Fallow

I’ve had a year blessedly full of work, but that volume has caused me to let my own blog mostly lie fallow. To make up for this, I’m going to try for a post a day in December. About just about everything. Funny. Serious. Anything goes. Here is Day 3.

My city-dwelling friends think of me as their country friend, because I live with trees in my backyard, across the road from horses and fields. I grew up in a 4H club, in state parks more than on sidewalks.   

I am not country. I constantly lock all my doors, to the bafflement of my neighbors. I’m still startled when my friend tells me she can only bike in the park on the weekend because the hunters are gone then. I don’t dislike it, but country music is largely a mystery to me. Most of all: I live in a condo. Farm living this is not. 

All of which is to explain that farm metaphors are often new to me (and perhaps that much more meaningful). One I’ve been thinking about lately, because of my intro to these posts, is the idea of fallow fields. 

For those like me who didn’t grow up in the FFA: you can’t plant the same thing in a field every year; it’d use up all of the nutrients in the soil. You have to plant different things, and sometimes nothing at all, to revitalize the soil. 

A short-term pause for a long-term benefit. 

The applications to life are pretty obvious. A rest day. A nap. A walk around the block when your eyes are crossing from stress. A moment to breathe, ten minutes for a conversation, a calendar that isn’t jammed full. 

As the year draws to a close, my instinct is to bemoan all of the ways I could have done more. But perhaps it’s worth looking closer, to see which of those were actually productive in their emptiness. Fallow.