I was up at 7:30 this morning and out in the driveway staining the 4x4s by 8. I overestimated how long it would take me this time, I finished all the beams, two coats each, by 9:45, which is pretty good time. This was a change because for the first three sides I had seriously underestimated the time requirements for the job. Perhaps that it was 8:00 AM and already in the mid 80’s and humid and I just wanted to get done. Perhaps I was just too tired (we went to bed at 2:30) to lapse into my usually contemplative state, enjoying the process of what I was doing, and so I just pushed to get it done as quickly as possible.
Nonetheless, it is hot and I am happy to spend the rest of the day indoors; well, except perhaps for a swim or two.
There are times when I wonder why I get myself into these jobs, why I bother, why not let the yard just exist as it is (it is perfectly nice) or hire a landscaper and have a perfectly nice yard much like everyone else’s. When I was growing up, everyone pretty much did most stuff around the house themselves, partly because no one could afford to have it done and partly because that was just part of the culture. Now, most of my friends make money and are good at many things, but have no idea of how to plant or landscape or fix anything inside the house. Many of the men I know are proud of not knowing how to swing a hammer or use a saw; rewire a light or tile anything. Most of their wives are the same, I have often ranted at how proud some of my friends are that they "can’t sew on a button".
And yet, for all that there is some part of me that would love to be able to pay wonderful competent contractors to do just what I wanted around the house and property, there is another part of me that would not be at all comfortable with that way of life. I like being able to putter about, to fix things, to get my hands dirty. To me, being involved physically in the place I live gives me a power over it and makes my home a part of myself, not just some place I occupy. This is part of why I am really not eager to move. My home is, as I have often said, my refuge from the world, and it is a place that I have played a significant role in shaping.
I was thinking the other day, after reading an article in the New York Magazine, in the end a really insignificant article, about the image of the high-achieving, driven, ivy-league graduate and how I have never fit that role completely. Oh, I am very grateful that I went to Vassar, admittedly not ivy league, but close enough, and my college years very much shaped who I am today. But many of my classmates were driven to achieve something — some form of success in the outside world, not necessarily money, but that was a part of it. Some of them have now, in their 40’s cut back or left careers and started families, which is a change from the young women who did not want to limit themselves to being "moms" while they were still in college.
But I was never particularly driven in that way. Oh I can be driven. In whatever job or career I have pursued, I hate not knowing something, I am driven to know everything possible, to not appear stupid, to master everything that is available. Because of that I can be a very driven and hard worker. But once I have hit a wall I am bored and ready to move on to something else. I have never been driven toward a career. Marriage and home have always been higher in my goals, but not in a "conservative religious family-values" kind of way that is popularized now in parts of American Culture. There has always been some part of me that thought the labor of life, working to keep a family going, working on a farm, growing food or flowers, fixing your own house, creating something, almost anything really, was somehow more rewarding than trading stocks for example. Not that I want to be a farmer and have to work that hard every day. I just think that making one little piece of life more enjoyable, and putting your stamp on it is enough. Not everyone can change the world and not everyone should.
I suppose I am a dilettante. Oh well.