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My energy level–and that magical ability to knock together a cabinet on a whim using nothing but some scrap wood and a bottle of wine–came to an abrupt halt at the end of January, because that’s the infuriating thing that happens when it’s legitimately negative forty degrees out. Which basically means that on the weekends my mom and I would sit in front of the heater in her living room for a few hours talking about how we didn’t have the energy to do any real work, and then eventually would open a bottle of wine, and the next thing you know… Yes, I own pretty much every tool known to man, and they are only an 18 second drive down the road, BUT WHY DON’T I JUST USE THIS EYE SHADOW TO MARK THE PLACEMENT OF THE OUTLET To be clear, my mom’s amazing neighbors removed most of the dock sections in fall, and then I froze my knees off removing the final posts in November.

There was a time–a little more than seven years ago–when I was convinced the “best” years of my life were already behind me. After seven years, I’ve learned enough to know the best years are never behind me, but that the years in front of me may look far, far different than I ever envisioned. When I had to make the very difficult decision to leave a house I’d put all of my energy into building for a couple of years, and a relationship that wasn’t bad but also… wasn’t really good. And I won’t deny there’s a lot of luck involved in ending up where I am, but, also, there’s a hell of a lot of doing the hard thing.

But, to be fair, all of my previous experiences with tents had been in “car camping” settings, and there’s a big difference between car camping and backpacking. Car camping typically means sleeping in a tent at a drive-up campground that, more often than not, has tiny, cramped campsites, and at least one annoying group of kids that stays up way too late drinking beer and talking VERY LOUDLY (because I am a cranky old lady who has wicked insomnia at home, but also has a very strict bedtime when I’m in a tent. I’m not a person who has ever been able to relax on a beach for more than a few hours, or “shut off” from work for more than a day or two, so being out on the trail is the only time in my life when I’ve been truly able to unplug. When I reflected on my life on the farm in 2018, it made me stronger, but in a way that felt disconnected from the things I love about the farm.

(For real: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) I don’t know why I would mess with a system that works, other than because I’d piled a bunch of shit in front of the chalkboard that runs my life and then just didn’t move it. The biggest thing going on around here this year is going to be putting in new windows on the back half of the house (don’t worry, the original 1850s windows are staying, but I’m upgrading the windows on the addition) and This is 100% necessary this year because, and I’m not joking, the chickens have started eating my house. Seriously, that project is going to take basically all of the not-frozen months of 2019, but I’m hoping I might be able to check a few other smaller things off the list in between.