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Another Year. Amazing.

It’s kind of amazing. I mean, kind of. Not unexpected. Not surprising. But remarkable.

22 years.

She has been married to me for 22 years. Stuck around voluntarily. Puts up with. Tolerates. Maybe even likes sometimes.

Amazing.

But not *that* amazing. I mean, this married stuff is a lot of work. I think this year we both identified with the term “winter blues”. January and early February were rough. But that’s some of the joy…the rollercoaster of relationships. Sometimes I’m annoyingly crazy about her. Sometimes I just want to be left alone. I can either grind out the hard times (that really aren’t that hard). or….

So why are we still married? I’m not expressing regret. Not at all. But sometimes I wonder why?

And more infrequently I remember to approach that question with humility. In a way, so far so good.

But in other ways there is a lot of intentionality in our relationship. (Is that a word?) I work to make sure she feels appreciated. Let me give you an example. I’m sure you have read The 5 Love Languages. If not, close your internet and go now.

My language is physical touch. I can’t sit near enough to Julie. Some part of me has to touch her. I think one hand stays on her back or shoulder or hand while we sleep.

Julie wants quality time. Like eyes open, sitting across a table and …like…talking and listening and stuff. That’s like…work, man.

A lot has changed in 22 years. I have had lots of different jobs. Lots of different cars. Several different houses. I went from being the doer of the things to being the manager of the things. I shifted from dreaming of farming to embracing the economic opportunity in the workplace (but cows still make me smile). I barely remember having children in diapers. I have learned to relax more.

But I have also learned how to really work. And where this post is concerned, I have learned to work on my marriage. I am humble enough to say, “so far so good”. We are fallible people and the next year brings unknown challenges. Admittedly, there are some pretty rough spots from time to time. But I think we both agree that this deal is not 50/50. We both have to bring 100%. And it’s work. No matter how kind, intelligent, hard-working, funny or beautiful she is, some days I just don’t want anything to do with her. We have both learned to be attentive to that feeling, to break it down and to not let it fester. 22 years in and I’m still learning.

I love you Julie. 22 years. Still trying to learn all about you.

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21 Years. What’s the Point?

Please understand, I am telling you what we think the point is, not asking if there is a point.

So what’s the point?

I’ll tell you what it isn’t.

This isn’t some sort of contest to be the last couple on the dance floor. We aren’t married for the sake of being married.

I would suggest that we are married, in part, because we make daily decisions to deal with our problems. And we have problems. Boy do we have problems. The Communication Guys podcast recently featured a divorce attorney who talked about the need to deal with problems while they are still small. Julie and I deal with a lot of small problems. Some big problems too but the ones that needle at our relationship tend to be rather insignificant when you pause to take a deep breath.

But that may answer how we have stayed married. I didn’t ask that question. I asked “What’s the point?”

I have shared with you before why I married her. The most succinct answer I can give is I married her so nobody else could. I won. So there. But that doesn’t sustain a marriage. And marriage is hard. Why bother sustaining it?

What’s the point?

I guess I’m going to have to stop evading that question and take a stab at it. Keep in mind, I make this stuff up as I go along. I get the feeling that she does the same (but she makes it look easy). Also, I have to offer the disclaimer that this stuff may only work for Chris and Julie and it may only be good for 21 years of marriage. It isn’t over until it’s over. We haven’t hit 22 years yet. I’m not here to brag. Just to celebrate.

But what about this is worth celebrating? What’s the point?

Shoot. I did it again.

Is it possible that I stay married to Julie without justification?

Is it possible that this is just some meaningless drive to a trophy that will never be awarded?

Are we simply sustained by emotions we felt as children and fear of embarrassment or social pressure to keep this thing going for the sake of the children? Gosh, I hope not.

So what is it then?

Obviously I’m having trouble putting this into words. And I can only speak for Chris. You should know by now that, though he has known her since 1993, Chris has no idea what Julie is thinking…I mean, I know she is mad, I just don’t know why.

So I would have to say that Chris is married to Julie because Julie…

Look, this is kind of embarrassing.

Marriage isn’t the end goal. Marriage isn’t the point. But it also isn’t the means to an end. It’s like…it’s like …it’s like being married to Julie gives everything else purpose. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my kids, my farm and my dog. But I treasure sharing those experiences with Julie.

