I don't read blogs.

I don't read blogs. I don't follow bloggers. I don't listen to podcasts (until last week). Up until recently I haven't strayed far from my 1990's self when it comes to technology (that might be an exaggeration). Mostly because, up until now, I didn't have time. Or energy. As an English teacher for the last 15 years, I didn't even have time to read books that I wanted to read, let alone read someone's stupid blog. By the way- thank you for reading this. :)

But times have changed in the last year, thanks (somehow?) to a pandemic. We have been lucky in my family. No one close to me has become sick with COVID. When this began, I was still teaching English, and it wasn't so bad working from home. I could actually clean my house during the day, not after my 45 minute commute, after making dinner, after...everything else we had to do. It was also fun to be home with my husband, JP. This was our first year of marriage. Luckily we've been together long enough that a pandemic wasn't going to shake us up- he's seen it all with me by now! And the idea of our little secluded island, our pretend homestead on the brink of spring, when no one could bother me and I could focus on the house, the family, and the land, was nice.

And I didn't go back. Mostly because we decided someone needed to be available to stay home with the kids if someone did get sick. But it also opened up an opportunity for me to finally explore an area of my life which bloomed in my 30s. Maybe now was the time to focus on my herbalism, in whatever form that took.

I'm a Gemini. I'm not even really into astrological signs, but there is no doubt I fall into this archetype. That being said, this duality has been an ongoing frustration for me at times. There are so many things I wanted to do! Let's have a farm! Let's sell stuff at the famer's market! I'm going to make things and sell them online! I'm going to teach yoga again! We should hold herb walks on our property! I can do workshops here! No- we should make a sweat lodge and have yoga retreats here! I'm going to start a community garden! Please, JP, can we get a YURT? Poor JP.

This is JP doing chicken surgery with me. We are not surgeons.

I still want to do all these things. Sometimes I feel like I'm running out of time, even at 38. But when you become a mother at 18, I guess when you finally have a chance to find yourself, it feels like trying to fit a couple decades into just one.

But through a pandemic summer with plenty of time for self reflection, I felt called to work with the 2 things I do pretty OK- herbs, and teaching people. I've always had kind of a weird innate connection with plants since I was a kid. Even now, things typically grow well for me, even though I don't know what I'm doing and I half-ass a lot of it. Somehow, the plants like me. So, I dug up my MUIH texts, notebooks, folders (I keep everything) and started to figure out where to go from here.

I'll admit- I felt rusty. I've been using herbs for friends and family for about 7 years, but seeing clients- the idea of that was scary. Still is scary. Then I remind myself that so was walking into a class of teenagers for the first time. So was teaching my first yoga class. And so will this be, for now. But I am equally as excited as I am nervous, and with every week that I've been working on getting ready to open my virtual doors to clients, I feel more and more ready to get this ball rolling!

Was there a point to this blog? Maybe not really. Like I said- I don't read blogs. I don't know the 'rules' of how this should go, and I'm really not interested in looking up how to do one more thing, if I'm being honest. But, if you made it this far, welcome to the journey. I hope you're along for the ride.