Can't change the way things look...

Just the way you look at things.

I read something the other day about doing things that bring you joy just because. Not because you 'should' or to get ahead. I sort of dropped out of the get ahead game a while ago and after being here walking around in some gas station flip flops for a few years, I'm not going anywhere. 

Or am I. 

What do I do for joy anyway? I used to eat fine foods, shop for fancy wine, travel, shop for furniture, paint, redecorate, have dinner parties, arrange flowers, buy shoes...look for dolphins on the horizon if near water. I feel like I'm reaching here---have I had joy in recent years? Decades? Did I deplete all my dopamine from the adrenaline rush of running my tiny restaurants? The rush of restaurant work...ownership, kitchen, servers, bar---it's a certain kind of drive that isn't easily duplicated. Maybe an ER? Stand up comedy? First responders? Cliff diving? I never bounced back after that decade really. It was fun and creative and I got to dabble in all my favorite things just a little bit every day. Food, decor, curating music, directing an event, finance. It ticked a lot of boxes. And restaurant people are fun and we stay up too late and smoke and drink and tell hilarious stories and play cards. It was a great group. 

But after a decade of lusty hedonism, I pulled the plug at 40 and decided I needed to go live in the boonies and raise chickens in 2005. A lot of my life has been knee jerk reaction moves. Sort of big ticket no refunds one way ticket moves. I went from being in the center of social fun making to literal rural crickets. I'm kind of quiet in my "off" times so it felt good for the first five years. Then I was done and I was stuck. Real estate market had tanked, I had sunk all my money into that estate and its renovation and chickens, it turns out, are a lot of work and loud and make no money. 

I can get wistful at times for what I left behind but it's fleeting. Google Photos brings up those This Week in 2016 memories and I say...awwwww, look at that awesome deep soaker bathtub and oh the blueberries were so sweet this is the week I harvested. What the photos don't show though is that the birds got most of my blueberries, the mosquitos in that area of the yard were comparable to the marshes of Florida, I had to be fast and needed a ladder to get the fruit. 

The apples on the trees were sour, the pears were eaten by deer, the grass would be up to my hip bone if I didn't shell out $300/mo to Ricardo to cut "caminos" paths and leave the rest to go wild...the herbs and beans needed picking, the tomatoes never did as well as I thought, the compost needed turning, the back patios always needed pressure washing or sealant. The roof leak, the cleaning, the Airbnb guests, the constant laundry---cleaning a too big house and wrangling the weekend workers who were gonna show up whether I was organized or not, so I'd invent projects at times to feel "efficient". I'll stop there, you know what I mean. It's quickening my breath just thinking about it all. But that verdant lifestyle was a shit ton of work. The winter was a nice break but the house was cold block construction and took $600/mo just to take the frigid out. I’m not fooled by those photographs.

Now I'm temporarily living in a rental "house" scrap yard in Mexico caring for a bunch of dogs who aren't mine. I have no lawn, just desert sand and some stuff that grows in it. There are two mango trees and I'm allergic to mangos. they'll be dropping soon and I'll put them out in a basket for people to take as they pass. I rake dog poo 2x a day and that's the yard work. It's not photo worthy, any of it. But I'm not stressed about it that's for sure.

Today I walked ONE dog at a time and took the ones who don't bother me for walks---for walks. Like Brindle. or Niles. I walked to a bakery that sent out a message that said new donuts and hoagie rolls were fresh from the oven...it's a dark and hot place and the lady is always sorta grumpy but hey. A cinnamon roll is a cinnamon roll. it's 50cents. It's pretty okay. it's not life changing or made with real butter or anything but if I squint my eyes past the litter and new abandoned puppies in the vacant lot on the corner I can pretend it's Provence. Not really, but I'm not there. So to preserve my mental health I have to squeeze life out of being here and being sort of disappointed most days. 

If I change how I look at things it might be "joy" in a new way. it can't be food shopping or furniture flips. They don't have that stuff here. So, I got some small bags of puppy chow and brought them back to the little babies who were hiding in rubble and practicing their Big Dog Barks. Niles was a perfect gentleman and great on leash and he just really REALLY wants to be someone's best boy and be part of a family. Hopefully I can place these dogs with some of the new contacts and other rescue services I'm hooking up with in the next few days. I can help these other pups more if I can get these used -to- be- babies in homes. I'm capping my ability to feed and pay for the vet at 12, and that's me eating a lotta beans. And the occasional, sort of joyful, cinnamon roll. 

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Thank you for your support and thank you for reading! I really appreciate it.