My kids will grow up and move out. Hopefully, they will live next door or, at least, very close. The dog won’t last forever. But I work every day to ensure that Julie comes to me for friendship, acceptance and affirmation. Heck, she can even come to me for food, shelter and safety if she wants. But those physical needs are easier to attain than love.

I love her. And I want to love her because I want her to love me.

And I think that’s the point. I love her because I want to love her. And I want her to love me because I love her.

I recognize that the above is circular.

And maybe that’s why it was hard to answer the question to begin with.

The point is that I want to. Even though sometimes I want to less than other times.

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20 Years. Twenty.

Twenty years ago on July 5th I had no idea what I was doing. Julie checked all the right boxes that I thought a mate needed…

  • Female? Check.
  • Warm? Check.
  • Intelligent? Check.
  • Pretty? (Really, really pretty?) Check. (Bonus points applied).
  • Similar family cultures? Check.
  • So…what the heck? Let’s do this.

That is as much consideration as my tiny 20 year old brain could offer toward the subject of marriage.

We were both full-time college students when we got married. There were arguments. We shared illness. We were broke. Like broke-broke. Like legit broke (like random people in our community would bring us food kind of broke). Things were worse.

But we resolved our issues. We got healthier. We even had a few nickels to rub together from time to time and things got better.

Then we invented new issues, found new and creative ways to get sick, spent all of our savings and went back to worse.

Then back again. Over and over, again and again.

Today’s drama (July 4, 2017) is due to the current surplus of eggs (which Julie reminds me has been worse in the past).

Last week’s drama was due to the pillaging armies of raccoons and their tiny offspring eating our chickens. We celebrated each victory against the bandits but today I am frustrated that I have so many birds.

Does it have to be this way? Up and down?

I wish it was not so. This is, in some ways, a measure of me as a man. I was re-reading Marcus Aurelius last week and came across this:

From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason; and to be always the same, in sharp pains, on the occasion of the loss of a child, and in long illness; and to see clearly in a living example that the same man can be both most resolute and yielding, and not peevish in giving his instruction;

Be always the same. If only I could.

I don’t know why there is an ebb and flow to my feelings toward her. There are days when I can’t stand a moment without her. There are also times when I feel differently. And I know she deals with that too.

We share a journal that gets more frequent updates than the blog does these days. When Julie and Wendy left for camp in Montana I had a rough time and made several journal entries expressing frustration and loneliness…after she had only been gone for three days. Most of the frustration was that I couldn’t share how I was feeling with her because I didn’t want to distract her from having fun with Wendy. But I needed to tell her what I was feeling so I entered it in the journal.

But as the time passed I found myself staring at the picture above and counting down the hours until she returned. Can you tell I was excited?

CountingHours

My entries changed from dwelling on my loneliness to my excitement about their return home. Everything changed…even though nothing had changed. No matter how I felt, she was due at the airport at noon on the 30th. No matter how I felt the 30th was always Friday. But my distance from Friday radically altered my mood.

My distance from Julie radically altered my mood.

And that applies even when we are not physically separated because the distance between us really has very little to do with the distance between us.

We drift apart. I busy myself with work or chores or fail to invest in quality time with Julie and she starts to feel lonely. She starts to make journal entries about her feelings.

We make adjustments and corrections and grow closer together. For a while.

Right now we are very close.

I don’t know what kind of an entry on my checklist can account for this behavior. I needed someone with whom I could survive the change of seasons.

Julie is that.

Not only is she kind, caring, warm, intelligent, unbelievably beautiful and has seen all Star Wars movies, she and I can weather the storm.

Richer or poorer. Better or worse. Sickness and health. I had no idea how good of a deal I was getting 20 years ago.

I love you Julie.

 

An additional thought about Julie not directly related to the theme of this post:

But why Julie? If census data is correct, there were 10 million other women in Julie’s age group in 1997. Even if Julie was one in a million, there were 9 others just like her. What is it about Julie that is special? I have wrestled with this idea for quite a while now. There are other women in the US. There are other nice women. There are other caring, compassionate women who watched Star Wars at least once. But Julie is special to me.

