Living a quieter life
Back to reality, strange as it is…
This is your brain on drugs, prescription drugs… After a few days of very strange brain sensations and a few wild hallucinations (both visual and auditory!), I’m finally starting to feel ‘normal.’ I’ve been struggling with the extreme brain craziness of withdrawal from Paxil, which I really cannot recommend to anyone!
Interesting how doctors don’t tell you about this ahead of time. I couldn’t have imaged anything like this from simply stopping a pill…Post Script: 30 days later feeling much better, but I had to fire my doctor over this one.
Then yesterday I went out into my garden and found the stupid deer or rabbits had chomped off two of the plants I’ve been carefully nurturing all summer. GRRRR… but my garden has mostly just been taken over by SUNFLOWERS EVERYWHERE! Funny how the deer don’t like them…
We are experiencing the total invasion of three foot sunflowers everywhere here at the Navajo Ranch in southern Colorado!
Sometimes it feels just like that scene from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ where they find themselves surrounded by poppies!
I had so much FUN meeting a few new women at a friend’s party yesterday. Most of them live in La Veta, so I got an earful of stories and anecdotes about living there. I love La Veta, and I’m so glad it is nearby, but I have never wished that I live there.
I figure if we came this far to get away from the noise, traffic, pollution, and problems of other people, why move in right next to them?
A Network of Grateful Living: Healing for all
I hope the rest of you are familiar with “A Network for Grateful Living.” I discovered them through their wonderfully healing short video A Good Day, which offered me a whole new perspective on what a good day can be. I started watching this video ten years ago. This video has changed my life.
Here’s a short statement of how they see their present work:
“These are moments that call on us to harness the greatest courage and conviction that our hearts can muster. Holding fast to our connectedness, faith, creativity, values-clarity, and our tenacity to love more deeply than ever – this is the work of our times.
Our work is to offer a wellspring of nourishment, support, and inspiration for you and this community; that we might collectively move through the moments of our days, and the days of our lives, uplifting and helping to heal ourselves, one another, and the world. Thank you for drinking from this well…”
I personally cannot summarize my own work any better than that…
Living in sunflower heaven!
Yes, I do see both sides. On the one hand, our country has some very serious problems, the main one being the nut we presently have in charge. But since I can do nothing today to change that, I choose to enjoy my present surroundings every moment of every day. Living here is a lesson in nature’s miracles!
For example, the amazing look of Navajo Ranch this August!
Suddenly there are millions of sunflowers everywhere!
Yesterday, when the sun came up…
… the Spanish Peaks were looking like this!
Mike and I left suburbia in 2014, after living in cities for most of our lives. We wanted to try out solar living with spectacular views of Sangre de Cristo mountains. We moved here to live close to nature, to try out passive solar living, and to build the kind of home we chose to live in for the rest of our lives. We came in search of a far more quiet, peaceful, healthy and inexpensive lifestyle than cities could offer us. We have received so much more… Would you like to know how we ended up here? The ups and downs of our year-long building process? My fears in our first year here? Why we love it so much now?
Please send me an e-mail to order your own copy — Laura Lee: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com
A mid-summer trip to Pueblo
My favorite time here in the southern Colorado foothills is the morning. I wake up to such a marvelous array of natural sounds. I love to hear the birds greeting the new day.
Then I go out to my garden and appreciate it all!
Yesterday we took a trip up to Pueblo to visit a farm east of there to buy fresh produce. I love buying directly from the farmers and the prices are quite good!
Then we drove into Pueblo to visit Yang’s Gifts in the Pueblo Mall. Why? Because I won a FREE gift from there! What fun going through the store choosing something just for me and for free! I love this store, but then I have always appreciated jewelry, fans, and beautiful clothes from Asia.
One thing Mike and I now disagree on. I enjoy occasionally driving into Pueblo or Trinidad to shop. He gets quiet in the city and his joy level visibly increases when we leave town.
He gets happier and happier as we get closer to home.
How to NOT get “Lost in America”
I just read a new review of the Criterion re-release of the 1985 Albert Brooks film “Lost in America” in The Atlantic. This film is a satire about two upper-middle-class Californians who decide to quit their great corporate jobs, and go “find themselves” by traveling our country in a Winnebago.
I couldn’t help thinking, as I read this review, how pessimistic their viewpoint is. Perhaps these Californians failed at their goal simply because they didn’t have a good plan from the beginning. It’s one thing to quit your “boring, predictable existence earning a solid wage” with no real plan at all. It can be an entirely different experience to spend the time to find out where you most want to live ahead of time, and then create a sustainable lifestyle in that place.
Like so many of us from the Boomer generation, the main characters in “Lost in America” achieved financial success and yet could derive no pleasure from that success. What I have learned from decades of living is that financial success provides no pleasure, unless it also provides personal freedom.
Our greatest success in choosing this new, rural lifestyle has been the freedom we now enjoy. Many would find our lifestyle boring. If you have no interest in weather, wildlife, sunrises, and an ever increasing appreciation of the natural world, you would probably run back to the city after only a few weeks, if not days.
The silence here can be deafening, unless this is the kind of silence you’ve been seeking your entire life.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 