Anxious and Worrying

This is going to be a lot of work. Ok lots of things are a lot of work. Not all of them are worth doing, either. This is worth doing, it really is. Right?

Making a fundamental shift in your lifestyle is always difficult. Deciding that we are no longer going to have soda in the house, or that we're not going to eat McDonald's food anymore, those probably don't seem like big feats to someone who grew up living that way. Trying to pry an entire household from the sugary-sweet, boucing-off-the-walls teat of PepsiCo is a challenge akin to moving mountains. Saying we're going to eat more vegetables. We're going to stop eating hormone injected over-medicated grocery store meat. Not only that, we're going to grow more of our own vegetables, and eat them. We're going to plant them, weed them, water them, and harvest them. We're going to blanch, freeze, and can them. We're going to haul buckets and boxes of extra produce to the Farmer's Market to help pay for the costs of growing what we eat. We're going to feed and water chickens and keep the coop clean, picking eggs every day. We're going to chase the escape artist chicken around the yard like idiots twice a week. No only that, we are going to raise up chickens to butcher, process, clean, and freeze. We're going to rake up grass clippings and mulch the garden. We've got to build raised beds and turn a thousand square feet of soil with a shovel. We're going to do all this, and probably a thousand other things we haven't even thought of yet.

Sure, we've done it before, but it's always been a hobby, never a lifestyle. We have always been caught somewhere between the shallow materialistic world of instant gratification and disposable everything, and the idea, the ideal of self-sufficiency. Want one life, and live in the other because we're too lazy to practice what we would preach (if we were the types to preach). We don't really know what we're doing, or where we're going, just that this feels better. So somehow we're going to change the mind of a teenage boy who grew up with a Nintendo controller in his hand, and not a shovel. We're going to raise two little girls into this world, teaching them that this is the right way. How can we be so sure? Maybe in the grand scheme of things, there's no difference between us and the suburban family that obsesses about fancy cars and wouldn't know the first thing about growing a seed. Maybe in the end, it won't matter one bit.

I can say this with absolute conviction. I feel good about this. That's all. In a lifetime of being worried about this or that, and too scared or lazy to change things that I wished I could change, I'm going to take a leap of faith here and trust myself. I feel good about this. So even if I fail, that's not the end of it, it's just a bump in the path.

Yes, it's going to be a lot of work, but I really believe that it's worth it. It's a scary thought, knowing that I'll probably fail at more things than I succeed, but it's worth doing. I know, eventually, I can do it, I can change my life for the better, change the lives of my children for the better. And so can you.