Why?

I really can’t put my finger on it. The book Start with Why talks about our limbic brain having no speech center but being responsible for our gut feelings (Chapter 4, This is not Opinion, It’s Biology).

The part of our brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language. It is this disconnection that makes putting our feelings into words so hard. We have trouble, for example, explaining why we married the person we married. We struggle to put into words the real reasons why we love them, so we talk around it or rationalize it. “She’s funny, she’s smart,” we start. But there are lots of funny and smart people in the world, but we don’t love them and we don’t want to marry them. There is obviously more to falling in love than just personality and competence.

There is obviously more to my feelings toward Julie than just the checklist above. There is also appreciation that she loves me back. Or I love her back. I don’t know who started it. But I know through each of the low points in our relationship, one or the other of us has had to make a decision. Either we are going to end this or we are going to treat each other better. So when things look bleak I try to say something nice. And she reciprocates. Or the other way around.

It’s like my marriage is both the result of a feeling I can neither express nor define and the fruit of deliberate action taken day after stinking day.

I asked one of my major professors, Dr. Singh, how arranged marriages work. He replied, “The same as any other marriage. You wake up each morning and decide to love that person next to you.”

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I Know. It Happened to Me Too.

Julie and I have been watching some online training together for several months. Around Thanksgiving we bought and watched Art Jonak’s Mastermind event. There were a couple of speakers at that event that really made an impact with me.

The first was Tom “Big Al” Schreiter who said, “You ask people if they want more money and a longer life and they universally say ‘Yes’. Then you offer to let them join your direct marketing opportunity and they say they would rather die young and poor. You have done something wrong.” Big Al is worth more attention but not today.

A later presenter was Eric Gamio. His presentation was amazing but is no longer available so I’m going to share my notes and thoughts. But my focus is on farm…and funnily enough, I direct sell everything on the farm so this is applicable. I would encourage you to find more information from Eric Gamio but you will need to understand Spanish first. I don’t.

Eric started by talking how amazingly simple it was for him to start a business. Basically, within 6 months he had to hire an assistant to take the money to the bank for him. Everything he tried worked on the first try. Eric immediately confessed that he had been lying and he was thankful for the truth. The truth was he floundered for 18 months before slowly finding his way. He said that experience was important so he could have credibility when teaching others. He could say, “I know. It happened to me too. I’m still here.”

I have worked to share the ups and downs of the farm with my audience since the beginning. I wanted a page people could read and say to themselves, “Oh. Wow. I’m not the only one.”

This farming stuff is hard. If you take a night off, things can die. Even if you don’t take a night off, things can die. Believe me, I know. It happened to me too, and I’m still here.

We bought our first 150 broilers 7 years ago. They came from one of the major hatcheries and slept all day with their heads in the feed trough (we later switched to a different strain of birds from a different hatchery). They had all kinds of leg issues (later, we discovered this was a lack of riboflavin in their diet) but the brooder in the back room worked fairly well (we don’t brood in the back room anymore…most of the time). Then we moved the birds to a temporary greenhouse made of PVC pipe…that we had built in a wind tunnel on the plains of Illinois. Sigh. Finally, the birds went into a chicken tractor (one chicken tractor, 100+ remaining birds) in the front yard. The front yard has never been the same since. Just as they were reaching the right size to butcher the buffalo gnats hatched and started killing the remaining birds. One evening, dad and I were in the yard, wearing bee bonnets to keep the gnats from attacking our faces and butchering birds only slightly faster than they were suffocating from the buffalo gnats. We had never really butchered chickens before and were learning under fire. But finally, it was time to sell the birds…to customers we had completely forgotten about. We forgot to find customers. Now what do we do with these stupid birds?

Does that sound remotely familiar?

Having gone through that, I could either use my internet connection to tell you about those stupid birds and their stupid leg problems or that stupid Salatin who said “You Can Farm!”

But instead I offer that story so you will be reassured that I really do know. I’ve been there. It happened to me too, and I’m still here.

There is hope for us, reader.

Let’s share another one.

