Earlier this evening, I was talking with a friend about where we've been finding fulfillment in our lives. She has recently discovered both a talent and love for baking and has begun the process of turning it into a business. As I have watched her go through this discovery process, I've found myself thinking about how you know when you truly love doing something:
A common line of thought in the young adult's brain is, "I have skill in this area and I don't mind doing it, so I guess that's what I should do with my life." Unfortunately - and trust me, I've tried this same line of reasoning too many times for my short life - that logic leads to the kind of unhappiness and tension that can only be found in the dreariness of not doing what you love. So, how do you know what you love? It's easy to know if you like something but so often, when you get down to the nitty-gritty details of doing it for a living, it loses its charm. If you love something, though, you may not have the skills for it already but you're excited about learning those skills and even your failures are celebrated because they were opportunities to learn. You might not have the time or energy to pursue what you love, but if you love it, you'll find yourself making time where you thought you had none or putting off the more mundane tasks of life in order to do it. If you love something, you don't tire of the minutia...it is the minutia that excites you, and you're always anxious for more.
Recently, I've been finding this kind of fulfillment in an unexpected place: my garden. Growing up, I always thought I had a black thumb and, even though I could compost like a bad-ass, I never managed to keep any houseplants growing for long. Last year, however, I decided I needed to learn how to do food gardening, at least on a small scale, to increase our fresh vegetable intake while helping our grocery bill. I started with five tomato plants that, while they didn't produce enough to make a big impact on our budget, turned out beautifully and gave us some truly delicious salads in mid-summer. I found out last year that I loved researching natural ways to fertilize my plants and was enthralled by everything about gardening (except the necessary thinning - I hate that... it feels like infanticide).
With such a great memory to go on, I decided to get far more ambitious with my garden this year: I already have radishes, carrots, garlic, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, chard, sage, basil, lavender, rosemary, oregano, lemon balm, thyme, and several flowers planted and sprouting with plans to add squash, beets, sunflowers, and a few more herbs. I was a bit worried at first that I'd tire of all the work in keeping such a large garden healthy and happy, but it turns out I love it! I make any excuse I can to go out and check the moisture level of the soil in my containers, pick off yellowing leaves, and look for new seedlings...
As I told my friend of my gardening joys this evening, she complimented me on my patience.
Patience? I'm not even sure what that is!
As I've eased into homeschooling and thrown myself into gardening, I've had a lot of people tell me that they respect my patience and each time, I find myself taken aback. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a patient person. I constantly have to hold myself back from pushing too hard, from hovering, from over-caring. I've learned to accept this about myself - I'm impatient, deal with it - but it flabbergasts me to think that anyone thinks I am anything but an impatient gardener who is never content to sit back and let the seedlings grow.
The thing is, I don't need to be anything other than impatient - impatience keeps me talking to my plants, doing successive sowings so we have a summer-long crop, looking up new information and ideas and all the other things that, if I were a patient person, I might never get around to doing.
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