I planted another seed

a seed of a new blog. If you're interested to find out the new spot, please email me at earnestenglish@gmail.com. At this point, I'm not thinking I'll close this spot up completely, but I'm not sure I'll update it much either.

I planted seeds today

I've been thinking about what to do with this blog -- whether I should close up shop or start a new one or let this one morph quite a bit. The truth is that not only do I have less time to focus on academic work, I find I don't really want to spend my free time thinking or writing about work either. I'm still reading y'all's blogs, but I just don't have anything to say about my job. I'm behind on grading, as usual. My to-do list is insane. I have this committee report hanging over my head and walloping me in the eyes. I don't know whether I want to work on the Article Slightly Outside My Field, but I know I sure don't have time for it. Who wants to spend any free time at all talking about all that? After so many years of building a career and carving out a research agenda and living my life around my career, I now want it to be just a job, no longer my whole life. I want to de-colonize my mind. I am more than my job.

Part of this may be temporary, as I was burned out big time by this time last year.

What I do want to talk about is how I recently hacked at and finally uprooted a climbing rose gone to seed (and mounded in a big bush rather than draped on the trellis, which had fallen) from the raised bed, then added three cubic feet of the best organic soil I could find, and then, today, seeded it with 2 kinds of lettuce, spinach, arugula (a lot of it!), leeks, kale, calendula, and nasturtiums. It is totally ridiculous to be starting a fall garden this late, and a winter garden is only possible here in greenhouses of one sort or another. But I don't care. We're all here: the place, the soil, the seeds, and me. So we'll do what we can. I did get very cold tolerant varieties, so much so that the kale should be harvestable in the snow. But it is sort of ridiculous. But it also occurs to me lately that some very good work in the world gets done because some naive person doesn't realize that what they're trying to do is impossible. Impossible Harvest? At Impossible Farm.

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said 'one can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. '

The title of Absurdist Paradise was always meant to describe academia. When I was not part of academia for that half year or so, the blog became more about my life, which also felt absurd. But now I want to spend my time focusing on gardening/farming/homesteading and Big Non Academic Project (BigNAP?). I want a space in my life to focus on those parts of my life that I wish could grow into bigger chunks of my life. But I'm not sure y'all are interested in my little family's long road to homesteading. I'm not sure this blog is the right place to discuss that. But our little family has to do something, because it sure doesn't feel like this so-called "normal life" is sustainable, from a spiritual point of view for us. (I don't mean religious. I mean this life so rubs against the grain -- it just feels wrong and abrasive. Meaningless.)

Even if nothing comes up in Impossible Farm's raised bed, I'll be planting garlic within the next month or two. October-December. That at least shouldn't end a shambles.

You think I should start a new blog?

Over and out.