Taking care of the first responder

I do a lot.

I do everything from making yogurt and cheese to felling, cutting, and splitting my own wood, literally keeping the home fires burning. I'm also furiously researching and writing articles for the web on forest gardening in the hopes that--one fine day--I might be able to pay a few bills or even (gasp!) the mortgage.

All this work is stressful. I am stressed that I don't have the time in my schedule to design and buy trees for the forest gardens I've been writing about, stressed that I haven't planned what to do with the vegetable garden out front, stressed that the vast majority of household maintenance and upkeep chores fall on my shoulders, stressed that my partner and I are trying to live on an income that pays only one-third of our bills, and, lying darkly underneath and as pernicious as a creeping cancer, I'm stressed that the world as all of us have known it is in the process of crashing down around our ears and I may not have time enough to prepare even though I see it coming.

I've been throwing myself at these issues whole-hog, every day, relentlessly. I often feel a caffeine-like buzz inside my body as my mind hops from "I have to" to "what about" to "how do I," a symptom of continually butting up against impossible challenges and obligations. I've been holding up OK so far, but yesterday I realized I can't do it all, no matter how important everything is. I've got to stop taking care of everything else and take care of me or eventually I'll go over the edge.

It occurred to me that in all of this I am a "first responder" when it comes to my life. There's this huge, life-threatening mess engulfing me, and I need to act like an ambulance EMT, who's first priority is to take care of themselves. (It sounds selfish, but a dead or injured EMT is of no use to anyone.) Sure, stocking food will take care of me in the long run, but you know what? I'll never last long enough to use it if I have an increasingly heavy emotional elephant sitting on my chest that may well crush me. It's time to take care of the first responder.

I'm not sure how to do that, except that I'm sure the first step is to back off and let go. Maybe take a half-day holiday now and then and allow myself to feel totally, refreshingly irresponsible in doing so. Have an adventure. Get lost in a snowy woods. Deliberately not learn something new. Visit an understanding mentor or friend. Play with a child, as a child. Draw a picture. Make a valentine.

The elephant can wait.

Why am I doing all this?

When I woke up, I stoked the stove on our lower level with wood from the basswood and boxelder trees in my back yard. I chainsawed and split the logs myself last spring, and yesterday I finished stacking it next to the back door as new snow floated down. After stoking the fire, I flipped the new cheddar cheese I made 10 days ago so it ages properly, and added yogurt I made from a half-gallon of skim milk to my oatmeal. Today I don't need to bake bread (rye, three loaves at a time), but I might do a bit of laundry and dry it on a rack set up next to the wood stove. I've made my own crackers, replaced a zipper in my winter coat, and always shovel the driveway the old-fashioned way with a a shovel and a grunt.

In the spring I'll put in my front vegetable garden from seeds I saved last fall, plant the nut and fruit trees I plan to buy, put up a separate raised herb garden, and fertilize everything with compost from two separate "bins" made of straw. Summer projects will be to build a clay oven from the clay-heavy soil out back, cook more with the solar oven I bought last year, and possibly (if I can ever find the energy) dig a deep pit in back that can be used to store vegetables or age cheese.

Why am I doing all this?

Part of it is economics--it would never have occurred to me to try to make anything from scratch if I had income that supported me comfortably and if (big if) I thought the larger economy would continue floating safely along so I didn't need to change in order to survive. But of course, I don't believe any of us is safe in the times that approach us, and I am big on avoiding bad things if I can. It may be that my efforts at self-preservation will be futile, but you know what? I can live with myself if they are, because I will have done my best. I know on the deepest of levels that I am here to grow my soul, and that that growth is my purpose. I don't grow by being safe and avoiding bad things--I grow by engaging them. And part of that engagement involves not only doing wise and prudent acts of preparation prior to the collapse, but also and perhaps most importantly, developing the personal links that form a genuine community. None of us survives alone, in spite of all the "rugged individualism" rubbish that's part of our national psyche.

For me, developing that supportive community with friends and neighbors is the most challenging part of these times. I'm an introvert by nature and social niceties escape me. Establishing real community is my soul's growing edge--much more difficult than felling trees and making clay ovens.