’s much better than having the tangled mess of metal/drywall/wood/mouse poop that was there before.

And since I was on a roll removing potential hazards from the kitchen, I decided to get this shit straightened out as well… 

I purchased this range hood from Lowe’s that supports a custom-built cabinet. (Side note: A couple of years ago I asked someone in the store about kitchen exhaust fans that take a custom cabinet and the person looked at me blankly for some period of time and then told me they don’t sell anything like that. Then I went down a rabbit hole of trying to buy just the blower and build the whole contraption myself, so thank god for Daniel Kanter’s Instagram stories, because he used the exact type of unit I was looking for in a kitchen remodel last year and I was like, Ah-fucking-ha! I knew it existed somewhere!) 

I did also have to purchase separately the stainless trim kit for the fan box, which wasn’t evident until I got the fan and looked at the instructions. (Given that almost all instructions are available online, browsing through the building specs first would have saved me some time.) 

Then it was just a matter of–you guessed it– drinking beer and building shit… 

I did have some help from the troops…

Some were less helpful than others…

Most of this was just figuring it out as I went along…

There’s nothing more fun than trying to install a range hood into a cabinet by yourself, while sitting on a stovetop burner that may or may not have accidentally gotten turned on during installation…

Despite the lack of amusement in my expression, I maintain that this is 100% easier than doing it with a partner. (Been there, done that, did not murder anyone with my tape measure, but I thought about it a lot.  I’m just not cut out for that kind shit, you guys. I’ll take the burnt ass cheek over team work any day. )

Anyway, I built this thing with a removable panel on the face so that I can access the fan (and finish the duct work to vent the damn thing outside at some point.) So I had to get a little creative on installing the trim…

I love how much trim can change the look of something from “boring, weird box” to, like, “actual piece of cabinetry that looks like it belongs there.”

Here she is, all built and painted.

The green on the backsplash was not a design decision. I just like to roll on a coat of waterproofing membrane before tiling over drywall. Do you have to do it? Probably not. But also, have you ever seen a piece of drywall get wet? It basically just disintegrates. And tile thinset/mastic is… wet. At least a little wet. And you’re relying on the structural integrity of wet drywall paper to hold everything up. (By “everything” I mean the very expesive hand-glazed tiles I bought for this backsplash.) The waterproofing membrane seems like some easy insurance against tile-tragedy.

I purchased the tile for the backsplash some time ago. (Years? I don’t even know. What is time anymore anyway?) So when quarantine started I had literally all the materials needed on-hand to finish this.

It’s actually the same hand-glazed tile from Winchester Tile Company that I used in the tub surround of this bathroom.  (But in white and subway tile sized… although I kind of wish I’d used the 4×4’s for this. Whatever, it’s too late, and I do like how it turned out regardless.)

Only took five or six years to upgrade it from this…

Listen. I’m not ever going to be bragging about how fast I overhauled a room in my house. I’m not even sure anymore if the point is to get it done, or just to have something to do when the world shuts down for a year… 

Either way, it does look better. I’ve still got one more opening to fix/frame/trim, and then a ceiling to finish painting, and yes–eventually– there will be a floor.

I’ll get there.

Was I? Absolutely not. 

I’ve never been able to fully articulate the difference between when I’m “on” and “off” as it relates to building. Sometimes–through fate, or alcohol, or the alignment of the stars, or (more likely) brain chemistry–I am just on. I have energy for days, I can hold numbers and building plans in my head without trying, I never mis-cut a board, and the most complex projects seem laughably easy. Sometimes this lasts a week, or a couple of weeks, or the entire first half of 2019. 

And then there’s the other times. Where I will sit and stare at a pile of lumber (or the space where I’m supposed to be building things) for a very long time. I will get distracted by whatever nonsense is on my phone. If I try to force it, I will mis-cut every board twice and then lose my shit. 

The very strange thing is that this is almost exclusively related to building shit. And sometimes with writing. But it doesn’t happen in the other areas of my life, like with my job (which, like building, requires both right and left brain participation), or my workouts (which, like building, require a degree of energy and motivation).  

