Nothing like a good guano cleaning session to put things in perspective.
Our chooks leave quite a mess in the back yard and around the back door. I ignored it for so long that I stopped noticing it.
But today I looked at the shit and said “it’s time”.
I scooped, swept, sprayed and scrubbed that patch of concrete.
For a while it looked like i was making the mess worse with all that water.
I got some in my shoe. Gross. Might have to throw those ones away.
But as i was out there, ankle deep in avian excrement, a thought struck me:
I can’t just ignore my shit, expecting it to get better or go away.
The last couple of weeks I’ve felt rather deflated, aimless, depressed. It’s been difficult to find motivation for, well – anything. I longed for sunny days and blue skies and thought, once it gets a bit warmer, once I can soak up some sun, these blues will melt away.
But the sun came, and still i was cold and dark and fetid. Despair sets in, in those times. The cycle of negative self-talk creates piles and piles of crap, suffocating anything positive. “I’m not depressed – other people get depressed, me? I’m just lazy, I’m no good, worthless, unlovable, useless, a burden…” and on it goes.
So today I’d had enough. I hopped over to one of my favourite blogs where I was reminded that love banishes fear. And at the root of it, I knew it was fear that was keeping me bogged down. Fear of failure, fear of imperfection. Doing nothing seemed like a better option than trying and failing.
I’m not saying this is entirely the answer, always, to the way I’ve been feeling. But today it was. Today was one of those ‘sometimes’ days.
Sometimes we feel the most free when we are nose down, shouldering into the piles of waste we have let accrue. Sometimes freedom doesn’t come when we are dreaming at the sky, sometimes freedom comes when we are shoveling shit; pungent on the nose, in mounds of brown, in swarming flies, making a small difference at our own door.
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For related musings, check out Alissa Writes Words,
and Micah J Murray {language warning – but it’s awesome.}
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Are you ignoring shit? Go grab a shovel now, move something.