Even as the days lengthen...

...I'm finding it difficult to find time to accomplish all that I need to.  There are days when I look at my Honeybunch and ask him, "How are we ever going to do this on a large scale?"

He works full time, and is building a business of making incredible LED and fire flow toys unlike any that I've seen on the market.  While mostly still in the R&D phase, he's producing staves and hoops for talented friends and acquaintances every so many weeks, prototypes of what he'll soon be able to introduce to the flow arts community at large.  It's amazing work, but time consuming and demanding of much of his energy.  There are circuit boards to be burnt (in the dark room, aka our shower), new LEDS to experiment with, programs to write and processes to streamline.  I'm very proud of him.

I work part time, and on paper that really sounds like I should be plowing through my To-Do lists on a daily basis with time to spare.  But somehow I am always behind.  I don't think it's a matter of poor time management... I multitask like a pro.  But still the laundry is never REALLY done, there are constantly dishes to be washed in the sink, fresh produce in the fridge waiting to be cooked, consumed or preserved, and weeds crop up almost as soon as my hand plow passes through the soil.

And there's aphids.  Slugs.  Chicken/cat/skunk poopies to be mucked out.  Inherited cold compost that hasn't been turned in two years, recently turned by my Honeybunch only to find infestation with horrible, awful pests that I shall not even name here!  Suddenly there's a need to construct an entirely new composting system, the tomato and pepper bed is in SERIOUS need of mulching in this hot weather, we run out of homemade laundry soap (AND out of the supplies to make it... what store did we find the washing soda at again?).  Oh yes, and I'd like to build some mosquito-proof rainwater barrels, please.

What really frightens me is that this sense of being overwhelmed comes when we're living in an APARTMENT in suburbia, with a few backyard garden beds and just under a dozen chickens.  How will we handle it all when there's a house to manage, hay to bale, a flock of sheep who need their hooves trimmed? 

I am trying to be kind to myself and believe that it's okay to be scared and overwhelmed, that this is a practice run and I'm new to the processes involved in building self reliance.  It's easier to eat vegetables that you've unceremoniously stripped of their sheer plastic garments, to wash your clothes with goo from a brightly colored plastic bottle, to eat pizza out of a cardboard box.  It is simpler to live a sterile life with no soil to scrub from beneath your fingernails, no animal feces to scrape off the bottoms of your boots, no little creature lives depending on you to close up the coop at night to keep them safe. 

I am not choosing this life because it is simple or easy.  I am choosing this life because it feels better, it tastes better, it is healthier for us and for our planet, it is guiltless (though not painless), more connected to the earth and the rhythms of nature, more fulfilling and challenging and fruitful.  I ache in my heart when aphids attack my lettuces because I am happiest seeing life spring from the good black earth that I've worked with my own hands.  I am not crazy, nor am I a masochist, and the benefits far outweigh the cost.

This is what I need to remember when I feel overwhelmed.