The Farm and The Darkness

Listen, I know that Daylight Saving Time has been a part of my life every single year of my existence. This shit has happened to me thirty-six times and at this point it shouldn’t be surprising how much it affects my desire to do anything other than lay on the floor with a bottle of wine and watch Star Trek TNG reruns for the rest of my life AND YET I AM STILL SURPRISED.

I mean just last week it was getting dark by 7PM, but I was still able to get home, see the animals in the daylight, catch a sunset, do my usual evening work (or workouts)… no problem. But set the clocks back an hour and all of the sudden by 6 PM I am literally done with everything.

This is particularly difficult because it coincides with the time I’m under the most pressure to get things done on the farm (you know, right before we enter the Deep Freeze) and the busiest time of the year at work.

Over the last few years I’ve learned to give myself a little grace in winter. This is part of the natural ebbs and flows of my life (and, honestly, if there weren’t ebbs at some point I probably would have burnt out long ago, but that still doesn’t mean they feel good when you’re in the middle of them.)

Also, if there’s been one constant in the last fifteen years, it’s that the thing that comes most easily to me (even when it gets dark and my energy is low) is telling an authentic story. And now, all of the sudden, it isn’t. Maybe because I spent a fair amount of time in a tent in the mountains this summer, legitimately disconnected, and got out of practice?

Maybe because the minutia of house-projects–while still a big part of my life… you have no idea how much time I still spend switching out electrical outlets– feels repetitive to continue to talk about all these years later?

Or maybe because the projects I’ve been drawn to this year seem a little self-indulgent and unrelatable?

Or possibly it’s just that everything seems harder, darker, and more dramatic than it really is once the sun starts setting at 6.

(Yep. Probably that last one.)

The bottom line is that I had an amazing, if unusual, summer, and after getting back from a long weekend of climbing and camping in Nevada a few weeks ago, I jumped right into prepping the farm for winter and prepping myself to try and stay sane with the lack of daylight…

It’s only working moderately well at the moment, so I’ll be pushing myself hard to knock things off this list over the next couple of weekends, and if anyone has any strategies I can add to that “Try not to lose your shit because it’s dark at 6PM” List, I’m all ears…

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