instinct over maps
looking for my footing on the trail to smallville
Whenever a talent or skill has been uncovered in my life, I’ve been encouraged to monetize it in some way. Oh, you’re so good at that! You should sell those cogs! Or, you should open a business doing that thing! When I was young and trying to figure out what I was here for or what my path would be, I would, for the most part, listen. When my interest in health was piqued, I did the requisite thing and went to school to be a nutritionist. Never mind that counselling others, trying to convince others for the most part, was something I really, really didn’t enjoy. When I found joy in a craft or a hobby, I was told to make more and sell it. When people enjoyed a meal, or a jam, or a textile, or a bar of soap I made, they insisted I start making said thing at scale and sell it to the awaiting masses. When I started farming, we grew enough and raised enough to sell because without profit, what was our measure?
In truth, while I understood the notion of encouraging someone to use their talents to make some coin to be complimentary in nature, it always left me feeling deflated. Why couldn’t there just be joy in that thing, in that moment with the value measured in the riches of exchange - the wonderful feeling of giving and receiving? Why is money, which often comes partnered with growth, the overarching evaluation of so much of what we do in this world?
I often felt like my writing was protected from this measure. Of course, one can always write a book and maybe even make some money from it, but by and large, people expect writing to be a rather solitary, quiet affair rather than an industrious business venture with grand possibilities of endless growth and riches when the requisite hustle and dogged determination fuel it.
I’ve never been drawn to big. I like small. I like intimate. I get lost in crowds and can’t find my way back until I’m alone with the trees again. I’ve never found the trade-offs of growth in my favour. The sacrifice of the stuff that means the most to me to get to some faraway idea just never really motivated me. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to work or I’m not willing to forego pleasure or strive for something. It’s just that I’m acutely aware of the cost of the striving in my every day life. Maybe that’s because I keep death so near and I understand how fleeting this life is. I want to develop and learn and evolve, but I don’t see any of those things hinging on anything I have to achieve or do. I also don’t see any of those things hinging on some faraway marker of success. There has to be, at least for me, some modicum of acceptance and surrender to today with faith in what is to come.
I recently read a commentary about the impending death of social media. I think it’s already happened, we just don’t get it yet. When I joined Instagram, over a decade ago, it was with the hope of spreading the good word about small farms and ethical farming. It felt a little sleepy back then. I came to know the people in my small, digital circles. Text was king. Images were there to support the sentiment. It’s not that way anymore, obviously. And with AI less and less of what we see and read is even being written by humans, including smaller corners of the internet that are supposed to highlight writers and the written word.
In a time when influencers are more front and centre, more assured and insistent, I feel evermore sure of nothing. I know nothing. I understand so little. I don’t want to put my gob on a screen and be the one to assure you I have the answers. I do not. I also don’t want to be a part of this pervasive spread, this endless creep of the digital world infiltrating what is real. If there are no boundaries, how will we ever stop it?
Maybe it’s because of this that I feel more pulled than ever to simplify and downsize, to streamline and shrink my life. I’ve been looking at everything, evaluating the constructs I live through and the absolutes I’ve left untouched. I want less of every thing and more stillness. Less people, more individual persons. I want less of a garden and animals and clothes and tasks and more stillness and autonomy and quiet listening.
My fantasy is to sell it all and move up north. How far north? As north as north will go until we reach the edges of being able to feed and shelter ourselves. I would live in a one room cabin and we would have a trapline and fires and simple food. One mug each. Maybe a third as a spare. We would sleep under furs and eat with our fingers. Fingers that would forget how to use a keyboard. I would watch squirrels in a tree for hours. We would float on a little boat on the lake and wait to have enough fish to fill our bellies for the evening.
I know how much work it would be. You can’t dissuade me with that metric. I’m already doing a lot of work on this little farm with big demands. But it’s a different type of work and there’s no way for the infiltration and seep of this modern world.
My husband tells me my northern fantasy is indicative of other things. I suppose he’s right.
