friday evening

Getting ready for the weekend. I can never get enough of these photos, or these moments for that matter.

Sorry, I’ll try to take some other nice shots today to bring a bit of variety in here 🙂 Right now it’s still dark outside and raining like mad.
I have a million plans for the weekend, as always. I never manage to get it all done and every weekend I have to deliberately stop myself from thinking in that “to-do list” way. I like having plans and making lists but they also make me feel pressured in a “it’s on the list, it has to be done” kind of way. I need to remind myself time and again that I am the one making the lists and that the things on it should be fun, not an obligation (things like building a lightbox for starting seeds and cleaning, but also things like finishing a knitting project, sewing something, baking cookies etc.).
I am learning to get as much done as I really feel like doing and saving other ideas for another day, or another weekend really. The stitching on my new quilt is about a third done. It would only take a couple of hours to finish it, but I haven’t touched it in weeks and that’s fine. I know I’ll get back to it when I really feel like stitching.
Bottom line from all this rambling: It’s not about how much we get done, but instead about how much we enjoy the process of doing the things we get done instead of just crossing them off a list.
I’m still learning.

And I should stop trying to put my thoughts into words. Even I have troubling reading what I’ve just written, though I know what I mean in my head 🙂

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this time last year

I was still in Canada, on a different farm, learning more than I ever imagined I would and loving every day of it.
Between learning to care for goats,

and alpacas

and chickens

I was lucky enough to take jumping lessons on this beautiful mare.

I should mention that I was sick when this picture was taken, so that’s why I’m wearing about 5 sweaters at once. I shouldn’t even have got on a horse that day, but it was my last day and I really wanted one good picture of me jumping to show off at the barn at home.

I wasn’t ready to go home and start working on my thesis…I just wanted to stay and learn more about those animals, and gardening, and soapmaking, and building stuff.

done!

Almost a year since I started working on it and now it’s done! I handed my thesis in on Monday and now I can just pray that there are no big flaws in it. I won’t know for about 3 months so I better stop worrying about it I guess.

It feels strange, being done with school and knowing you will never for the rest of your life do so much studying and learning by heart again…not that I’ll miss it!
It hasn’t really sunk in that I’m practically unemployed now until I find a job. Not that I’m bored…in fact I have so many things to do that I don’t even know where to start! And those don’t even include the big and necessary spring clean and packing up my school stuff.
I’m still waiting for the jubilant feeling to set in but maybe it will be the same as with all my exams…the longer I have been studying and working for them the less satisfying is a good result, at least that’s how it feels like for me (though my head knows it should be the other way around). Maybe because an A is after all just a mark on paper and in the end I just regret the days and weeks and months of my life wasted with forcing myself to work for it, when there are so many better, more colourful, more meaningful things to do.
God, I’m feeling philosophical today 😉 Finishing a chapter of your life does that to you I guess.
And reading back over that it sounds much gloomier than I intended…I really do feel happy now and maybe a sense of accomplishment will follow soon. I did after all finish climbing that mountain, the size of which I could not even guess at when I started out five years ago.

If I’d known its size I wouldn’t even have started out.