Sagebrush & Solar

This week, a friend at work asked, “how haven’t you two had a mental breakdown yet?” Another commented about how they were surprised we haven’t given up yet and thrown in the towel.

This made me laugh, because we’ve definitely had several small breakdowns— we just have no choice but to move forward with this project. We have two big reasons for this: one, we’ve invested a lot of cash into this build. If we were to walk away now, we would be left with a partially constructed building and a LOT of wasted money. Two, this is our dream. We dream of a life where we can be self sufficient, away from town. Where I can have all of the chickens I want, Keith can finally learn how to bladesmith and our kids can roam free.

After our conversation, it got me thinking about resiliency, humor and mindset — three things that have really helped us move forward and maintain a (mostly) positive attitude, despite the numerous curveballs that have been thrown our way. Though Reasons One and Two have definitely been a driving factor behind moving forward, our attitude has been driven by our humor and mindset, which directly impacts resiliency.

At this point in the game, our first response is to laugh and say, “are you kidding me?” when something crappy happens. It’s almost a running joke at this point when we say we’re planning on pouring our exterior walls next week — we’ve been saying ‘next week’ for weeks now. We’ll find something humorous about the situation and let it roll off our shoulders. Is there disappointment? Plenty of it. We just don’t let it saturate every waking moment or delay. We’ve been on this ride for the last eight months; who knows how much longer we will be riding out these delays and setbacks.

When it comes to mindset, we constantly remind ourselves of three things.

One, so many of our obstacles have been completely out of our control. Or, the path forward to move past a delay is out of our control. Whether that’s waiting for an architect to design building plans, or for a permit to take 6-8 weeks for approval, or to redo insulated concrete forms that were incorrectly cut and stacked, stressing about delays just brings unnecessary anxiety and sadness.

So, two: we focus on the future. We hold onto daydreams and images of drinking coffee in a warm living room by the roaring fireplace, chatting on our patio after Luke has gone to bed, tending to a garden and learning how to preserve a harvest, watching Luke feed and play with chickens, working in the shop on projects, working out in the garage gym — the list is endless, and these images help. I’m not sure how much I believe in manifestation, but if there’s even a slim chance it works, the amount of daydreaming we do should hopefully help speed things up.

And lastly, three: we appreciate our now, no matter how difficult it sometimes feels. We have a roof over our heads, a warm place to sleep, a beautiful and inquisitive little boy, careers we enjoy, and a wonderful support system. We have each other. Our delays are hard, but it could be worse. I’m not saying we aren’t frustrated, or occasionally upset or angry or down about how the build is going. It’s going a lot different than we anticipated. But we’re a lot closer to our dream now than we’ve ever been before, and that’s more than we could ever ask for.