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2019 aspiration: Be a farmer

01.06.2019 by Chris Wilcox //

My 2019 aspiration is to be a farmer.

I speak mostly in metaphor. For my purposes, I don’t need to run a real, physical farm to be a farmer, though I will continue to toss coffee grounds and vegetable scraps on the compost heap and occasionally even mow the lawn.

No, what I really mean is that I aspire to adopt the mindset of a farmer and apply it to non-farming tasks that matter to me.

And the actual farmers, fresh in from the fields with dust-caked faces, cry out in unison: “That’s not being a farmer, idiot!”

Sorry.

But I use the metaphor with nothing but admiration. A farmer does the work. A farmer doesn’t worry about what went wrong yesterday. A farmer gets out there and does what he or she can today. A farmer takes the long view.

I want to keep tilling soil and sowing seeds. I want to keep doing the work, engaging in the process, that moves me toward meaningful reward eventually in whatever I pursue rather than continually looking for the quick hit that will make everything happen today. I want to remember, all the while, that the process itself will be part of the reward: that a life doing this, trying this, is the life I choose.

I want to be persistent and indefatigable.

This mindset can be applied to most of the things that people tend to focus their New Year’s resolutions on: exercising more, eating better, saving more toward their retirement, etc. But the mindset itself is the thing. If I can put the mindset in place in general, whatever particulars I aim for will more easily fall into place.

One of the things that matters to me is writing. Creating little sparks of connection. Making myself known, and knowing you as well.

To that end, it’s my goal to put my butt in the seat and show up for you here, with one piece of writing or another, every week. I’ll bring my crop to market, whatever the crop may be. Probably, the weekly post will appear on Saturday or Sunday, good reading days for busy folks. Possibly, I will slip up on occasion and, like a farmer, be undeterred in coming back at you with whatever I’ve got next week.

And if I manage to do that? Who knows what may grow.

(Take this post, for example. I had something better in mind, but this is what I came up with in time, so here it is.)

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