The Beauty of Not Knowing

I don't want to know what I'll be doing in 6 months.

For 5 years, my days have been meticulously planned from early morning to late evening. Get up, get dressed, bring the goats from pasture to milking parlour, milk the goats, bring the milk to the cheesekitchen and the goats back to pasture, wash the milking equipment, clean the milking parlour. Have a coffee and check emails. Don't forget to eat something. Don't forget to brush teeth. Check the fences and fix them. Move water and feed.

Squeeze in some writing wherever possible and feel shitty about not being able to squeeze in enough.

On and on it goes until we fall into bed, late at night, bone-tired and wishing this would end.

Once the farm is sold (keep your fingers crossed, please), I don't want to have a plan. I want to get up whenever, wherever, and enjoy a slow breakfast with my family. I want to have the luxury of time to listen to my daughter tell me about her newest projects and look through my husband's newest photographs. I want to sit among trees and think about nothing and everthing. I want to watch the Milky Way inch across the night sky, and marvel at the beauty of the world.

I don't want to own anything but what I need every day and only as much as I can carry. Plus an old car. I want the freedom of going from A to B with a hundred detours, not knowing what or where B actually is.

I don't want to worry about monetising every minute of my day, because that's what you have to do to survive as a small farmer and artist. Maybe 24/7 monetisation worries are a simple reality of end-stage capitalism? I have no clue andI don't care anymore.

Most of you experienced this kind of exhaustion of juggling multiple jobs, trying to stay afloat financially but barely managing it, and keeping up the grind just to be able to eat and pay the rent. Some of you, when hearing friends talk about going on vacation, have forgotten what a work-free, worry-free day feels like. Some of you might be on antidepressants to get through their days, and some might be grateful they don't have the budget to turn themselves into an alcoholic.

You are not alone.

If you think I sound like I'm going through a midlife crisis, you're probably right. I've had several. They pop up every 5 to 10 years, and they've always led to necessary change. I'm not made for the usual "pick a job at age 16 and stick to it until you die" scheme.

And I doubt many of us are.

I highly recommend midlife crises to anyone who's past toddlerhood. You reflect on your past, on what you really want from life, and what weights you down and needs shedding. The older you get, the more wisdom you'll hopefully accumulate, and the wiser each new midlife crisis resolution will be.

No guarantees, though. You might end up with a farm during an economic crisis that sucks all lifeblood out of you.

For now, I'm still organizing my days methodically – protecting my morning writing time, fitting in house renovations, equipment sales, and closing down the farm & cheesemaking business step by small step.

We still don't know where we'll go after this. The only answer I have is: Away, together.

And it's perfect.