My point is… brains are very weird. 

Historically the way I’ve handled this is… I just don’t build shit when I don’t feel like building shit. (Or, sometimes I let myself build whateverthefuck I want, even when there are more critical projects I should be working on.) And that has worked because I’m okay with living in a house that has no flooring and holes in the walls. But you can imagine it’s weird for people in my life (hi mom) who need me to help them with small, building-related tasks, and instead of getting anything done, I’m just staring comatose at the tape measure (when literally the month before I fabricated a couple of built-ins in a weekend out of basically scrap wood.) 

(True story: In the worst of my “off” period this summer I tried to force myself to finish those cabinets for my mom, and ended up spending a fair amount of money on custom, non-returnable cabinet doors in sizes so wrong I think maybe I had a stroke when I was reading the tape? I mean, come on. It’s a fucking rectangle divided in half, and I have built actual houses. It should not be possible for me to fuck it up that bad. But I did.) 

All of this is to say… this summer, I did drink beer and built some shit. And on the scale of how much I was in Kicking Ass and Building Shit Mode? (10 being this and 0 being those cabinet doors I mis-measured.) I was probably at a 5.7 for this one: 

That’s what I spent a week’s worth of evenings staring at. The back of my mom’s deck. 

My mom’s deck needs some work in general, but you know what was impossible to come by this summer? Pressure treated wood. Everyone and their goddamn uncle was building decks (which I wholeheartedly support) but also, so irritating when I need lumber and it’s out of stock.  Also, you know what I’m not doing when I’m at a 5.7 on the Building Shit Mode scale? Replacing all the decking and railings on a 600sf deck. Just no. 

However, this was legitimately driving both of us nuts… 

The existing railing was right at eye-level-when-sitting-down height and blocked the view of the lake. And I was like, okay, I’m not in Building Shit Mode, but, also, it’s stairs, right? I should be able to do this in my sleep (and/or with the help of 4 cases of beer.) 

Here’s the thing about being at a 5.7. This build was miserable. (Also it was the hottest, muggiest week of the year.) But, also, it was not impossible. 

Luckily, my mom’s house is a mile down the road from the farm, and I have a tractor with an auger. So digging the holes for the concrete piers was relatively easy. (Did I break a shear bolt and also somehow cause a leak in the gear box of the auger? Of-fucking-course.) Was the grade of the ground a pain in the ass? Also yes. 

Did I buy those stringers pre-cut? Absolutely. 

Did I also send my mom on a mission to 4 different lumber yards to find enough pressure treated wood to finish these off? I did. 

I basically outsourced (to my tractor, my mother, the liquor store, and whoever cuts those prefabbed stringers) all the major hurdles in the project. 

It was so miserably hot that for the first time in my life I worked barefoot and in shorts on a project. (Definitely regretted the barefoot thing more than once, but it’s cool, my tetanus is totally up to date.) But I will say that at the end of those hot, miserable building sessions… this wasn’t the worst way to end the day. 

After about a week of trying not to shout profanity in front of the neighbor kids (whom I adore), there were stairs… 

And a much better view from the deck. 

(The railings are temporary until the whole new deck railing goes in.)

Also, here’s a legit (even after 4-cases-of-beer) protip… I ran a 1/4″ roundover bit in my palm router over the ends of the deck boards on the stairs. Looks way more polished. 

Also, that “starting stair” that’s wider than the rest of the staircase and wraps around the railing posts? That was just because I fucked up on the height of where the top of the first step should land based on the grade… decided to add another step, and decided since I was adding another step, I might as well make it fancy.

None of which would have happened, if I’d been a 7+ on the scale and all my initial measurements were right. Are we doing philosophical life lessons today? If so… there’s probably one buried in there somewhere.

Like I said, it wasn’t easy. But difficult does not mean impossible.

At the end of the day I’m happy with how the stairs turned out, happy we made a little progress on Lake House projects this year, and definitely not going to talk about how many actual cases of beer it took to finish that project. (It was a lot.) 

