I decided to take a short vacation. Like I mentioned, January is slow, well, relative to other times of the year.  I’ve done all the work I can do for the month, I’ve submitted almost all our documents to state for our permit application, I’ve made all the phone calls possible to the engineering firm, the paving company, the security systems company, the power estimator, the brush clearing guy, and have put my face before the county planning commissioner more than I’m sure he has time for.

Now I’m in a sort of a holding pattern, waiting on all the pieces to fall together before I can do my part. In the past I would be pacing around the house searching for ways to speed up the process. I would imagine that I could do the engineering survey, run the power, dig the pond, and build the building. I’d plan out the process day by day, excited by the challenging logistics of it all, until I would realize the very important and meaningful fact that I’m not an engineer, an electrician, a heavy equipment operator, or a contractor. I’m the gardener. It’s an impulse I’ve always had. I like to see things accomplished and if it takes longer than expected I start to get nervous, a sort of ‘emergency’ alarm goes off in my mind and I feel as if the project I’ve undertaken is on the verge of epic collapse.

It’s this quality in me that has keeps me moving forward to stubbornly achieve what I set out to do while simultaneously wears me out and makes me ineffective. I’ve learned to pause when pausing is necessary or inevitable, to revive my mind and my body when possible because the work is always there, always ready to be done. It has taken me years to learn that if I leave for a few days, heck, even a few weeks that nothing will collapse, well not entirely.  And with that I’m happy to tell everyone who I love and couldn’t work without to kindly go fuck themselves until I get home on Wednesday. Then we can have all the phone conferences and go over the budgets and sign the lease on a new warehouse, and ever onward.

For all you who are like me, don’t forget to take breaks, unwind, unplug. For all of you who do that all year, get back to work, you’re already behind.