Too many things, too little brainspace…

I was feeling overwhelmed this afternoon while trying to organize my thoughts around my various interests. Every time I would identify one and the next steps that I wanted to take to follow up that interest, I would think of two or three related items that I also wanted to explore. On top of all of this, I thought of all of the content that I felt like I needed to create in order to work towards being able to make a living as a creator. In an effort to both get some shit out of my head and get some blog content out into the world, I figured I’d write down as many of those things as I can think of along with their associated next steps.

Gardening

The thing most present on my mind is the garden. Ashe and I are on vacation right now so I can’t even look at the garden, let alone work in it. Much of the garden was just starting to fruit as we left, so I’m sure that things are starting to ripen up even more. There were a couple of ripe raspberries before we left and the gooseberries were just starting to turn red, so I’m hoping that the blackberries and blueberries will ripen up next.

I also managed to transplant a ton of plants from the basement into the front yard raised bed right before we left. I’m hoping that they’re doing okay even though I haven’t been around to check on them every day. I’m trying to remind myself that the garden that I’m trying to create is as low-maintenance as possible so that I can travel or have my focus elsewhere and I’ll still have a harvest. It may not be the biggest harvest, but I’m working towards creating a self-nurturing ecosystem to build a garden that balances resiliency with productivity. It’s still hard to not feel like a neglectful parent.

Ashe and I also just received the two Greenstalk planters that we ordered a bunch of weeks ago. We’re excited to get those out on the patio. Ashe wants to do up an edible flower garden in one and I’m considering trying to create a tomato and basil stack or something. I don’t really know what I want to do with it, but I like the idea of planting all of the plants needed for a particular type of dish or cuisine in one themed planter. From what I understand, that will meant that the plants should have similar ecosystem requirements and the plants should support each other as companions.

I feel like I need to work harder on the planning side of the garden too. I want to start collecting information on the plants in my garden so that I have that information to reference for the years to come as the garden changes over time. I know that I have a particularly bad working memory, so doing what I can to create hard records is going to be very appreciated by future me.

The idea of starting this task of information recording is overwhelming. There are so many plants and so much information to record and I can barely tell one tomato plant from another at this time. But I think that what I might do is to create a special type of blog post that I create and update over time for each plant in my garden. Then as I have more information about a plant as it changes, I can grow the information I have and I can share it with others.

Content Creation

Being on vacation this week, I had hoped to do a bunch of filming. I have not. I’ve done a little filming just to keep in the habit, really, but I have been much more interested in taking in the experiences of our vacation than I am in capturing those experiences on film. Which is fine except for the fact that I feel like if content creation is something that I have trouble making time for while working full-time, I feel like I should be taking every opportunity that I can to practice my craft when I have the time. But then putting that pressure on myself while I’m supposed to be on vacation and recovering from the daily grind probably isn’t great for me either, so I feel like I just can’t win in that area.

Beyond those particular internal pressures, I’m starting to feel the pressure of not remembering as much of my past as I would like to and so now I want to record the things that I’m doing so that I can hold them to me all the tighter for the future. I think this is creating additional anxiety though because it’s forcing me to live in the future and I’m missing out on the present.

I’m also acutely aware that the more time I spend filming, the more time I’ll have to make for editing in the future and I already feel like I don’t have time for all of the things that I want to do. I think I really need to pare down my focus quite a bit.

I also feel like I want to write in my blog more but it’s taken a bit of a back seat to my videography. The filming is new and there’s so much to learn so that inherently keeps my interest. When I do it right, the product that I create is flashy and so much more fully representative of real life than anything I can hope to capture in words. But the fact of the matter is that nothing clears my head quite as well as blogging and there’s a much better effort to reward ratio. So even though it may not be as exciting, I feel like I need to make blog writing a priority.

Sustainability Efforts

I feel like I’m doing really poorly at being sustainable right now. I use Amazon way more than I should, I participate in fast fashion, I eat out more than I should, etc etc etc. I don’t feel like I’m just not doing as well as I could at living sustainably but I feel like I’m doing really badly at it.

I do have a couple of ideas on how I can improve some things. I’ve already been diverting as much cardboard as possible to the garden to help add some nutrients to the soil. I want to build in some compost buckets into the raised beds that we’re putting into the garden to see if I can experiment with a hybrid bokashi-type system and help us to waste less food in the house.

I’ve also been looking into the idea of making my own clothes for a while and I’ve been trying to find the motivation to take my first steps. Ashe and I went into this local slow-fashion boutique of clothes made by hand from upcycled fabrics and so many of the designs were very close to my ideal fashion if they were in my size. Seeing such beautiful things in person and seeing how they are crafted made it feel like something finally clicked and I felt my interest lock-on again. So (sew?), we’ll see if that motivation continues further when Ashe and I get back home after this weekend.

I also want to add more sustainability to my cooking. I’m already making a start by investing in growing my own food which will reduce how dependent I am on others to feed myself. I want to work towards creating meals more out of what we have on hand and making smaller meals more frequently to reduce how much food we waste. I also want to be more organized to have pantry staples on hand that I know how to use and make food from without necessarily needing a recipe. Learning how to ferment and preserve food is somewhere on this list too. Learning things about cooking can feel especially overwhelming as I could probably write at least a paragraph on each of these topics by themselves.

The tip of the iceberg…

I have a bunch more thoughts that I should probably write down, but this is all that I have the stamina for at this time. I’m going to try and take more time to blog though so that I can organize my thoughts a bit more regularly.

Do you struggle with having too many things on your mind all the time? If so, let me know in the comments what you do to clear your head.