2024-01-22
This is the first entry. I've discovered that vim has a very useful feature for this: g followed by Ctrl+g gives me the word count. I just have to subtract the title, and I've got a very convenient way of finding the word count. Vim strikes again!
I'm not sure what to write about. Not that I don't have ideas; rather, I do not know which of these to expound. I feel somewhat unconfident about my abilities anyways when it comes to each of these subjects I wish to speak of.
I'll choose gardening as a first. I only picked up gardening last year really; the year before I grew a few carrots but nothing serious. 2023 was my first serious foray into the world of gardening, and 2024 is shaping up to be even seriouser.
When I started the growing season in March last year, I realised it was more difficult than I had anticipated. Really, the act itself was simple enough. I sowed some leek seed into several pots, initially keeping them indoors then moving them to outdoors, and... that was it. The leeks grew up by themselves. Once they got to a good size in about June or July, I dibbed holes in the ground, stuck them in, drowned them as for some reason you are meant to with leeks, left them, and a few months later I had harvest.
The problem was not the act itself though: it was my thinking about the act. I expended countless thoughts about these leeks. And they're just leeks, for goodness sake!
Firstly, I worried that when they were indoors that they would be damage by the flies around them. The flies themselves were a symptom of my over-watering, but I kept trying to drown the pot in water to drown the flies with it. I found small imperfections in the young leeks and seized upon them as caused by the flies. In reality, they were just natural imperfections, and the flies harmless sciarid flies. But I needed to worry.
So then, I took the leeks outside, to cure the issue with the flies. I could have just not constantly drowned the leeks of course, but I couldn't control myself. I wanted to drown away the flies with them. I bought yellow sticky paper to hopefully quell the flies as well. The sight of the hundreds of dead flies stuck to the paper, always at least a couple of them twitching their legs was for me just a part of the day. I thought I was saving the leeks.
When I took them outside, I stayed worried. The flies were still there! It was raining often as well, and very cold out still. Would the leeks be ok?
And so on and so on. They were never real problems I had with the leeks. They were problems of my imagination. And of course, as soon as they went in the ground (and I more or less forgot about them, choosing to worry about other crops and flowers instead) they... were perfectly fine. (Un)surprisingly, the result of millions of years of evolution doesn't really need me to frenetically fret about some flies that are in the soil around it. It can do perfectly well by itself. All it needs is a bit of water if it's particularly dry, and some decent soil or compost to keep it healthy. Beyond that, I don't really have a place.
That last sentence sounds depressing, but it really isn't. I don't have a place in these things really. I am just there to move a couple things about and protect against the extremes (too little water, too much, too little sun, too much). Beyond that, the plants do it all. It's a common sentiment in the gardening world that mother nature does most of the work, and it's completely true. It hasn't managed to quell my ego much, but it may well do in time.
The lesson here is obvious, and probably doesn't need spelling out. That said, I'm only about seven hundred words in, and need to pad it out to a thousand. I can't write very well like this. Yet oddly, on some days, I have written to four or five thousand words. Mostly repetitive, mostly complaining. I think I am trying to hold myself to a slightly higher standard here. Not that I have a mode of writing I am aiming for, rather a mode of writing I am trying to avoid, that is, the mode of writing in which I repeat thoughts over and over as a form of self-catharsis. I cannot imagine that is healthy. I do it all too often still.
I will hopefully not worry so much about these trivial matters this year. I can leave the leeks to sort themselves out. The interesting thing about gardening is how slowly it happens. Everything is on a timescale of weeks, not of days or minutes. There is no boss harrowing you about deadlines or performance. Instead, you work to your own pace, and accomplish what you put into it, and what Mother Nature desires to happen in that year.
I intended to speak about the idea of gardening as a form of parenting. I felt, in those days fretting about my leeks, like a parent of a young child. I didn't know whether the small patch of pinkish skin was the beginning of a dire rash, or just... some pinkish skin. I couldn't tell whether the tears were for food or water or from a pain of some kind. Like the child, the leek couldn't tell me exactly what it needed. Yet, as with parenting, generally, things work out. A good amount of it is out of your control as a parent. The small part that is within your control is vitally important, yet unimportant at the same time. It reminds me of the study mentioned in Ultra-processed People: that a child left to choose its diet for itself will choose the most optimal diet for it. Even when the decisions the child is making appear to be the wrong choices, it is always for a reason, and generally the child deciding of its own will eat the perfectly optimal diet for its own health. It reminds me of Cleanthes' analogy of the dog and the cart.
Hopefully, as and when I get around to having children of my own, I can put this to the test. And whilst I don't, I ought to simply stop worrying about the leeks.
There's my thousand for the day. It is surprisingly difficult to continue writing past around six-hundred, but hey ho. I'll get used to it in time.
Have a good one!