Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This photo was taken at 6:47 in the morning.
It was still cool out, the ewes had already taken in a belly full of grazing. When the day is shaping up to be a hot one they’ll rise soon and mosey their way to shade, unless there’s a good breeze blowing. They seem to appreciate a breeze that is strong enough to keep the flies and mosquitoes away.
Sheep just might be one of the most patient creatures. In the heat of the summer there is little to do but wait out the day and then feed in the coolness of the evening and very early morning.
I have let slip my habit of pausing to watch them as frequently as I used to. I have been letting the pull of other tasks and desires take over. I have been dismissive of the ordinary, every day checking of sheep; treating it like a task I have to do instead of a task I get to do.
One does not have to pause for long for the quiet mood of these meditative creatures to seep in and be a needed reminder. But if the only thing these creatures represent is production and numbers then all the time in the world will not suffice.
I determined some time ago that cell phones do not jive with this reclusive prairie space and there is very, very seldom a valid reason to take mine along on my daily walks. With no phone at hand, social media does not exist while in this prairie space either. I began to notice how exquisite not scrolling on a screen felt. This noticing would often be followed by rounds of internal questioning about why social media was in my life if its absence felt so good.
One morning, well over a year ago, I decided to not post on instagram that day. I did the same thing the next day, and the next. I had already been down a rabbit hole of researching the impact of social media as the current models are set up, and I was angry at myself for succumbing to the habit. But after days of not posting I figured I had made a mistake. I was lost, I was ‘disconnected’. I was feeling very much left out, particularly as an artist trying to find my way through marketing. But each day as I walked the dogs out on the prairie I would feel the ‘rightfulness’ of having no social media concerns there. I hung onto that feeling of rightfulness and stuck by my decision to not post. I picked up a physical paper book to distract myself and discovered just how short my ability to focus was, and how badly I missed reading books. After a few weeks I hardly missed IG but what stood out stronger than ever was the continual push by the rest of the world to prove one’s validity by being on social. This has not ceased at all.
I had plans to replace posting on IG with diving deeper into other online avenues, like this blog, but I ended up walking away from all of it. I stopped writing my newsletter regularly, I nearly stopped posting to the blog, and there have been no posts to pinterest in forever. I had no clue what this state of emptying out was about, although in hindsight, I think it was a means of debriefing where I was going and what I was still interested in doing. Unexpectedly, that debrief took many months.
Without social media and with a lot less screen time in everyday life, I have long focus back and I have additional time to spend in my studio. A corner of the kitchen counter has become the landing place for any recently acquired books, awaiting a read. Falling in love with reading again, lead to encouragement for writing again. I have joined a local writers group; where meetings with people who are physically and mentally present take place, sans phones. And when I am in my studio, instead of logging on to an app I log-in to my sketch book, a habit that has done more for my drawing skills than any other. I’m now dabbling in watercolor painting. I’ve been more creative in the last year than in the past three. No video reel has been made to document any of it and it will not see the light of day on social media platforms. But the local community is seeing the best parts of it, and that feels far less fraudulent.
‘In Companionable Silence’ / Felted wool artwork
Fifteen months later I’m still opting for digital minimalism in my life, or to put it another way, applying the approach I use on the land to being online. One must always consider the whole, not just the parts. When and if the time comes for dipping a toe back into social media, I’ll know what to watch for, I’ll know that my creative self will not break when I walk out on the rat race and take the scenic route.
You have a notion you just can’t shake. An idea/problem/reoccurring issue that rides around with you. Perched there on your shoulder, you see it from the corner of your eye.
If you would turn and face it full on you would know it for what it is, realize what it is trying to tell you. You would hear the call, see the gift. But you don’t, you’re still too unsure of the rising up it will ask you to do, or afraid that if it notices you reaching for it, it will take flight and disappear altogether.
So you appreciate that it is there. It is a small, ironic comfort to you. Prompting you to think of the things you see yourself doing in your unlived life. So you do not usher it away. Instead you put your head down and graze, not yet committed to the new and not yet done with the old, further contemplating the ending of things and wondering about the beginning of others.
During a walk last week, I was marveling that I could use the pasture trails due to lack of snow. I was mulling over how small the flock is, how simple the winter chores are, how few guardian dogs are here and how many Kelpies, and how far off course this winter felt. There have been changes in my day to day work load; changes that eased themselves in over the course of a years time rather than arriving all at once. As I walked and thought of what my day was shaping up to be I caught myself wondering … am I even in agriculture anymore?
