Spring forward

Garden projects, a Substack birthday, and flirting with burnout

It’s been busy over here in our hollow. Spring energy has seized our home and we are hustling to keep up with our various projects. We have managed to erect a garden fence (with immense help from our papa John), prep and plant out several beds, start a few flats of seeds (some of which have germinated, others not so much), clear out the abundance of dead bamboo in the bamboo grove, cut back the sprawling undergrowth from the pond and around the perimeter of the property, all the while running the regular show of working, raising children, cleaning house, preparing food, and occasionally taking a moment to sit down and relax. It’s the first spring/summer I’ve had in four years where I wasn’t either pregnant or freshly postpartum, which means I can finally dig into the land and get to work. And now I’ve got two extra (albeit tiny) sets of hands to help get it all done.

Like a maturing garden, this sweet boy has become more of a steward every year. The patience and instruction is paying off.

Bon annif, Sous-stack

Somewhere in these kaleidoscopically full days, alongside the floors growing fuzzy with smushed fig bars and laundry piles taking root on the bedroom floor, my Substack had a birthday. I want to say it was at the end of February — and now, in mid-April, I am coming around to celebrating it.

I starting writing this public newsletter a year or so ago while still in those tender months of matrescence (early post-partum or the fourth trimester of pregnancy). I had stopped working (for pay) altogether and was staying home full-time with my two-year old and my three-month old. I was adapting to the push and pull of mothering two children, becoming gradually and invisibly more weathered and brazen in my approach to parenthood and basically everything else. I was learning to let things go, to squint my eyes fuzzy so as to not dwell in the mess of details. I was thickening my skin, cottoning my ears, mediating between my children’s emotions and my own. Ough! Mostly I was looking for an outlet — a place to share my thoughts and experiences with friends and perhaps to connect with others in a similar walk of life. I didn’t have a clear trajectory of how I wanted to fill my little corner of the Internet, and I still don’t — and so far no one is asking me to, what a relief. This is my blank page to fill on a rare evening when the stars have aligned and my other work is done and my children are sleeping undisturbed — a breath of contemplation between movement and sleep. A moment to say hello to friends I fail to speak with on a regular basis these days, simply because, amidst the endless lists, I’ve dropped the ball of friendship. It’s a hello that is nowhere near as personal and intimate as I’d prefer — but right now it’s the best I can do.

When I started writing here, I was primarily stationed at home, with lots to do but not much being required of me beyond the scope of my family. I did a lot of reading. A year later, I’ve returned to teaching and have subsequently put a great deal of my mental energy toward curriculum; I host monthly shows and try my damndest to promote them on a shoestring budget; I play hard with my kids all afternoon; I walk the land, children in tow, visualizing completed landscaping projects in the way-way-off. In short, I’ve made a lot of work for myself, and must chug away at all times to keep the machine running. There are moments I wonder why I would pile so many things on my plate; is all this really necessary? Am I headed for a burnout? My answer will change depending on the day. But on a good day I believe that these side hustles and projects are fueling the composite of what I am most passionate about, and are providing substance and texture to my life in ways I couldn’t conjure without them. I am always looking for ways to simplify my existence, and while it’s tempting to let go of one or more of these projects, for now it seems important to see where they lead.

A side-note on Substack the platform — I’ve found the more time I spend on the app (or on any social media site, for that matter), the less inspired I am to write. It is simply exhausting to see so many writers putting out articles at a rapid pace, covering every possible topic from every possible angle. It puts out my creative fire. We aren’t built to consume and process so much information. So many of the suggested posts seem engineered as rage-bait (shoutout to my middle school boys for teaching me this term) to rally up new readers, and it all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So I’ve found myself pulling away from the platform as an app, and keeping the parts that work: the writing, plain and simple, without concern of growing an audience.

Doing more with less

If motherhood has taught me anything, it is how to economize my time and energy. I can no longer afford to dawdle; I gots to get shit done. Here’s a window, hop through it. Looking back on how I once spent my time, lingering over a cigarette in the morning sun, journaling for an hour, taking a stroll around the neighborhood on a whim, I marvel at the swaths of unfettered, spontaneous activity I had access to, and can’t begin to wonder how I’d use that time if I had it now. I can access spontaneity now, but it looks a lot different — it requires packing snacks and water and a change of clothes and getting everyone dressed and shoed and out the door in one piece. So while I may not be any more productive than I was before having kids, I am certainly more intentional about how I spend my time.

Those gestating thoughts

The projects I’m working to materialize now were born in those first months of matrescence — that stretch where so much of a mother’s time is spent repeating the motions of caregiving, with room for little else — when my mind was wandering, plotting out new endeavors for the coming season. And now we’re here. I’m trying to give everyone and everything, in their proper time and place, my full attention, so as to keep it all afloat, and thus far it is running smoothly enough, with only an occasional meltdown from me. It ‘s all part and parcel in the growing of things.

Until the next,

Ginny