The first time we raised pigs I kept them behind poly net and it worked out well. The pigs cleaned up areas where I had decaying equipment, trees and brambles. The poly net kept them in check. I can’t interact with small groups of animals without referring to them as something so I named them Buddy, Girlie and Susan. Yes, Susan. That’s not directed at anyone out there, it just happened.

It came around to butcher day so we asked a knowledgeable friend to assist with Buddy and Girlie. We sold Susan (more later). After opening the polywire fence, I politely asked Girlie to follow me to the combine shed so we could shoot her in the head. She obliged. Everything went swimmingly.

Next, I asked Buddy to accompany me as well. He came out of the pen and followed me to the shed. My friend lined up to shoot as Buddy ate a cookie but…missed slightly. Buddy was hurt and went running. The goal is to finish it cleanly. And every pig since then has been clean. But with Buddy…it was not clean. Buddy had to teach me how not to kill a pig.

Have you ever had an experience like that? I know. It happened to me too, and I’m still here.

Susan the pig was absolutely pig-headed. She would not load into the livestock trailer. We tried every trick imaginable and failed miserably. Ultimately, I used a sorting board to push her into the trailer. Somehow she squirted away from me, fought her way through the electric fence and went running across the pasture. I had stressed her, put pressure on her and she responded negatively. I think she is the pig we had to rope and drag into the trailer and I not only promised my wife I wouldn’t swear like that anymore, I promised myself I would find a better way to load pigs. (We found we could open their pen to the trailer a day or so before and they would explore it and lose their fear as the new wore off).

Has that happened to you? It happened to me, and I’m still here.

When we got Susan to town I backed into the loading chute at the slaughter house. But I backed up a little crooked. One of the guys held up a board to close a gap between the trailer and the chute but Susan was still freaked out, saw the gap and nearly knocked the guy over on her way to freedom. Every employee at the slaughter house and the state inspector was out in the street trying to help catch a pig that had gotten loose in town.

But I know. And I’m still here.

So here we are, 8 years later. Surely I am now an expert in raising and selling chicken, pork and even beef by now, right? Surely I am making my full-time income from the farm, right?

Heck, I’ve been a parent for 16 years now. Surely my kids are perfectly well-behaved, right?

I’ve been married for 20 years. Surely, by now, I have some clue what she wants and it’s all easy, right?

I have been alive for 40 years. Surely, by now…

Look, man. I know. It happened to me too, and I’m still here.

I don’t know if I would be here without my mom and dad. Not in the physical sense, obviously. I don’t know if I could have survived the learning process without their help.

And that’s the point Eric Gamio was making. You need help from others. You need help from people who know. People who have been there too.

You can make incredibly stupid mistakes but not be stupid yourself. You just have to learn. It’s Maxwell’s Law of the Process. It takes time for those hard lessons to sink in.

And it takes encouragement from mentors to continue. Relationships I treasure with people like my parents and Steve and even remote friends like Darby and Matron and many others.

Believe me. I know. I’ve been there too.

You probably have been through some difficult experiences…anything ranging from personal rejection to dead calves to pediatric oncology. While you may not want to wear them in public every day, there may be someone you know who needs to hear, “I know. It happened to me too, and I’m still here.”

Or you may be someone who needs to hear that you are not alone. You are not a freak. You have not made a mistake. It is OK if you don’t know everything on day 1. Or day 100. Believe me. I know. It happened to me. I’m still here.

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I Don’t Have Time to Not Read

I was listening to a recent episode of the Read to Lead podcast this week and the guest was talking about the importance of reading. You probably aren’t too surprised by that, given the subject of the podcast is reading.

Guest Angie Morgan said you can’t argue that you don’t have time to read because we don’t have time to not read.

That was sufficiently profound that I felt prompted to write a blog post. A blog post on the blog where I spend a considerable amount of time talking about the farm by way of the books I am sharing with you.

I don’t have time to NOT read.

Why?

Because there is so much I do not know….too much I will never figure out or even think of without guidance. The depth of my ignorance is boundless. Reading does not alleviate me of the need for thinking for myself. Rather, it allows me the opportunity to catch up. Why do we ask the Muse to sing of the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles? Because he brought so much pain upon the Achaeans. Because Achilles thought he wanted a short life and everlasting glory but, when later talking with Odysseus, changed his mind. He would have preferred a long life. Because we can see by their example how badly we can screw things up when responding to emotions rather than to reason.

