The Point of it All

There has been a lot on my mind lately.  So why has my Brain been so quiet?  Well, I think it's because the lot has been about the why, the point, the bigger meaning and I don't have all the answers yet.

The last few weeks have been especially challenging.  Many, many things have not gone according to plan.  I plan projects for a living, so I know things don't usually go according to the plan, but these last few weeks have been especially challenging.

The interesting thing about all of these set backs and challenges is that the outcomes have been generally positive.

• Emergency surgery on Noodle saved her life.  She gets her stitches out tomorrow and can go back to being the full-fledged puppy and protector that she wants to be.
• A hail storm took most of the fruit from our new trees and shredded much of our veggie garden.  There was no property damage, the peach tree still has enough fruit for eating and the veggies seem to have recovered.
• My combs and cutters were "lost in the mail" on the way back from being sharpened in Oregon.  I was able to replace them with new sets prior to my shearing appointments and found a local resource for sharpening.
• Equipment failure during shearing, twice. Yes, twice.  The switch on my 4-year old handset failed halfway through shearing an alpaca.  We finished shearing her by hand.  I bought a new handset, which failed on it's second alpaca.  Again, we had to finish shearing by hand.  The second handset is undergoing warranty repairs now, so hopefully I'll be back in business next weekend.  The good news is, that we've been able to reschedule and I may have a new mentee.
• Compiling the technical requirements for my day job project and the subsequent fit/gap analysis have taken a lot longer than anticipated.  I don't think the overall impact will be significant but it will be nice when we're in the throws of development.
• A family of raccoons tried to move to the farm yesterday.  The dogs and alpacas were not pleased.  While I went out to see what was going on, The Alpaca Dog pushed by (or maybe over) me, went behind the hay pile and came out with a raccoon.  He killed it and promptly went back for the next.  When it was over, he had killed three raccoons, my neighbor and I killed the fourth and the momma raccoon has not been seen.  The good news is that The Alpaca Dog has no wounds from the incident and is now current on all of his shots.
• Flight delays.  Ugh.  While not causing a significant impact, they have caused me to miss my shuttle home several times.  This has me looking for a day job that is not only interesting and meaningful, but also allows me to sleep at home every night.

So, what's the point of all of this?  To show you how good I am at seeing the bright side of things?  No.  I think it's to remind me why we're doing what we're doing.

It would be pretty easy to take each of these challenges as a reason not to do what we're doing.  But I've been trying to think of them as hurdles in a foot race.  Hurdles are meant to slow you down and help you focus on what you're doing.  They're not meant to trip you up, even if they do sometimes.

So I've been journaling.  A lot.  Refining the vision.  How it feels.  What it looks like.

Change is never easy and we are changing the way we live our life.  We have big goals and are making progress toward achieving them.  There are gates to navigate and milestones to hit, but the point is to make a difference and achieve a dream... actually the point is to achieve a couple of dreams.