Two years have passed since I last wrote here (although I’m busily posting back-dated posts as I put a lot of photos and musings on Facebook during that time that I don’t want to lose).
Life on the farm became hectic – it was fun – but nearby bushfires, changes in circumstances with having a toddler and working part-time, two overseas trips – it all stacked up and just meant that we couldn’t really keep on top of it. We weren’t giving the land what it really needed, were time-stretched even getting to grips with basic bushfire preparation. It was dangerously close to becoming a chore and even selling up was hard work. Not everyone wants to have a steep, long, 4WD-preferable driveway cut into the hill, that many describe traversing as a ‘heart attack’. Great views from the top though! So…even selling up became a long and stressful part of most of 2009. However, eventually we found that unique couple, who fell in the love with the log cabin on the hill, and at the start of 2010 we said goodbye to 20 acre farm life.
I stopped writing as the focus turned to moving on and lots of change in 2010. We moved temporarily to a very urban environment, renting near the city and I barely wrote anything at all. We were lucky enough to be allowed to have a veggie patch, thank goodness, but for me, it was as if moving from that place, needing to say goodbye to so many animals (yes, including Gandalf the cat and Molly and Elf the dogs!) had just completely severed me from my muse. I felt it keenly – knew that I shouldn’t write during this time and should just leave the difficulty of ‘animal separation’ to memory.
I even left my postgraduate writing course that I started last year – starting that had been a dream for me, after finishing my MA to suit my career goals. I tried a different short writing course and even failed to keep up with that. I just stopped writing – about anything, for the first time ever really. I took photographs still, so there’s something.
I love writing about nature and the world around me, and just documenting the experiences of that interaction. My blabbing on Facebook in the gap between my last entry here and now, has fulfilled my need to share my wonder at everything – a little bit – but the content is ‘forced’ on the audience in a way I don’t like. I like secret writing with the ‘excitement’ of someone stumbling across it accidentally from a link. That’s what I love about this blog – I’ve never really pushed it out. If you find it, and stay to read something, that’s nice, and you found it on your own wanderings, not via my signposts.
When I realised, that today, I was about to post a series of photographs of caterpillars on my Facebook wall, and my status updates became more imaginative written ‘pieces’, I realised that it was actually time to move back here, and start to journal again, rather than just splash thoughts on a wall that broadcasts to friends newsfeeds.
Yes, it’s true, I’m feeling inspired to write again. I think it’s because it’s the end of a long year of positive and necessary change in 2010. We sold the farm, I changed jobs to address my rock-bottom morale after returning to my previous job part-time after maternity leave – and after a year of limbo, moved into a new house at Christmas. In the last week or so, I’m finally feeling settled. Just as well with a new baby on the way in 5 weeks!
Life is full of things to do and things to dream about – especially when it comes to my passions – nature, writing, mythic fiction and living sustainably.
I’ve even been watching David Attenbourough again. I’m full of ideas and inspiration to turn our new garden into a backyard farm of sorts; I can’t wait to keep chickens again; and I’m feeling really proud of a small temporary veggie patch we managed to get up and running since moving house the week before Christmas 2010- and looking forward to yet another change of being a mother to two in April 2011.
So this is it, starting again – an exploration in *backyard farming,*- new tails (I’m hoping for some chickens as soon as the baby is born and life is roughly running smoothly!) and imaginings (planning to write the children’s fantasy stories in my head – one character has been patiently waiting by the fireplace for me to start the next chapter). I’m back – I think. 😉
I’m going to migrate a lot of my 2009/2010 content from Facebook back to this blog site in the interests of posterity.