Don't leave anything for later.
Later, the coffee gets cold.
Later, you lose interest.
Later, the day turns into night.
Later, people grow up.
Later, people grow old.
Later, life goes by.
Later, you regret not doing something...
When you had the chance.

Life is a fleeting dance, a delicate balance of moments that unfold before us, never to return in quite the same way again.

Regret is a bitter pill to swallow, a weight that bears down upon the soul with the burden of missed chances and unspoken words.

So, let us not leave anything for later. Let us seize the moments as they come, with hearts open and arms outstretched to embrace the possibilities that lie before us. For in the end, it is not the things we did that we regret, but the things we left undone, the words left unspoken, the dreams left unfulfilled.

- Toshikazu Kawaguchi,
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
(2015)


Wait for someone kind. 🌱
Wait for someone respectful, not only in the beginning stages of the relationship when things are bright and beautiful, but also when things get hard. Wait for someone who respects your boundaries and does not force you to do things that you’re not willing or ready to do.

Wait for someone who is giving and does not keep count of the good things they do for you.

Wait for someone who challenges you mentally. Someone who inspires you to be a better person.

Wait for someone who takes their time to learn and understand you.

Wait for someone who is consistent with their efforts in showing you how much they care about you.

Wait for someone who wants to be part of your world, and wants you to be part of theirs.

Wait for someone who lets you know you’re on their mind, someone who checks in on you, someone who wants you to know that they care for you.

Wait for someone who is willing to commit to you, someone who is willing to choose you.

Wait for someone who makes love feel easy, calm. Like coming home.

Wait for someone sincere. Someone who doesn’t confuse you because their actions match their words. Wait for someone honest.

Wait for someone who does their absolute best to not hurt you, someone who strives to protect your heart.

Wait for someone who will choose you over and over and over again. Love is a choice you make every single day. You deserve to find the kind of person who shows up for what you share, someone who believes in it.

Wait for someone who’s not perfect, but rather, real. Perfect is an illusion. Real is where you find something rare and special.

Wait for someone who reminds you that love was always meant to be soft. 🌱

(pause)

I am infinitely more than everything you are about to read... 😊

Personality: cordial, engaging, interested, upbeat, looking for and creating laughter, seeking truth, diving deep to gain knowledge and awareness, happy-go-lucky so that even when bumps come up they are either tai chi mediated or somehow navigated so that the moments and the days are not ruined - but rather learned from. I can be a passionate philosopher who walks along with a song in my head like an inspired teen.

Attitude: typically up for anything. Hmm...maybe see above as I may have blended these responses...lol...

Passions: Ah - good...if I am honest and look back over my distant, recent and everything in between life, I would say rooting for the underdogs is a true passion of mine. Art - and more specifically filmmaking and literary storytelling - be it fiction or non-fiction - are passions of mine. Travel and even simple changes of scene and scenery are passions of mine. I like for my immediate surroundings to be as stimulating and dynamic as the far off ones. As a young child I used to rearrange my bedroom just to experience all the possible combinations of arrangements. :D I always have been and likely always will be passionate about learning - whether it be "how to knit" or "going to law school" or learning about some larger physical skill.

Beliefs: Ooo...at this stage in the game it seems I gravitate toward an informal Taoism. Everything I hear and read from it resonates. Fits. Feels right. Makes sense. Beyond that I see all of us as children - be you 20, 50 or 90 years old. We fail, we flounder, we struggle, and we do just about anything and everything we can - and this is the content of "life." What is mundane to many is fascinating to me. I can be silent yet perceptive, and always ready to engage strangers - whether it's in the grocery aisle or the train or the city street. Everyone is truly fascinating and more than worthy of my time - until they're not, right? It is after all a two-way street so there are those learnings and incorporations. But I am endlessly hopeful and continue to swim forward through our great social dance. :)

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AbuaF7MMJ/?mibextid=wwXIfr

I think I have come to realize that if you want the universe to hear you you really need to be as clear and specific as you possibly can in letting it know what you want. Same in our interpersonal relationships themselves, right? Right. :)

I think what's written below is accurate. I've gotten many kudos for having written something so accurate and illustrative. But I believe I need to dial in and describe and define some specifics.