Humans have shared read the works of Homer for 3,000 years. Is that by accident? I don’t think so.

Because I can’t tell the future.

I know very little about Neil Gaiman. I have seen his name on spines at the library and at book stores. Fortunately, the Milk is on our shelf and I suspect my kids know all about him. But I don’t. I have only read this article quoting him. Rather than quote the whole article, which you should read and consider, I’ll point out this sentence:

The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

But I can influence the future, just as Gaiman says in the post above. I can raise my children to wonder at worlds that will never exist but are reflections of worlds that could be. I can help guide my children through these worlds, the concepts and consequences the writer is presenting. Jean Valjean was not real but his impact can be felt. Bilbo Baggins, like Luke Skywalker, was an unlikely hero with a glowing sword…but a hero nonetheless. Jean and Bilbo teach my children about doing what is right in spite of the cost in a way they can relate to where they are now.

Because I don’t want to screw this up.

Is that silly? Or obvious? I want to be a good husband. A good father. Even a good employee and citizen. I want to understand the historical definition of each of those roles and I find my way through them. Not only do I seek to understand how previous generations raised my fathers, I seek to know why. And what traps did they fall into that I can avoid? Because it’s not enough to turn infants into adults-sized bodies. I want to shape the minds trapped in those bodies. And I can’t do it alone. I have to rely on outside help. Marcus Aurelius’ great-grandfather said exactly this:

From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.

While you can’t learn to swim from a book, we rely on the perspective and experience of a wide variety of authors to teach us. And we do spend liberally. Amazon gets a frightening portion of our budget. So does the library in the form of overdue fees but that’s another story.

Obviously my focus in on my home but it goes beyond that. After Julie and the kids, I spend the most time with my employees and co-workers. I can influence the future of the company by encouraging others to explore, learn and grow. It’s as easy as asking, “Hey, whatcha reading these days?”

The most typical answer is, “Nothing. I don’t have time to read. Hey, did you see that last episode of Zombies Murdering People? It was Awesome!”

No, man. I don’t have time to watch watch Zombies Murdering People. There is too much I don’t know…don’t understand and haven’t explored. In short, I am too stupid to watch Zombies Murdering People.

How about you? Whatcha reading these days?

Update:

I came down kind of hard on Zombies Murdering People and for that I am sorry. It may be that in 100 years we will look back on the various episodes of Zombies Murdering People and reflect on the changes the show wrought in the human spirit. It may prove to become a classic. But the odds are against it. Jefferson wrote that the US was better for its lack of printing presses compared to France. France had plenty of paper for the toilet but the US only printed the things that had proven their worth.

So I’ll offer Zombies Murdering People the benefit of the doubt and I’ll just let it be. And while its worth is measured I’ll occupy my time on tested and proven resources.

 

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Looking Back on Surgery

A year ago today (December 18) we were in surgery with our daughter to make the cancer go poof. I am delivering you an unedited video of Julie and I and a whole lot of anxiety in the waiting room at the hospital.

This is how we dealt with the strain. We drew close together. We laughed. We talked.

So here it is.

I hope it helps you in some small way.

If nothing else, pay attention to how tired and confused both of us are about various surgeries, dates and locations in the hospital. This was the halfway point of Wendy’s treatment and it was all a blur.

Last year was hard.

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A Failure of Reduction

Remember the movie Better Off Dead? That movie is a family Christmas tradition for us. Lane Meyer has to ski a dangerous mountain to prove himself to Beth. He seeks advice and receives the most boiled-down help imaginable.

While entirely accurate, it is incorrect and Lane barely escapes injury.

I was talking to our children recently about the search for that special someone and I, too, fell prey to the temptation to reduce. Not wanting to embarrass my child on the internet I’ll begin this way, one of my children was found to be holding hands with someone…but they were way, way in the back of the group trying to express their affections without being “caught”.

Allow me to reduce the other mother’s response: shock.

From my perspective it’s no big deal. Immature. Silly. But no big deal. But it gave me an opportunity to boil relationships down to the minimum: Whatever else happens, don’t anger the mother. You will lose. Make her your ally…pursue real friendship with her. And if you find you don’t like the mother you will find you no longer need to pursue the child because, if things go according to plan, you will have to spend every Christmas with her for the rest of her life. And that may not be what you want.

