Stress

This semester i let everything on the homestead go. I had no choice. The interior of the tiny house is covered in dirt. The clothes and sheets are as well. The spiders have webbed up everything. The paint i bought to redo the house trim that’s exposed to the elements and had the old paint peeling off, never got used. The grass is up to my armpits now. The whole thing is just a dumpster fire. But, i have to let it be. Right now i have to get this degree as fast as i can so i can get back to making money to pay the mortgage before the savings account is depleted. In order to save the land, i have to let it go for a while. I was pulling 3 all-nighters at a time. I was sleeping an average of 1 hour a day. I was working (running 7 miles a day) 4 days a week and doing my GIS school work for the other 3 days and all the nights. I finished both courses with an A in each class, created a resume and a public portfolio of my work, and was forced to do an actual contracted month long job for a company within one of my classes. My tutor has a list of reasons why this is a bad idea and i agree with him. Students cant ask for more time when additional requests are made by the client because the semester ends when it ends. Students also cant quit if the client relations go south or become exploitative. So, its probably not a good idea but i did it, and the important thing was, i learned the skills required to make something worthwhile for an actual company to use in their mission. For that i have to thank my online tutor. He is wicked smart and if he doesnt know the answer he knows how to teach himself what he needs to know to get the answer. He’s also the only tutor i’ve ever met that will only tutor one student a day, so if you need four hours, you’ve got four hours of his time. I can honestly say he taught me 75 percent of everything i know about GIS. And then taught me another lesson; that he’s not the answer. He was trying to give me the skillset i needed to answer my own questions, and after a while, i started being able to do research just like he had and answer my own questions before he was able to get back to me. That was an invaluable lesson, i will admit, that i was reluctant and sour to learn. However, now that i know how to answer most of my questions through my own research, i contact my tutor to learn “best practices” for the industry and for more advanced concepts that i cant find literature on.

So, i’m doing this. I’m passing these courses. I’m learning GIS. Im marching ever forwards towards a new career, and i’m giving my best to my day job as well. I’m maintaining 6 chickens and 2 dogs. I’m sleeping 1 hour a night. I am so tired it’s hard to do anything beyond autopilot. But i’m doing it. The exhaustion, the depression, the anxiety…they all creep in on a daily basis. All the things that i was doing are on hold. The books i was writing are on hold. My patchwork quilt is on hold. My study of scripture is on hold. Etsy projects with pressed flowers are on hold. My homestead projects are on hold. Routine maintenance is on hold. Further dog training…on hold. Even the blog and my journal entries were on hold. Sleeping was on hold. I keep thinking, what if i never right this ship, what if i never get this dumpster fire extinguished and back to normal? Is this the end of everything i was working on? And then i remind myself, no silly, this is the way to save everything you were working on. Patience. Twas never a virtue that came naturally to me. Now more than ever it is a skill it would behoove me to master. Instead, i tend to just bury all my fears in food. Like Ellis, i will stress eat the day away. Only, my food allergies and my tiny budget keep me from being a giant human.