I'm a farmer. I farm before and after an off-farm job, and I farm on the weekends. I love this life and my goal is to be a full-time farmer ONLY who doesn't leave the farm to work another job. Every day I get closer and closer to realizing this reality. I grow food. I manage biological systems. I care for animals and plants. I experience life in some of its rawest forms. I work in blistering heat sometimes, nauseating humidity, paralyzing frigidity, and torrential downpours. And - the other 97% of the time I work in conditions that are sunny to cloudy with temps in the 40's to 70's F. :)

Have you ever aspired to be a farmer? Are you someone who's out there and thinking and experiencing the sense that you want to be a farmer, and/or in a relationship with a farmer? I know what that other, "more normal" [sic] life looks like, but that ain't me and it will never be me. I'm not just some dude working, paying my bills, and otherwise just some statistic or blank demographic. Every day I do things that matter to me emotionally, mentally, physically, and that have a profound effect on other peoples' lives. I'm an artist with 30+ acres as my canvas.

If you are someone who is or can be attracted to this life then let's talk. Let's get to know each other. Come visit. Dip your hands and and the rest of your body into it. It's not for the faint of soul, but it is for those who like or love what I've described and want a life that's unlike any other.

Hmm...

Someone who's intellectually engaging.

Someone who's always excited to be challenged and to learn.

Someone who loves to laugh and can hold her own at making others laugh.

Someone who's not afraid to light up the chat with f-bombs and more.

Someone who likes food, being outdoors, animals, soil, the elements, dogs, cats, silence, the sun, all four seasons.

Someone who's strong, yet vulnerable. Extroverted and introverted. A doer and a thinker. Someone who likes to make love passionately, and likes to sleep hard.

Someone who knows or at least is open to the idea/reality that the entire covid nonsense is a ruse to control the masses and already knows or is open to the understanding that viruses do not exist and never have (and that there's an explanation for every so-called "contagion"). Who understands or is at least open to the idea/reality that germ theory is nonsense and that terrain theory is where it is at. Who is not hooked on so-called "remedies" but instead sees and has experienced that the body heals itself - if you simply stop poisoning it with junk, stop injuring it, and end your toxic thoughts/beliefs.

:)

I currently work two jobs.

One is on the Finance team of a North American fruit growing co-op. That pays my mortgage and more. It's steady income doing something I am familiar with and am good at.

The other is: I farm. Small-scale farming. I currently raise pastured livestock that I rotate through lush, green, diverse pastures during the growing season. Just pasture and browse, non-gmo feed and hay, clean water, and freedom to roam pretty extensively. My animals are clean and live a very good life. No vaccines, no medical interventions needed. I also grow vegetables and fruits in and around my 1/6 acre market garden. It's non-certified organic. I sell products at the farm and at a two local farmers markets every Saturday of the year. Late spring through early fall outside, late fall through early spring inside.

I follow humane principles, rotational grazing, I socialize my animals, as well as follow lean, organic and permaculture principles.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLa5OBsItIE/?igsh=eThpYjJrNWQ2cGYw

Water fasting.

The body heals itself. Indeed, if you halt that which signaled the detox you’ll ultimately be well again.

It takes me a long time to physically read a book. I've come to love books on CD and Audible, esp with my love of and need for travel. I never read as a child - but I wrote a ton. I read about things - but never read books to read books. They have to hook me. I find the act to some degree boring AF. :D I'd rather be out DOING stuff if the reading experience isn't rewarding enough. But then in college I kinda had to read to umm get good grades and that was better - since the selection was more stimulating (I was a philosophy, creative writing, film, and Native American Studies student...) AND we discussed what we read. I found that so meaningful.