Whatever you think of my guidance above, it is hardly adequate. But I do this with everything.

How to take a shower? Get wet all over and put specific emphasis on cleaning places where the skin folds.

How to drive a car? The pedal on the right goes, one on the left stops. The wheel keeps you from running things over. Let’s do this.

The majority of server issues boil down to capacity management or connectivity.

So I have this pattern I fall into of attempting to boil it down to the essence. What is trying to be done here?

That practice, in summary, fails when people are involved.

Let me give you another one and then I’ll give you a few more.

I tend to manage people by setting expectations and turning them loose. I don’t micro-manage. I expect my employees to learn the basics and grow from there by teaching others. Let me know if something comes up.

But that’s not enough because these are people we are dealing with!

I have successfully described the work that needs to be accomplished but nobody comes to work to do the work and get money. We come to work to be with people.

People who care about us. People we enjoy being with. People we can trust.

So there’s another reduction. I would suggest my job accomplishes several things all at once. My work is meaningful, it pays the bills and allows me to enjoy interacting with others.

There is a kernel of truth there but it misses so much subtle detail.

Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m missing the subtle detail.

I’ll typically arrive at work in the morning after most of my team has arrived. I’ll walk in and speak some song lyrics or something like, “You know, I don’t need dolla bills to have fun tonight…as long as I can feel the beat.” Two of them will look at me like they have no earthly idea what I just said. Another will laugh because I’m such a dork…but everybody loosens up a little we greet each other and then tie into work.

But I have already reduced the workey part. Let’s pretend I have a new employee named Larry. “Larry, each of your co-workers assume primary responsibility for a platform. They have created documentation so anybody else can do the work when they are on vacation. I need you to learn A, B and C in and out. But you won’t be primary on any of those. You are going to take on a new project. You are going be primary support, create the documentation about it and teach everybody else. Let me know if you have any questions. I’ma go over here and work on the things.

“Oh, and on Wednesdays we get together as a team to update project status and do some team training. In your free time I need you to learn all about technology X and teach it to us next month. I know you don’t know anything about it at all. In fact, I’m well aware that you have never even heard of this. My goal is not to make you look stupid in front of your peers, it is to expose our team to something new and help us to find better ways of doing our jobs. I can’t sift through all of the options on my own so we learn things together and discuss. I need you to be a part of that.

“Oh, and one more thing. If I catch you working evenings we’ll have to have a serious talk.”

I REALLY like that freedom. I have had at least three managers who worked that way. They gave me a lot of room to run, expecting me to just get my stuff done because I’m a grown-up. And, for the most part, I do. But it’s not for everybody. Some people need much more structure. So I interview for that. I honestly and completely lay out the culture, the environment and the expectations in the interview. We have fun, we learn how much we don’t know, we teach each other. We own our projects. And if their eyes pop out of their head I scratch them off the list.

My style is not for everybody. Sometimes people need each day planned out. They need to be told each step along the way.

I failed to discover this when I interviewed Julie and the kids.

I tend to give vague instructions like, “Please move the cows before noon.”

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What I really mean is, “How are you feeling today? Look, I have to go to St. Louis today. I know it’s a bother but I need help with the cows. They cows are by the hog building. They are watering in the creek down the hill. Please set up a new grazing strip about 20′ wide to the East beginning at the hog building and going down to the bottom. Julie should carry the reel, oldest boy should set posts. As you are walking back, shift 40′ to the West and Julie should reel up the previous day’s rear fence while the boy collects the posts. Then leave any extra posts and reels in the SE corner of the grazing area. This should take you 15 minutes but give yourself 30 just in case. I really appreciate your help in this. The cattle are important to me but you are more important. This farm is important to me but we can put it aside if needed. I hope it is important to us. Maybe I can bring dinner home to make it up to you. I love you.”

It is not safe for me to assume they understand what my expectations are. Nor that they realize the most efficient way of getting it done. Nor that they won’t need discussion time to offer feedback. I just say, “Make the magic happen” and expect it to happen.

