Let's Buy A Farm! Who's With Me?

I adore Jenna Woginrich. I follow her blog and read her books and daydream that I'm going to be as cool as she is because she homesteads on a six acre farm in upstate New York, raising sheep for both wool and meat. She has, not one, but two horses, a brood of chickens, a piggy or two, a border collie and a turkey (or two, maybe more) among other animals that I'm probably forgetting to include on my list. 

I just finished reading her latest book Cold Antler Farm, her memoir about growing food and celebrating life on a scrappy six-acre homestead as the cover reads.

On the second to the last page of the memoir, Jenna talks about the motto of the Scottish Mackenzie clan: "I shine, not burn." 


Here's Jenna's reflection about that family motto: 

"What a beautiful way to see the world! We live in a culture of victims and anger. We are surrounded by nonstop news and pundits frothing with rage and fear and disaster, crime, and threats. All around us is this fire, this burning. And if you let yourself fall into it you too will be consumed by it. You'll become angry, depressed, unhealthy, scared, and worried. You will stop living the life you were meant to live. Why would you not choose love? Who cares about the fallout?"  

Jenna goes on to write: "Not everyone can make their wildest dreams come true, but hell, everyone can try, can't they? Why do so many people choose to put off happiness? Or choose to not try for it? Why do they do things that make them sad? Why do they choose fear and anger and step into the fire that consumes them instead of following the fire that lights the path toward something better?  

She concludes the memoir by stating that she chooses to shine, not burn. Then she admonishes you, dear gentle reader, to "go light your torches." 

Hell, freakin' yeah. 

I may never leave this quiet suburban street to raise a small flock of sheep for their wool or watch the sun burn off the mist over yonder meadow as I gather eggs every morning. Indeed, that may be a pipe dream to distract me from the choices that I've made to saddle me with a mortgage in generic suburbia in the first place. 

But I do know this: God whacked me over the head, metaphorically speaking, when I tumbled down the stairs, fracturing my leg. I had known for quite sometime that I was allowing myself to be distracted from my writing. 

The one thing that is my passion, I subjugated. Procrastinated. Made excuses for why I wasn't writing even though I desperately longed to do so.  

Enough. No more distractions.

Henceforth, I choose to shine, not burn.  

Thank you, Jenna, for the eloquent reminder.