Well, it’s been quite a few weeks. I’m still in Texas, but I’ll be leaving the state later today, headed for New Mexico, and then Arizona. Where to begin? I guess I should just get into it: my 20 days WWOOFing in central Texas were tough for me. I wrote lots of journal entries and blog post false-starts. I’m glad I waited to post anything.
I was WWOOFing at a small farm, run by a young couple (about my age), Logan and Geer. The land has belonged to Logan’s family for a century, and the two of them began living on it a few years ago, after it had been largely unused for a long time. They raise about a dozen goats, a few dozen chickens, and some assorted other birds. There’s also a beautiful pecan orchard on their 75 acres, where they host Hipcampers, which provides their primary income right now. They live a minimalist lifestyle, with a well on their property for water, composting toilets, and internet service limited to their T-mobile phone hotspots (my Verizon was 3G at best, and often entirely unavailable, which contributed to my being out of touch). One of their values is land stewardship and regenerative practices. Texas’ natural ecosystem is upsettingly out of equilibrium. Logan and Geer are attempting to regenerate their land by responsibly grazing their animals and enabling the native flora and fauna to reestablish themselves in a sustainable way. Also sharing their home are Geer’s parents, Jack and Missy, who are there during the pandemic, two cats, and two lovely dogs (as well as Jack and Missy’s two dogs, who were less significant to me, personally). Logan is also about 3 months pregnant, so there will soon be another in the household!
I took lots of photos, and I may include some in a later post, but I encourage you to check out the photos and captions in my Instagram. If you don’t have an Instagram account, you can see the relevant posts without an account here, chronologically: goat, pecan orchard, my tent, cattle, turkey, rooster, music, baby goats, my favorite dog, my hosts.
Let me just get this out of the way now (maybe I’ll write a separate post on my play-by-play of my experience). Like I said, I had a tough time. At least at first.
For much of my time there, I felt out of my power. Disequilibrated, perhaps. Adrift.
Those feelings started almost as soon as I got there, and I spent a long time trying to understand the source and proceedings of my discomfort. It started with just feelings of discomfort and ennui that I couldn’t place. I considered that perhaps it was related to the fact that my hosts are in conflict with a few of their neighbors, and maybe I was feeling some sort of lack of safety being deep in Trump country with my hosts being stressed about the neighbors. I considered that maybe it was simply that I was stuck in one place, without the freedom of the open road that I’d grown accustomed to. There was certainly an element of feeling isolated from the world due to my highly-spotty cell service, and my shyness about constantly asking my hosts to share their mobile hotspots with me.
If I’m to break it down in classic Wandering Mystic fashion, I think there are a number of things it comes down to. And these things all provide me with insight and lessons into the way I am, how I interact with the world, and what I need in order to feel right with things.
The external factors I identified here as contributing to my feelings of dis-ease generally come down to three categories:
Physical discomfort
The nights and mornings were generally cold, and then of course came the polar vortex, during which time it was all we could do to stay warm. I was disconnected from the world because of very slow (or wholly absent) internet service; and for whatever reason, I felt awkward asking my hosts to use their hotspots. There were animals everywhere, and I had to get used to having dog and cat hair on me at all times; that’s very much a me thing, but I just had to get used to it. I was using a composting toilet, which also took getting used to, although pooping outside was pretty nice. The house wasn’t super comfortable to hang out in. Part of that is because my hosts explicitly don’t believe in furniture and believe in sitting on the floor directly or on cushions. (They believe, perhaps correctly, that furniture is ergonomically unhealthy for us.) The furniture that was there was sparse, covered in pet hair, or torn up by the animals. I also wasn’t entirely sure of the house rules, including what was expected of me. I often felt uncomfortable jut lounging about.
Occupational uncertainty
When I got there, it wasn’t made clear what I would be doing. I was shown how to do the basic animal maintenance. We also built a fence together and did work preparing for the polar vortex. But overall, there was a lot of down time, and I never knew if I was doing enough or the right things. Expectations were never clearly laid out, and I think that was really hard for me. I just now sent my hosts a message with this feedback, and offered to help them write up expectations and house rules. It was only in my last few days that my hosts started to make clear how much they appreciated my presence and assistance. I eventually realized that expectations were low, and that I simply had a lot of down time. I realized that this wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for in this experience. I wanted to work, and not having an outlet for that felt demoralizing and made me feel useless.
Interpersonal compatibility
My hosts are nice people with compatible values to my own, but I just didn’t feel a click with them. I think a lot of it is simply cultural. Whereas my WWOOF host in North Carolina quickly took to asking me probing personal and philosophical questions, my hosts in Texas hardly asked me anything at all about myself. While they were pretty open about sharing about their own lives (both in response to my questions and unprompted), perhaps they were expecting me to share about myself unprompted. Perhaps there’s an element of them not wanting to pry that kept them from asking about me. I simply don’t know. But I did realize that it didn’t feel great. It made me feel distant and unconnected, because it felt like the people around me simply weren’t interested in me. (Again, I don’t know whether or not this is true, but it was my feelings, however disconnected from reality they are.)
I came to this place directly from New Orleans, where I’d had several authentic, vulnerable, deep, and honest connections with people around me. And I was surrounded by magic and artistry and creativity at every turn. I came into this WWOOFing experience with this mindset. So when I encountered folks with different interpersonal approaches and culture, I think I succumbed to something resembling culture shock. I neither understood nor felt how I could relate to these people, nor how I could contribute to this space using my unique abilities.
And maybe that was the hardest thing about it: I felt like there wasn’t a niche for me to be fully myself. When I am fully myself, I am silly, clever, probing, authentic, vulnerable, challenging, insightful, empathetic. I love to hold space for people’s feeling and challenges. I love to guide, advise, and coach people. I love to be asked for advice and wisdom. I love to empower people’s stillness, gentleness, and inner wisdoms. I didn’t feel right being most of these things in that space. And in contrast to New Orleans, where I did feel right being most of those, I think I felt stifled and impotent.
And this impotence, once it had taken hold, spread into other areas of my psyche. The most common part of my psyche where it manifested was in “WTF am I doing?”-land. It started with “WTF am I doing here, at this particular farm? Why am I at a place for 3 weeks where I have nothing special to contribute?” But it inevitably advanced to questioning what I’m doing on my wander, where it’s leading me, and whether I need to just drop this whole charade and get an office job. Now that I’m on the move again, these feelings are less prevalent; but when they do pop up, sometimes very randomly, the pangs are sharp and aggressive.
Another part of my psyche that my feelings of impotence led into was that I several times spiraled into lonely feelings where I lamented how few people seem to care what I think, and how there may be little hope for me to have the impact on world that I feel I have the potential for. I found myself wondering whether it’s time for me to start getting used to the idea of having little or no impact on the broader world, and that being okay. It’s self-defeating thinking, but perhaps the breaking of my delusions of grandeur are grounded in a reality that I need to start to accept.
I haven’t accepted this reality yet, of course. Which is why I write this blog post, speaking into the void, secretly hoping to have a broader inspirational impact on the world, beyond simply keeping my friends and family up to date on my movements and musings. But I suppose that will have to do for now, my dear friend or family reader. Consider yourself up to date on some of my internal experiences in the past few weeks.
But for now, I must mosey on to New Mexico. Wander on, friends.
