Quiet Friday

It's been a week since I said the final farewells to my life in Kansas City. The 4.5 day drive presented me with an enormous challenge, to quiet my mind and really listen to my own thoughts. It was during that drive that I evolved into a much quieter version of myself. What a curious notion, that someone so boisterous and flamboyant is suddenly bashful, tongue-tied, observant. I must presume it's part of the settling in process, the introduction to a self-reinvention that I've craved for years. Few people will ever know my true self and these days I'm much more guarded in what I reveal. While it's difficult to silence the old tapes that keep replaying through my head, but I now have the presence of mind to realize that the uncontrollable circumstances I keep obsessing over are 2,000 miles away and it may be time to retire the worry as it's only leads me to a bottle of Xanax.
I'm at Peet's again. The barista's have learned my name and learned to lean over the counter to hear me order. My voice is so small, my throat chokes at the idea of projection. I'm not in my element yet. Something similar happened to me when I was 18. Suddenly, after years of enjoying theme parks, I became terrified of roller coasters. Perhaps an adventurous and fearless spirit redirects its strengths from time to time. My strengths are innumerable. I've worked hard to be a person of integrity, a person of inexhaustible work ethic, honest and generous but also unruly and unconventional. I've followed my heart and its led me here to a place where I'm reintroduced to me, and I have changed.



I love Kirker's Pass more every day. Driving home last night I wanted to pull over, jump a barbwire fence and run up the sides of the soft mountains singing "The Sound of Music." But, I didn't- only because there's not much of a shoulder but something about those mountains and the gentle littering of calves and sheep keeping the terrain orderly, I love it.
My first 8-hour work day happened yesterday. I make my own hours, wear whatever I like, and participate in manual labor so strenuous that I ordered pizza delivery on the way home last night, too tired to get out of my car and walk into a restaurant. Before it arrived I heaved my exhausted body into the shower and watched as the dirt and grime of the warehouse rolled off my skin and down the drain. The first and foremost goal on the way to a tangible bookstore is to get inventory under control. This is the view from the loft in the warehouse:



One by one we unload these gaylords in front of recycle bins. If the book has no monetary value, it gets recycled. If it does, we resell it. Everything else is just a dream until the kinks in this process are smoothed out. I took another shower this morning trying to loosen up the tender muscles in my biceps and calves, but it still hurt to bend over and tie my shoes. The pain is my reward though, reminding me of the countless days at the greenhouses, carrying hundreds of buckets of tomatoes out of one hot house and into the main building for buffing and packaging. And when we expanded, leaping into the backs of semi-trailers to cart out 50 lb bags of cattle grain, bales of alfalfa, salt licks. I loved that life and I love this one- with every movement I'm earning my dream.