I had a boss named Rosie. She was a great boss. She was not technical so she relied on us to know how to fulfill the vision she gave. But she gave clear vision and she encouraged feedback. She didn’t say, “Go fast and turn”. She said, “Here’s the plan. Here’s where you fit. What do you think? Let’s go.”

Ugh. If only I could be more like that.

But I don’t even make time to talk to myself about why and how.

With the events of last year we were unable to raise replacement pullets. So right now, I have 100+ birds laying as many as 6 eggs/day. I know what needs to be done. There is no discussion. Nobody cares about feelings. Those birds have to die. We are already out of the egg business. That’s a fact.

But there is more. There are no replacements. There may never be. I have shown the kids the viability of the business model…when appropriately scaled and in partnership with other enterprises on the same resource base. And if they want to do it, they can. But if I am to put my resources to their highest and best use, I have to spend my time elsewhere. I can’t stay up all night hunting a skunk that is killing my birds and still answer tech calls at 2am and still show up at my desk ready to rock at 8. I am not 25 anymore.

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There are more factors involved. I can no longer reduce it to “I want chickens so I have chickens.”

Reductionism only goes so far.

So I guess I should spell out what I’m trying to say. I do a fine job of reducing tasks to their essential points. But I should not be reducing people…because people are more complex than tasks. And I need to encourage feedback rather than just act like it’s all obvious.

So…what do you think?

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A Dairy Maid’s Life Sentence

“Good morning, cow’s manure-covered tail.”

“Hello girl. Don’t kick me today. The bruise still hasn’t healed.”

“Come on. Just put your head in the thing and eat your oats. Where are you going?”

I’m sure you have seen the pictures Julie puts up of her cow. Or her milk. Or her milker. Maybe even the cow in the stanchion. But you haven’t heard her.

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You haven’t heard her beg the cow to cooperate. And you haven’t heard her cry out in frustration.

What is she so frustrated about? There are thousands of people in town who would trade their retirement plans for a few acres and a dairy.

Well, here’s the thing. Even with 4 children we have a hard time drinking 2 gallons of milk every day. And we only milk 3 teats, leaving the fourth for the calf.

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We could make butter and mozzarella cheese. That’s probably what Steve would do. But I’m not Steve. Or Matron.

Let’s talk about Matron a little bit. Matron is a real source of inspiration for us as well as a source of encouragement. She has been a friend to us at a distance. But she and Julie are different people with different motivations. Different needs and wants.

So there really is no comparison.

So we do our own thing.

In fact, we do what I have never known anybody to do. What I have never heard of anybody doing. So I don’t recommend it.

Now that we are several months into the lactation and the calf has grown we let the calf have the milk and only milk every 2 or 3 days.

I know. Crazy.

Even when we milk we leave one teat for the calf.

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So how does that work. Well, one day we drove away to the airport. We went to Disney for two days and came home again. When we got home we separated cow and calf overnight then milked the cow in the morning. Every evening the cow gets fresh grass. She usually gets a small amount of oats even when we don’t milk. And that’s about that.

Milking every day meant milk going bad.

Milking every day meant sterilizing equipment every day.

Milking every day meant dreading the morning’s chores, never sleeping in and hating being enslaved by a cow.

But now she is free.

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And that’s really good news.

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Re-Learning Things I Already Learned Again

I try to carry a theme of humility and ignorance on my blog. Another theme of my blog posts is I tend to start at the end.

I learned something recently. I have to be able to understand your issues without internalizing them. Additionally, I really treasure time with my wife.

So why is this important? And how does this relate to the farm? And why am I writing this in a public blog instead of just leaving a notebook for my kids to read later on? Because I say it is, because I believe it does and because my handwriting is terrible.

So with that out of the way, let’s start over. 14 months ago my youngest was diagnosed with cancer. For eight months my wife and daughter lived at the hospital for a minimum of 10 days each month. In addition there were trips to the ER, surgeries, blood work, checkups and infusions of poison…each with its own co-pay.

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But I don’t want to talk about poisons and finances today. I want to talk about Julie.

I love Julie.

But I lived without her for so long I lost a level of intimacy with her.

Not just physical intimacy…which was obviously lacking when she was away. Real, personal interdependence. Need.

