Labor Day

I spent the last two days of labor day weekend like I always do, doing research, keeping up with events, and working on climate outreach like I usually do. I’m OK financially but I’ve been working on designs for a local climate outreach commitee. Life’s more or less OK here in the hills. I have some good days and some bad days, sometimes both at the same time, but I still do everything I can, which brings me to labor day.

I don’t know why I work like I do. Of course I do it to get by. I have very little extra to spend on even giving to political donations and even local food shelters. I love to help things in any way I can. Whenever I have any kind of outside funding to my art projects I end up helping out other people, or helping my nonprofit get a donation directly from me. I do it because I love it. I love waking up at 3AM, and just trying everything I can. I post and make art, and today I did it for almost 14 hours. It’s been like this for weeks. I finally had my first bid on an NFT that would give me some extra to put aside in savings, or even give that one $1 donation to a nonprofit cause.

I do very little to spend on entertainment. My favorite thing to do is just look, to just see. I’ve been looking deeply at objects in the room in the early mornings, which seems like staring into space, which it is, but not in the way you might think. If you look at anything long enough, it’s like seeing without seeing. You just begin to feel some kind of presence. When it’s still and quiet in the forest you can feel it all around you. And in the early hours of the day, or even night, I’m just there with it, and it is somtimes all I want to do. It’s not even spiritual or religous. It just is.

I wish I had known this when I was in my most desperate circumstances in my work life. The long hours not knowing if I’d someday be homeless. Just the day to day. I wish sometimes those struggles and moments had given me time to stop and listen, to remember to just be. Maybe this isn’t easy to see. Maybe I’m ignoring the fact that it took 15 years of meditation for me to get to this point. But I wish in my work life, which was pretty difficult at times, to say the least, that I had known.

I still work that hard, sometimes even harder. I don’t take weekends. I work all the time, just because that’s how my Mom was, and it’s been ingrained in me. But for anyone who feels that way, the desperation of those moments, we’re sometimes granted the holiday or two where we just have a day to sit, and honestly that may be better for most people that waking up at 3am gives me. It’s not something I would advise. It’s not even good for my health, but an hour or two just to sit, and so many different people have different way to do that. Maybe it’s all the same. I don’t know. I wish I could work less. I wish we all could. I wish our hours were better, even when we absoutely love what we do. And I don’t know why even when I’m OK, I just keep working.

Even when I’m writing this I know, that when I really stop and feel it, and I feel it right now, it just is. It’s beautiful. It’s love you can’t describe. And it’s always there, no matter what we’re going through, it’s always there, and that will always give me the deepest peace. I should stop writing now. I want to try and find the best answer, but it’s there already. It doen’t need an answer. It just is. It’s love you can’t describe.