I’ve been reading more autobiographical, nonfiction books because I want to hear the gritty, hard stuff and nobody seems to want to share those things anymore. Even my go-to authors and writers seem to be in a space of focusing on politics and the dysfunctions of our polarized societies and their new callings into religion and how sure they are of whatever they are sure about. It’s all good and interesting and I respect all of these different viewpoints, but I just don’t resonate with any of it right now. Maybe I will tomorrow. Today, these things just feel like another grappling hook tearing into my skin, demanding I participate in something that further pulls me away from where I’m supposed to be.
Ernst Schumacher once wrote, “A businessman would not consider a firm to have solved its problems of production and to have achieved viability if he saw that it was rapidly consuming its capital.” He was speaking of the capital of our earth’s resources, but we can bring this down to an individual level, too. If chasing whatever it is we think we need requires the consumption of our own life’s capital, how can we ever understand that to be a problem solved?
Our geese had the first of this year’s goslings. I heard them chirping from underneath their mama when I locked them up last night and couldn’t wait to do chores this morning when I could see them in the light of day. Three have been born so far. Fat, rotund little balls of yellow and grey. Harold and Maude, their parents, have been together for twelve or thirteen years now. Harold is a most doting papa, ready to destroy anything that gets near his babies. Maude was still sitting on her nest this morning, driven by instinct I suppose, to remain for awhile longer - hope for the last couple of eggs still intact. Harold led the goslings outside of the safety of their home to a patch of juicy, green grass. He stood sentry as they discovered their first taste of food. I watched as one of the goslings noticed a fly on the wall of the duck house and snatched it off with a surprisingly fast peck of his tiny, blunt bill.
I stood leaning over the fence, watching the goslings for a good, long while. The roosters were letting out their endless duelling calls a few fields away. The dragonflies were out in great clouds, circling overhead. Maude made soft calls from her nest, constantly checking with papa that her babies, out of her line of vision, were alright. He, continuously reassuring her in response. I fell into that moment body and soul and stayed there for a long while.
How do I grow that? Monetize that? ‘Cause that’s the very thing I want more of.
And therein lies the problem that isn’t a problem at all: the things that are important to me cannot grow. There’s no need for them to grow. What has to grow is me - my awareness, my conscious decisions, my understanding. In order for me to have more of what I want, I need to have less of what’s on offer from the prevailing culture.
There have been cycles in my life when I feel like I’ve simplified enough, but then I come to another fork in the road and realize that my expansion and growth is eternal and to live and experience this life as I desire to, there are more tethers that need to be severed, more assumptions that need to be challenged. Who am I without? What is possible with less? What do I really need?
When I first started writing here on Substack it was with the simple desire to write and interact with people in a more meaningful way. Instagram is fine for the marketing bit or some nice images, but it’s writing that is in my soul and Substack has given me the platform to share that. And you, dear readers, have given me the encouragement and the absolute joy in our interactions, to keep with it. And now, soon enough, my book will be released. All of these things come from this place and I feel such gratitude for this opportunity and for the incredible humans that are here.
There is, however, a haze building up inside of me. I can’t quite grab onto things and turn them over like I used to be able to. I’m slowing down and minimizing in all my life and the incongruence of my writing patterns have become more clear to me. I used to write from inspiration and things that came from beyond myself - a pull I couldn’t resist if I wanted to. Now, I’ve started writing for deadlines. I remember taking a writing book out of the library once that emphasized that writing from inspiration was a sure way to die a failed writer with a sentence trapped in your brain and without a penny in your pocket. Quite bleak indeed.
I don’t think that’s exactly so anymore. I do think I work best with scheduling my time and forming structures and routines into my world, but those things include the slowness and contemplation where I find great learning and communion with my life. For that reason, I’m no longer going to commit to putting out an essay once a week. Sometimes I will. Sometimes I won’t. I will continue to write regularly, but my writing will spend more time in the brewing and observing before finding its way to my keyboard.
I’m also going to be posting less and less as free content, sending out more of my essays directly to my subscribers without those requisite paywall essays, trying to get unpaid subscribers to subscribe. What comes will come. I don’t like this schtick of prompts and teases. I want to get back to building the fire and whoever comes to sit around with us will come. As this year unfolds to the next, I see more paper in my life as I move along this trajectory. Maybe you will join me for that. Maybe not. All I can do is move towards what feels authentic to me which, although pretty rocky at times, has served me well in my life.
I recognize that this will not be satisfactory to some of you and I may lose some subscribers. I’m okay with that. I’m sad to see anyone go, but after a few years on here, I have come to recognize that this is the nature of the animal - people come and go. I do hope most of you will stay and you will continue to think that what I offer adds value to your life. That is the whole point after all.
I regularly get emails promising me new ways to expand my reach, get more followers, grow my platform. There are whole industries dedicated to getting people like me “seen and heard”. Cheerful people I’ve never met, most likely bots, promise me they can increase my bottom line and connect me with powerful platforms for “explosive growth”. I want none of it. I want smaller. Where are the companies helping with that? Helping to figure out how I can still make a little money doing what I want to do with care and consideration, but not get sucked into the bog of profit in exchange for, well, for the very things I do want most of all?
There is no company to help with that. That comes from me or no-one at all. And so me it has to be. There’s resistance I face from some well-meaning friends. Confusion from others grinding away in hopes that they arrive wherever that place is that they think holds their answers. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What matters is I hold true to the things I value. I want congruence not friction. And for that, I’m willing to keep on this path even when I have no idea where I’m going. Sometimes, all we got is instinct and most of the time, that’s better than anything else on offer.
“Yet a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking it a true one, is likely to be worse off than someone with no map at all; for he will fail to inquire wherever he can, to observe every detail on his way, and to search continuously with all his senses and all his intelligence for indications of where he should go.”
-Ernst Schumacher
wow Tara, I was reading these words - and even though we’re in such different stages of life and geographical locations - I felt like you were speaking words from my own mind. Like a resonance across this weird inter web. Articulating thoughts about less less less. Lately I can extract so much from such little stimulus. And the big stimulus just makes static in my brain that goes clanking on and takes a while to process. I’m feeling more and more sensitive in the world as it’s speeding up. And just wanting less but feeling more. Knowing less and being comfortable in the nuance and mystery. And how every ‘convenience’ or ‘entertainment’ feels like a ‘free exchange’ but really it costs me in what I miss in the present moment and subtleties. I love coming to your page and reading about your inner world, your ability to notice the beauty and nuance, and feeling that sense of community, like I’m not alone in my feelings and thoughts
Like Amber, I too created something and was encouraged to market and sell it, and had a business school friend of mine tell me what steps I needed to take. During the meeting, I just kept thinking, I don't want to do all that, I don't want to get big enough to sell it to someone else - I just want to gift it to people, can I get paid to do that? Yes! But the payment will not be made in money. It's not to disparage those who have built businesses from the ground up and made a living otherwise unattainable to them, just a recognition of the fact that that's not for me.
My dad is a wonderful singer. I was always proud to stand next to him in church because he sang the hymns in tune, confidently, resonantly. He was asked constantly to join the choir with comments like "we need a voice like yours in the choir!" Younger me always encouraged him. He always politely declined, claiming that there is a need for strong voices in the congregation. Lately I've been reflecting, with similar sentiments as you articulate, Tara, that it doesn't matter whether he's singing from his seat or at the front of the church. He's still singing. Wearing the choir robe won't reward his singing with any more joy than he already has.
Because there's a performative aspect to it, isn't there? I read somewhere that, when it comes down to it, the only reason people post on social media is for attention - good, bad, and ugly. And these days, though I've been feeling pulled towards writing, that observation gives me pause every time I feel compelled to share something. What kind of attention do I want? (Mostly, none) Who is going to take my words and twist them or try to make an AI replication of my writing style, indistinguishable from my own, and rob me of my own voice? You could call it humility, but social media has already robbed me of my confidence that I have anything important to say. But when I write it on paper, in a letter to a friend or a sympathy card after a death, that writing is for me as much as it is for the recipient. It can't be (easily) quantified, analyzed, or transformed into a product that will "sell." It's a gift. And though you write for many, Tara, your writing has long felt like a gift to me. Like my dad, the older I get, the less compelled I feel to achieve something for the sake of it being the next step in the trajectory of performance/production/monetization. For me, remembering which kind of writing (or performing or creating or producing) feels most like a gift, is me singing joyfully from my seat in the congregation.