But it is almost impossible to talk about “quarantine projects” without sounding a little flippant about covid. Especially because I sound flippant about every goddamn thing, mostly because I do not get worked up over shit I cannot control. Also, that’s just how my writing voice sounds (up to and including in the obituary I wrote this summer for my grandfather…who died because of covid.) 

I loved that man dearly, but I’m going to ask that we skip the whole condolences thing because then I feel obligated to respond to every damn one of them– I get it, everyone is sad and sorry and thank you for having empathy for me, etc. etc.– and also I just want to talk about building shit for a minute without picking up that emotional weight.  

But even in the covid era, I just cannot start a post about my kitchen projects by mentioning my dead grandpa. This story is clearly meant to be about something else.

I need to acknowledge the balancing act that is new (to me) in these strange times. My guiding principle has always been to tell an authentic story. That’s it. And while that often took courage, and a lot of introspection around what the authentic story truly is, it didn’t used to feel so… fraught. It didn’t feel like every somewhat flippant remark required a paragraph of explanation about how “just kidding, that was hyperbole.”

As someone who is trying to write again–trying to find my way back to telling stories–I don’t love the balancing act.  And, yet, I also believe things should feel fraught, especially if you’re making a conscious choice to put your words out into the world. These are fraught fucking times. Change and growth always start from a place of discomfort, and people who aren’t doing a little balancing these days? Well. Yeah. Those aren’t my people.  

A thing I say often to the people in my life (particularly when they are Going Through Some Shit) is this: A sign of being an emotionally intelligent adult is being able to hold two opposing feelings inside your body at the same time, and still function. 

Two opposing things can be true. And we can hold both of those feelings inside ourselves at the same time. And it will be uncomfortable. And in order to get out of that discomfort our brains will tell us “you have to accept one of these ideas/feelings and reject the other right now”. Or, “you have to pick one of these opposing ideas and all of your actions have to back it up, otherwise you’re being a hypocrite/aren’t acting with integrity/don’t really feel the way you say you do.”

I’m sure literally everyone has seen this happen in a relationship in their lives. Where a person does, in fact, love their partner and want them to be happy. Doesn’t want to make decisions or do anything to hurt them. And yet, is unhappy in the relationship. Can’t be happy staying. They might even express that inner conflict through something like “I wish my partner would just cheat on me so I had a justified reason to leave.” Right? (And fascinating that we would want someone to hurt or betray us, specifically to get out of the discomfort of holding two opposing feelings inside at the same time.) Because we don’t tell stories about how it’s okay to feel both “I love this person and don’t want to hurt them” and “I have to leave and know it will hurt them” at the same time. And both can be true. And that’s totally normal. 

(That’s not my personal issue, by the way. I’ve turned leaving relationships that make me unhappy into a goddamn art form. And I love all my exes. Have I mentioned them recently? Fabulous dudes.) 

I, personally, have a lot of irritation right now at people being “performative” on the internet. Lots and lots of posts and stories about the cause du jour for about a week, and then it’s back to their regularly scheduled programming. At the exact same time, I am irritated by people constantly posting about the cause du jour because just show me your cat pictures, damnit. I am not here to take on the emotional weight of society today, I just want to read about people’s travel adventures and/or house projects for a minute without all the shit. 

And I am doing the exact thing that irritates me right fucking now. I’m writing this post, so I can feel like I’ve publicly acknowledged These Strange Times, and then can then go back to writing stories about drinking beer and building shit, where I can make flippant remarks about covid and quarantine without feeling bad about it. 

That’s the balancing act. Holding two opposing feelings inside of me, and navigating how my actions (and the stories I tell) align with those feelings. It’s uncomfortable. I am 100% going to fuck it up at times. And there probably won’t be any consequences when I do, because all of you who are here reading my stories will give me the benefit of the doubt. Or don’t care if I acknowledge These Strange Times, because you’re here for the cat pictures anyway. 

(The Tiny Angry Badgers have turned into The Very Best Farm Cats, by the way. It’s definitely a story.) 