THE DIRTY LIFE and GOOD HUSBANDRY by Kristin Kimball. If you are interested in me and in the farming life these two books may give you clearest vision of how it CAN go sometimes. The good, bad, ugly, and beautiful. And always profound.

Anymore I don't read much fiction. The last fiction I really got into was really more like historical future fiction and it was THE WORLD MADE BY HAND series by NY author James Howard Kunstler. I HIGHLY recommend that series. Four books, each one taking place in a season of an upstate NY's future scenario.

I'm currently alternating between three books: SILVOPASTURE by Steven Gabriel, NO BAD DOGS by Barbara Woodhouse, and STOCKDOG SAVVY by Jeanne Joy Hartnagle-Taylor - and am thoroughly enjoying all of them.

I just finished SCATTTERED by Dr. Gabor Mate, MD. Loved it.

This moves me: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CgXUeRbel3c&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

And this moves me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZe3mXlnfNc

For better or for worse I seem to listen to less and less music as my life goes on. I opt for silence, audio books, or really just appreciate the sounds of the world happening around me. It--to me--is often stimulating enough (maybe because I live alone and in a very rural location?).

When I do listen to music it is often very melodic, inspiring and evocative. Sometimes it's meditative and hypnotic. It just seems to fit or to feel right and my mind, soul and heart latch onto it.

Genres don't matter. Words don't matter. It's all just a personable poetry of sound...

All of that being said--what did I grow up on, what shaped me at various times of my life, what have a listened to most recently?

--Grew up on classic rock radio
--Then moved on to cooler and more evocative artists like Pink Floyd, The Who, Rush, etc
--Sure--I went through my Dylan, Beatles, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin phases...
--In my early twenties I worked for a college radio station and of course fell in love with: The Cure, REM, U2, The Replacements, The Feelies, Bauhaus, etc.
--In my later twenties and beyond jazz has become my full-approval love...esp. thanks to documentaries like Thelonius Monk: Straight--No Chaser, etc and just exposing myself to Miles, Davis, John Coltrane, etc...

:)

I have two English Shepherds (herding dogs) - which I inherited when my kids moved out. Jack and Chloe, both age 11.

In the summer of 2023 I rescued an Aussie/Border Collie cross from a bad situation and am undecided as to whether I will be keeping her for the long term, or getting her in line (the previous owners did no training with her at all) and then rehoming her. She adds an additional time commitment to already packed schedule, but she's a joy to be around. She's 6 or 7 (I think...) and her name is Sophie.

In early June 2024 I bought a Great Pyrenees puppy named Evie. Omg is she a sweetheart and an awesome dog. Have you ever spent time around LGDs? If all goes well I may add another to the pack after Jack and Chloe pass. Note: LGD's (at least GP's) bark. Sometimes they bark a few times and top. Other times they bark for a few minutes - and then stop. They can do either of these either zero times per night, once per night, or sometimes 2-4 times per night. It just depends on if anything is alarming them. They are a dog that has been bred and selected for identifying and alerting their people to threats. They also bark to ward off predators and interlopers. I do not mind it one iota. :)

So, yes...that's four dogs total. :) Two of which may not be around in a year or two.

I also have three spoiled-with-love, short-haired cats - Shadow (all black, approx 11 y.o.) and Agata (gray tabby, approx 5 y.o.) and Sara (brownish-gray tabby kitten, just over 1 year old).

- Blue sky sunny mornings

- Beginning any journey.

- that moment when the train starts pulling away from the station or the plane disengages from the tunnel...

- Engaging any animals.

- Engaging people.

- Completing tasks/projects.

- Cleaning and organizing.

- Listening to music and hanging out with a lover or friends as we make and devour a meal - esp breakfast.

- Walking into any bookstore or library.

- Going to the cinema and that moment when the lights start to dim...

- In the good ol' days opening my mailbox and seeing my name and address, hand-written on an envelope from a friend or distant love.

- watching sunsets

- smelling the seasons and the weather...