Enough already.

Can I find my softer side by losing everything?

I'm finding that this mental health journey I'm on (disguised as a dog rescue) is defined by doing less. A lot less. As I mix my poo compost and decide which bags are "cooked" enough to spread on the orange trees, I'm in the most basic state. Soil. Microbes. Carbon. Nitrogen. 

I started with 6 recycled feed bags full and made it into a huge thing. Then 12. I had the Helper Who Never Shows Up dig a hole so I could sink the bags inside. A future of Red Wiggler Worms surely. What a boon in the desert! 

Go sit down somewhere already, my voice said to my other voice. 

After 60 days most bags had turned to soil and compost and I've dragged a couple across the yard like a corpse from the weight of the moisture. I know better than to launch projects that require two persons when you can't rely on the other person to come back. The Mexican guys in Mexico are VASTLY different than the Mexican guys I work with in the US. And that's fair. Also most people here are pirates and likely sitting on some buried cash and are older dudes who just want to do stuff to make it look like they have a job and cash to buy beer. I don't blame them a bit for not wanting to dig my worm holes on a freelance basis. That's the other part. They'd rather work 5 days a week laying bricks and working like a chain gang for a salary of $50 a week. Comradery, bird in the hand and all. 

I've got to let that Project Polly part of me go. For now anyway. I rent. I'm in an industrial park in Mexico. There are no stores to buy things. I have no car. No plants. No Home Depot. No Goodwill. The walls are cement so I can't just hang a mirror or something and about the only thing you can buy is instant coffee and used baby clothes at someone's roadside yard sale. It's such an itch I need to scratch that I made a project out of dog poop. The only raw ingredient I can count on. 

I like Project Polly, I do. But she's grabbed so much attention in the last 25 years, I'd like to give another side of me a chance. When I found out I was stuck with this ugly ass rental furniture and there were no thrifty groovy vintage stores or anything here I was catatonic for like six months. Debbie the Decorator is Polly's cousin but they're kind of the same. If I can't do Projects then who am I? 

I'm not sure who or what this other me looks like but I've emptied the vessel so much that I'm pretty sure even the quietest side of my shadow self or better self will emerge soon. Is it safe to come out? She's not so sure. Are you going to require me to drive cross country through foreign soil, replace a roof, till an acre, raise 100 chickens, buy more real estate, start a restaurant or empty a septic tank? No. Mostly because I sold all that shit and no longer have any money to buy more things to make projects out of.

I read recently that women who didn't have reliable male back up or who were required to take on many masculine tasks actually override their feminine energy. And for sure I was so naive about what that meant when I started as a Business Woman that I nearly pushed my feminine side off a cliff to stand firmly as a No Baloney Betty in the restaurant industry. To some extent before that in political PR but that was mainly to keep the boss from treating me like his personal Barbie doll. Gross. 

I thought that I'd get taken advantage of just because I was a woman but it turns out the food and booze business is just rough on everyone and is full of shady characters. Most chefs eventually burn out, have mental health issues, trust issues, substance issues... and find it tricky to reinvent themselves after they leave the industry. It's just hard. You have to be hard to hold on, so I got hard and did more hard things after that. Farming! Huge expensive property rehabs! Weddings! Rural life! Alone! 

Dog rescue is softer I suppose, it's heartbreaking a lot of times but you have to do it with care and love because of course, there is no money and it's endless. I don't feel my Divine Feminine or anything but that could be because I've been wearing the same thread bare yoga pants and cheap tshirts and flip flops or mud boots for 2 years. No make up, tinted chapstick. I could use a hair cut. Most of my stuff has holes in it from the dogs. The desert is a sandstorm you can't get in front of. I'd like to know the feminine side that isn't worried about "pretty" though. Is that a thing? 

I feel like I'm Swedish Death Cleaning for an Ego Death. 

So I have decided that I'll compost two bags of poo instead of 12 and have started emptying some and putting the rest one at a time out at the trash. I've gotten the pantry shelf down to salt, sugar, pepper and honey. Cayenne. Olive oil when I can find it. The vitamin stash that was once 3 produce boxes full is down to a shoebox. I sold the oven I never used. Hot plate, crock pot, tea pot.

And I wait. If I'm really quiet I think the other side of me will emerge like a fox in the forest. She's out there, you can hear her sometimes. I've just never seen her.