Splinters and Thorns in My Fingers!
Sometimes I get very tired and frustrated with myself.
That is to say, I get frustrated with the work I'm trying to do and with the seeming inadequacy of the results I get... in terms of living up to the demands of this crazy world of ours.
Don't get me wrong, I am very content with being self-employed, and very grateful for the fact that I get to work from home and don't have to sit in traffic for hours every day going to and from some soulless job… but — to put it perfectly bluntly — I'm also getting a bit tired of constantly struggling financially and in terms of having enough hours in the day to make it.
Yes, I know this is a sad song I have sung before...
Perhaps what bothers me the most about all this is the fact that doing what I do — at the pace and energy that I do it at — used to afford me a fairly comfortable living, and these days working the same (or more) barely allows me to scrape by.
I realize it's a situation many people find themselves in; we seem to be living in a world that is on a collision course with some kind of economic "reality" collapse or certainly reset. You eventually reach a point at which there are no more "expense reductions" you can apply to your life.
But doom and gloom aside, when I get really tired and frustrated with myself I find that the best thing I can do is get out in the yard and start tearing at weeds, dead shrubbery and other things that need to be tidied up.
Even though there's no such thing as "taming nature", at least when you're working outside you can get a very direct visual representation of making progress at something. This is particularly true when it comes to such things as weeding!
At the side of the house there is a patch of land that for several years were pretty close to being a miniature swamp. This happened because the underground flow of groundwater runoff somehow changed course... to that part of the side yard. Anyway, due to changes in the way the water runoff from up the hillside behind the house the former swamp is now slowly drying up and a fairly large patch of land that used to be lawn (and then just kind of became soggy bottom) is now dry enough that all the thistles, horsetails and stinging nettles and whatever else grew there can be pulled up again.
So that has been what I've been out there doing and now I have a bunch of tiny splinters and cuts on my hands, in spite of wearing heavy welding gloves, and those tiny thorns that come from thistles are now in several of my fingers.
Most of the time I'm not even aware they're there until suddenly I pick up something and it rubs the little thorn the wrong way and there's a sharp pain, followed by me headed for the nearest strong light with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers to try to dig out the offending thorn.
I do love gardening; I do find pulling weeds to be a very satisfying job but it has its downsides! That said, some vigorous weed pulling is a great way to clear my foggy brain!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great week ahead!
How about you? Do you have an activity you pursue to relieve stress? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 2025.06.16 01:22 PDT
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It's a trade-off isn't it, self-employment. When I left my corporate job and even when I stopped being employed in Thailand at a resort where I had shareholders and owners to report to constantly I was stressed out constantly... but the tradeoff was guaranteed salary. Once I was self employed I rarely stressed about the actual work, but now was stressed about being able to drum up enough custom to support my life. Thankfully for me it worked out and years later the work just comes in effortlessly. I'm probably counting those chickens before they hatch though because the industry could change really quickly.
I hope you are able to get ahead of the curve though because yes, not spending hours a day in a car is a definite perk of working for yourself. I don't know how people that have to do that day in and day out deal with the stress and I guess that is why we see so many road rage incidents in and around big cities.
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All in all, I wouldn't change the self-employed life I have for my former life in the IT industry... regardless of the economic uncertainty that comes with not having a reliable paycheck and dealing with fickle customers in an unstable economy. Sometimes it's a bit touch-and-go with being able to afford the basics — the US is getting ridiculously expensive — but it's still a good life.