And maybe I’m particularly suited to this time in the world–being uncomfortable, and making the choice to talk about why things are uncomfortable even when I don’t have to–because I have a lifetime of experience (mostly documented on this website) in the good things come out of putting yourself in uncomfortable situations even when you don’t have to. Of doing the hard thing, instead of taking an easier path.  

I mean, at the very least it will make you smarter, and stronger, and better able to handle the next uncomfortable thing. Life is full of them.

That’s about the only articulate thing I can say about 2020. To be fair, I’m out of practice. However, I’d also  guess I’m not the only person stuck in the space between “there are a lot of things that should be said about this year” and “dear god, I’m sick of people talking about this year.” A space that i believe can be most accurately described like this: 

Well. Shit. 

Sixteen years ago I started writing stories on the internet (about the adventures of renovating houses) before this was a thing. Just to put that in context, it was before YouTube existed, before Reddit existed, before HGTV was HGTV. A time where your best bet for finding information about how to DIY something on your house online was to delve into the fraught and contradictory advice on old contractor’s forums. 

It took a certain amount of courage, in those days, to put stories about your life on the internet. To say, authentically (as a 23 year old woman, who just bought her first house), “Hey, I’m not an expert at this, and I can’t find any goddamn information on it anywhere, but here’s what I tried and how it worked.” 

There were no rules. No real algorithms. A little money to be made (which, in fairness, I did), but not a whole lot of ways you could “sell out” even if you didn’t have a strong set of values around your platform. (And, let’s be honest, “platform” really is a generous word for it.) 

There were, however, a lot of stories. There was a little bit of magic about being invited into people’s lives online, and I still carry those stories with me. I remember when Rob “Acidman” Smith from Gutrumbles died unexpectedly. When Patti from OMT had her first grandchild. When Sara and Shaun from Russet St. Reno got married. When Sarah from Ugly Duckling House broke up with her ex and took on all her house projects single-handedly. When Julia and Matt from Home on 129 Acres bought a farm at the exact same time I did. When Alex and Wendy from Old Town Home bought their historic Foursquare. (This list could go on forever.) And it’s not just the highlights of these stories that have value for me, but the whole of them. The projects, the searches, the obstacles. The tragedies and the strength. The joys and the successes. 

Funny story (and something that almost never happens these days) I do not share religious, political, or lifestyle beliefs with everybody on that list. I don’t even share building philosophies with everyone on that list. (Although to be fair that’s because almost all of them are smart enough to wear PPE and don’t do electrical work while drinking… but whatever guys. To each their own.)  And yet, there was no vitriol in these spaces. Just general enjoyment, entertainment, and, also, appreciation for being invited to know these people as people (even if, from the other end of the keyboard, it sometimes feels like you’re just telling stories into a void.) 

These days, when I interact with people and the world via the internet, I don’t remember the stories (which, to be honest, are not so much stories as status updates.) I haven’t lost my curiosity, but it has very often been overridden by whatever dopamine hit scrolling endlessly through memes on instagram provides. And, in a lot of ways, I had been participating in that algorithm-driven machine, which we all know exists solely to sell us shit and waste our time, and yet can’t seem to quit. I participated through the way I posted, or didn’t. Through the way I branded this website. Through the way I monetized my “platforms” (seriously, every time I type that word I literally say “oh, go fuck yourself” to myself, out loud. It’s almost as bad as when someone unironically uses the term “influencer”… and now I’ve rolled my eyes so hard I think I pulled a muscle. Fuck.) 

Even outside of the realm of blogs and influencers, I have friends (who have also been kick-ass colleagues in the corporate world) who write posts on LinkedIn that promise “5 Tips for [insert whatever business buzzword is hot this week]”. And I get why they do that. Why they have to do that. But also, dammit, I want your stories. Your real stories. The ones that you tell me over a couple of beers after a long week about the real challenges you have, and how some of them you overcame, and some of them you didn’t, because goddamn it life is hard. Interpersonal relationships are hard. Work, when you’re challenging yourself appropriately, is hard. 

