The Power of "Yet"

Happy Saturday friends!

Every year I have a word that I focus on—I don't choose it, it chooses me. It usually appears in the springtime, I suppose when everything feels fresh and new is a good time for a fresh, new word.

The word for 2023 is, "Yet."

When life gets hard, I really struggle with black and white thinking, my brain doesn't allow the grey. And from August 2022 to now, there has been a lot of hard.

One day I was talking to one of my life coaches and said I couldn't do something and from somewhere in the ether, someone whispered in my ear, "Yet." and the power of it hit me right between the eyes. I've incorporated it into my daily life ever since.

Here are a few of the ways it appears:

I don't know how to do that...yet.

I'm scared to try that...for now.

My goal is to be neutral in this situation...for now.

Another piece was recently added by my sweet doggie I Love Lucy who talked to me about, "This moment."

As in, "I haven't fully resolved my feelings about this relationship but in this moment, I am happy/at ease/calm."

I recently read a little piece by BrightWanderer along the same idea:

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned "forever" into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like...if you open a coffee shop and run it for awhile and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it's a "failed" business. If you write a book or two, then decided that you don't actually want to keep doing that, you're a "failed" writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for awhile, and then stops working and you get divorced, it's a "failed" marriage.

The only acceptable "win condition" is you "keep doing that thing forever." A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on, is considered less valuable or not a "real" friendship. A hobby that you do for awhile and then are done with is a "phase" or, alternatively, a "pity" that you don't do that thing anymore. A fandom is "dying" because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it's okay to be sad that it ended too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success...I don't think that's doing us any good at all.
-brightwanderer.tumblr.com

People like to say that the only thing that's certain in this life is death and taxes. I'd like to add: and change. Things are just not going to stay the same. I'm reminded to keep looking for those glimmers!

And that goes for this extra blog post I wrote this week about ManChild and the joys of raising a teen. I will keep looking for the glimmers there too!

Someday, the happy sweetness that is ManChild's soul, will return in a more consistent way. Look at his happy little 2 year old face!:

THE RANCH:

Friend Bonnie sent me these pics that she took:

Waiting for breakfast:

And let's just gaze upon their beauty for a moment shall we? Sigh...❤️🥰 And also, Rayn, the smaller grey is an average size horse! She looks like a pony next to Wynter!

Speaking of Rayn, last week I talked a little about how I think her eyesight is deteriorating. This week I noticed even more signs, I suppose because I'm looking for them. She was crowding me at the gate and I put my hand up and out toward her face and asked her to give me some space. Instead of backing off she kept coming forward and whapped the left side of her face into my hand and then jerked back, completely startled. She also hit the left side of her face into the golf cart and threw her head up in surprise. I looked into both her eyes and her left pupil has grey in it. Damn. And Bonnie noticed something going on the right as well. My poor girlie. I hate this for her.

The glimmer is that over the past couple of months Bonnie and I have both noticed that she's gotten very soft and sweet with us. Now I see that it probably has something to do with being unable to see much. Wynter is being less pushy and she's being less reactive. It's good to see them get along better :-) The video of Rayn and Wynter at the top of this post is from August of 2018 when we lived in Colorado and they were buddies. I think having so much more space was much better for them. Plus her eyesight was better!

•••

Sigh:

That gate was on its last legs anyway but jeez.

Another sigh:

A single ant bit me 🙄

A new, weird centipede thing:

Someone says this is a Carolina Praying Mantis. It was small, maybe 1.5 inches long:

I was cooking the other day and had to laugh at my view:

Do you see her? Always making sure I'm within eyesight🥰

I just don't know if Oliver will be big enough (literally tall enough) to breed goats this fall. Maybe by winter? I really want to have baby goat events again! Also, let's just gaze in wonder at Poppy's "bangs" shall we?

THE MEMES: