The Weeds can Wait: Living the Life You're Building

Y'all, I'm tired.

Driving home from work the other night, I found myself wondering why.

After all, this is the life we chose. We bought a farm because we wanted a slower pace, meaningful work, and more time together. We wanted a place where family could come visit, where we could grow good food, and where at the end of the day, we felt like we accomplished something worthwhile.

So how did I end up so worn out?

The last month has just been project after project. We finished a new chicken coop, built a deck for the market building, opened our new Farm Market Hub, and somehow still managed to keep up with the everyday work of running a market garden. Well... more or less kept up.

Then we took the Fourth of July weekend "off."

Instead of kicking back and having a relaxing weekend, we spent ten hours cleaning out the barn, followed by another full day tackling the garage. The barn looks fantastic, and the garage is finally usable again. I'm glad we did it. But it certainly wasn't much of a break.

We've also spent a month of Sundays—our usual day off—helping our son and his wife renovate their new home. We've scraped popcorn ceilings, pulled carpet, chipped up glued-down linoleum, textured ceilings, painted walls, laid new flooring, and installed toilets. The house is adorable, and I'm so excited for them to finally move in. Watching them build their home has been awesome.

The truth is, none of these things are bad things. Every project has been worthwhile. Every hour has been spent on something—or someone—I love.

But here lately, I've been so busy building the life I wanted that I forgot to leave time to enjoy living it.

I suspect I'm not the only one.

Maybe your "farm" doesn't have chickens or tomatoes. Maybe it's a career you've worked hard to build. Maybe it's little league games and dance recitals, caring for aging parents, remodeling a home, or growing a business you've poured your heart into. These are all great things. Meaningful things.

But even the things we love can fill every available space in our lives if we let them.

I'm the first to admit that I bring a lot of this on myself. Nothing on my to-do list is truly urgent. But there it sits, that litany in the back of my mind, reminding me that the weeds need pulling, the garage needs organizing, the website needs one more edit, and this project really ought to be finished before I sit down. And I need to do laundry because I don't have a single pair of clean socks.

I know this about myself; I over-commit and then over-work to keep up, and that makes for long days with no time left over to sit down and just enjoy ourselves. My New Year's resolution this year was that we wouldn't work past 4:00 p.m. on our days off.

That particular resolution is buried somewhere under a pile of weeds and unfinished projects.

So maybe it's time for a new one.

Maybe we really, genuinely, need one day each week that's actually a day off.

Maybe I need eight hours of sleep more than I need to pull weeds before work.

Maybe we need a date night more than we need a perfectly organized garage.

Because the hard truth is that the weeds will still be there tomorrow.

The website will need another edit next week.

The projects list is never-ending.

But an evening on the porch with a cup of coffee, dinner out with my husband, or simply sitting quietly and petting the goats—that's part of the harvest too.

After all, we didn't buy this farm so we could spend every waking minute working on it.

We bought it so we could build a life worth living. And then live it.