But that’s not how stories on the internet work these days. 

A year ago, what I said to myself was: It is impossible to participate in any of this authentically anymore. And if you can’t participate authentically, you’re not participating at all. (And, also, because I’m basically a grumpy old man trapped in a slightly less old woman’s body, and “kids these days” have ruined the internet, which is not like it was back in the glory days of my youth… I threw a year-long temper tantrum about it. Goddamn sue me.)  

And yet, even with a year of non-participation, some of you reached out and told me stories. Told me you bought your first houses (or farms!) Told me about the hard shit in your lives. About how you, also, were learning to tell authentic stories (and figuring out your personal boundaries for how and when to tell them.) About how your little girl was scrolling Instagram and saw a picture of me “working on trucks like daddy does!” and that may be part of why she believes girls can do things too. Build houses. Fix trucks. Put up fences. Drink beer and do electrical work. 

(Or, maybe not so much that last one.) 

It has raised a lot of questions for me about if and how I want to participate in telling stories online. In blogs, platforms, social media. And about what the value is. What the responsibilities are. There was a time I wrote stories about my life online just because I could, because it required a level of courage and authenticity I felt it was important to model for the world at large, and because I was goddamn good at it. But now, the courage isn’t in the storytelling. The value isn’t in being particularly good at it. 

Also, as an aside, I have an Actual Professional Life. If the only things you know about me are stories from this website, you may be surprised that I’m as comfortable in corporate america as I am on a farm. Even though there’s no sawdust, no hammers, no getting your hands dirty planting seeds and then watching them grow. (I’m not going to say “no swearing” because that would be a big fucking lie. I swear in a boardroom as much as on a construction site, and I think everyone else should too.) There are, however, other things I love about it. Systems and processes. Figuring out how things work, identifying things other people can’t… things that are broken (or might break), and then fixing them. Identifying things that could be done better, and then improving them. Or growing and developing people, which has always felt like just another extension of hearing people say “I can’t” and showing them that they sure as shit can. 

And, if we’re being honest, I’m not 23 anymore. At this age, and this stage in my career, there is a very reasonable question about how many stories about me drinking beer and almost electrocuting myself a prospective employer should be privy to. 

But here’s a very real thing I’ve told the people who work for me: If you refuse to make a decision because you’re afraid you won’t make the right one… you’re always going to be wrong. Not that I don’t understand why inaction is so appealing sometimes. When you make a decision– when you pick a path–things will change. They may get better or they may get worse (those of us who have started “a small project” in 100+ year old houses know exactly how much worse), and I know how tempting it is not to do anything. When you choose inaction it’s easy to maintain the status quo. 

Which is exactly why that’s the wrong answer. For me, at least. And for the teams I lead. Because in my life and in my work, I’m not here for status quo. I’m not interested in mediocrity. I’m here to kick ass or die. 

And as far as this website is concerned, it seemed like it was time to take my own advice. To make a decision, instead of just sitting in a place of unanswered questions around if and how I should participate. So. Here I am. 

Telling stories, old school. 

No branding. No ads. No sponsored anything. No social media. Even if I don’t know exactly what the value in these stories is, I know that it will never be monetary, or measured in likes or followers or traffic. (I refuse to be the reason people spend more time on any of the apps.) The algorithm, frankly, can go fuck itself. 

There will probably still be beer and power tools. There might be more about the ways I live a life that kicks ass (and sometimes almost kills me) outside of building shit. There will always be swearing. 

2020 has been a weird year (to say the least) and I genuinely do not know what the next phase of my life will look like. More farm projects? Maybe. A finished house? Unlikely. A big move? An off-grid cabin in the woods? Building tiny houses? Climbing a big mountain? Flying airplanes? Running death races? I do not know. 

But I do know there will be stories. And you’re welcome to join me for them.

Fifteen years ago– before all of the houses and power tools– I used to take art classes, religiously. Metal casting, stained glass, painting, pottery, photography. I don’t have a passion for a specific art medium, just a desire to know how things are done, and then, when I can picture something in my head, to bring it into existence. I often don’t care what it is, or what’s involved in bringing it to life, I just get an overwhelming urge–once I can see it–to make it real.

And, truthfully, every construction project I’ve taken on, that house I built while I lived in a garage, and almost everything I’ve done on the farm is just a bigger and more complicated extension of that. Of picturing something in my head, and then bringing it into existence. Building it, planting it, tearing things down and/or cleaning them up. (Okay, fine, very very rarely cleaning things up, but you get what I’m saying.)

Everything I’ve written on this website has also been an extension of it. Once I’ve broken something down, dived into the details, and understand it from top to bottom there’s nothing I love more than to tell a story about it. To share it with everyone else. And while I know this is not the case, part of me likes to assume everyone out there is just like me and wants to know all the ins and outs of how things work, and how to take it all apart and put it back together themselves.

The internet, and the early days of blogging, provided such an amazing platform for those things, partly because nobody was doing it. There wasn’t good information out there written by, well, nerds like me. People who were just learning themselves, but passionate enough to want to dive right in, learn everything they could, and share it with everyone.

There are sixteen whole years of my life documented on this website. Even if you look back at the online world ten years ago, there wasn’t great “how to” information on the internet when it came to houses and DIY, and so everything I wrote here felt good, and useful and energizing.

A few years back I stopped writing how-to articles, mostly because all of the sudden you could find how-to’s on almost anything online (and I’m not mad about it… do you know how many parts I’ve been able to change out of my piece-of-shit ’95 farm truck because some guy made a shaky phone-cam tutorial and posted it to YouTube? ALL OF THEM. I am so grateful.)

Even after I realized the wave of useful how-to’s had caught up with me, I told stories all of the time. I believed so strongly, and still do, in the power of an authentic story.  I recently went back and re-read all of the archives of this website–which, as far as existential crises  go, I do not recommend re-reading 16 years of your life in one sitting– but I will say that I fucking love everything I ever wrote in 2013 (and not one of those things was a how-to). I love a lot of other things I wrote, but if there was a year between 2004 and now that I was on point with my storytelling (or maybe just genuinely delighted with my life?), that would be the one.

Recently though– and this will come as no surprise to anyone who has been checking this site, wondering what I’m up to– not so much. Which is weird because I’ve actually been writing a fair amount. Writing. Re-writing. Thinking a lot about the things I’ve written, and then never hitting the publish button.

I spent at least three weeks on this one, and I kind of love the story, but also kind of hate investing more time into a story I can’t seem to tell correctly…

Don’t even talk to me about my Drafts folder right now.

I know everyone wants to hear about the Tiny Angry Badgers. (Spoiler alert: They’re feral cats and resulted in six of the worst weeks of my life, and currently 2 of the best (since Bubs died.) I’ve had three complete emotional breakdowns over them. It has been a roller coaster.)

Here’s the thing… the fundamental parts of me that I’ve shared on this website for years have not changed. I love a challenge (I mean, people used to give me shit for drinking and using power tools, and now my hobbies have escalated into climbing mountains… alone. And even that doesn’t seem challenging enough. So.)

I love tackling projects on my own.. and increasingly feel like a crotchety old man when talking to the youths about how to do so, which I also love. (Let’s be honest, deep down I have always been a crotchety old man inside.)

I still occasionally have wicked building streaks (like all of the spring of 2019) where I have so much fun and so much energy I just can help but want to share it with the world.

I also have stories, like we all do. Stories about how I was bummed my peach trees only produced one whole peach this year (and yet how fucking delicious that one peach was… how much more I appreciated it than the years where those trees gave me ten pounds of fruit.)

Stories about how cool it is that my mom lives on a lake, just a half-mile down the road from me (how much that has increased my quality of life in general, and how good my gardens look because of it), and stories about how hard it is that my mom lives on a lake, just a half-mile down the road from me (because I’m basically a crotchety old man inside… one who doesn’t have a lot of patience sometimes, or a lot of experience navigating shared responsibilities with my mom.)

I have stories about how some of the grapevines have finally established, and stories about how (after all of that work and joy) I harvested a bowl full of grapes and then let them all go to waste in my fridge because I was too busy with work to do anything with them…

I have stories about how I feel I’m not doing right by the farm, because I spend a few of my after-hours hours at the gym instead of at home. Stories about how, at this stage in life, a career can override a lot of your passions (because let’s be honest, unless you’re very, very lucky, a career will pay for far more of your mortgage than passions.) But also stories about how my passions have been the catalyst for some of the best, strongest connections I’ve made with amazing people in my adult life, and how I struggle to make time for them. (Both the passions and the amazing people.)

I have stories about the internet which, through this website, was once one of the best and most energizing parts of me.. and now has now become one of the worst distractors from the things I love to do. I have stories about how building a non-traditional life by myself–without compromise–has been one of the best decisions of my life. And I have stories about how I’ve failed. How, because I love the life I’ve built so much, I haven’t taken chances. Stories about how living that non-traditional life has both provided unique opportunities for connecting with people, and also prevented me for connecting with people in the way people who live more traditional lives do.

I spend a lot of time every day looking for the kind of stories that used to inspire me, that I used to feel a connection with, that made me think, “hell yeah, that’s not perfect, but it’s awesome, and it makes me want to do the same.” And I don’t find them. I find a lot of people trying to be “influencers” (I have never hated a word more in my life), a lot of people who have genuine stories to tell who are more worried about the searchability of their blog posts, or the clickbait in their titles.

I mean, seriously? Screw a world in which we cannot say a true thing in a true way because if we tell an authentic story in an authentic way A SEARCH ENGINE MAY NOT FIND IT AND DISTRIBUTE IT TO THE MASSES.

I am, in general, uninspired. (And, if we’re being honest, also jealous of the kids who have found their niche building things and doing what they love on Instagram. I appreciate them, their creativity, their free spirits…  but not as much as I’ve appreciated health insurance and a 401k in the past which makes me? Old and lame? Probably.)

I realize this sounds like the the end of this website. And maybe it is? Except I clearly have a lot of stories I’d still like to tell. Things I would still like to share about the farm, and my projects (when I have the time for them.) It’s just that there was time where sharing them on this website made more sense in the world, and in my life, than it does now. And, honestly, I haven’t sorted it out. I don’t even have time to sort it out. I just have time to write half-finished blog posts… to think half-finished thoughts about my current life, but not to share them. (Except this one, which I promised myself I wouldn’t sleep until I published.)

And maybe, maybe telling the truth about all of this will unlock the part of me that just can’t figure out how the hell to tell a good story right now. To share in this new world of sharing. Sometimes just saying “I don’t know” gives you permission to just speak about what you do know, or what you’re questioning, or what you think you know but will probably realize you’re wrong about later, and maybe that’s all I’m asking for.

But in any case… if it takes me a week, or a month, or a year, or ten years to tell my next good story, this sure has been an amazing ride. Not just the sharing in general, but sharing it with all of you. Thank you for being a part of my story.

Edit/Update: So I hit publish on this post some time after midnight, woke up this morning and headed into day 14 of a work crisis, and honestly didn’t give it another thought until I came up for air an hour ago. And then I read all of your comments. (Is it dusty in here? Because my eyes are watering.  Maybe I’m allergic to these tiny, angry badgers…) Anyway. I’m going to respond to every comment but also wanted to make a general statement, which (if I haven’t said it enough) is basically thank you. Again. Sometimes all of these feels like shouting into a void, and then every once in a while you get a moment of clarity. Like, holy shit, the void has people in it! Awesome ones!

Seriously, every comment has been meaningful, and it has all given me a lot of food for thought.

I don’t know what shape my life is going to take in the next 6-12 months, or what part storytelling will play in it, but I don’t plan to take this site down (so all my old stories will stay up.)

I can’t imagine this is the last thing I’ll ever post here, but it might be the last for a little while. Thank you for letting me know that when I’m ready to tell good stories again, you’ll be here to read them. It means the world.