Friendship.

Julie is my best friend. I say that because you look worried.

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But that wasn’t the case for much of the summer. Julie was more like my roommate. Friends with benefits.

We identified this problem some time ago and sought out professional help. I guess it helped. I have gotten ahead of myself again. Let’s go back.

14 months ago I learned about pediatric oncology. Those two words do not belong together. It’s not like I was unaware of childhood cancer, it’s that I was insulated from it…either because I am shallow or because I am lucky. Please let me believe I am lucky.

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On August 31 my life was normal. On September 1 the whole  world was upside-down. Or downside-up. Or topsy-turvy. Skip it.

We found our way to the pediatric cancer floor of Children’s Hospital in St. Louis. A whole floor of sick kids. One girl we remember was in isolation for months. She was 11 and had leukemia. The bad kind of leukemia. Without treatment she would die. But treatment was killing her. So she lived in isolation. Every few weeks the nurses would allow her to move to a different room so she could see fresh scenery.

She died between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I have a 14 year old girl. Believe me, I can imagine.

In fact, for a long time I could do more than imagine it. I could feel the pain of the other families on the floor.

But something began to happen. Slowly. I learned how to care without internalizing the pain of others.

To some of you that seems entirely obvious. But it was not easy for me. I would go to the hospital every day. I would ride the elevator with the other parents and I would take time to talk with them. One child was 7 months old, was born with a heart defect and was not eligible for a heart transplant. One child was 7 days old and could not draw breath on his own. One child was in an accident and had fractured his skull. Heavy stuff. And it all weighed on me. My own daughter, losing weight, feeling sick, throwing up, sleeping all of the time, fighting and crying to avoid the next painful round of breathing treatments, obviously depressed and extremely self-conscious about her little bald head…and then all of the weight of other sick kids in the hospital…the struggling families we were meeting.

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Like Bruce. Bruce was a truck driver. His son was in prison. The son had 7 grandchildren all in foster care. Bruce had custody of his youngest grandson…the one with leukemia. Bruce and his wife just lived at the hospital with the boy…the 2 year old boy. The 2 year old boy who was on his second round of treatments. The boy died at Christmas.

How do the nurses and doctors deal with this pain?

How can Julie and I deal with it?

You know what? We don’t have to deal with it.

We have to support our daughter’s needs. Not that little boy.

One thing our daughter needs is a stable home.

Bruce also needs us. But Bruce doesn’t need us to take his grandson’s pain away. Bruce needs us to listen. To listen. Not to feel. To listen. To understand. To understand without internalizing.

But we did internalize. And it was killing us.

It caused each of us pain, individually. The weight of that burden, in addition to our daughter’s illness, was almost more than our relationship could stand.

So we sought help.

Rest assured, we sought professional help. From a real, licensed professional.

But I had a particularly difficult moment at work, cornered an executive, shut the door and, among other words, quit my job.

Now I didn’t lose my job at this time. I say that because you look worried.

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I’ll summarize my list of complaints about myself. Everything I touch breaks, I’m tired, I’m not the right person for the job and I think I would be happier making sandwiches at Subway. I think that about covers it.

He corrected me that all of the technology I am responsible for at work is in better shape now than it was when it was handed to me. However, he thinks I probably am tired because I am still fixing problems. “There will always be problems, Chris. That’s why we need managers. You are a manager. You should not be fixing problems anymore. You should be managing them.” Thanks, Jim.

At the same time I was reading A Failure of Nerve by Friedman. Friedman says roughly the same thing. There are problems. Real problems. Some of these problems don’t have solutions. They have to simply be managed to mitigate the damage.

Living with crises is a major part of leaders’ lives. The crises come in two major varieties: (1) those that are not of their own making but are imposed on them from outside or within the system; and (2) those that are actually triggered by the leaders through doing precisely what they should be doing.

My daughter’s cancer was not of my own making. And there was nothing I could do to make it stop. We just had to manage it for the duration.

And when that battle ended we had a new fight on our hands. The emotional distance separating Julie from me was not of my own making. And there was nothing I could do to make it stop immediately. It took time. And patience. And change.

And here I sit talking of it in past tense. But that is inaccurate. This is our present battle. Every. Stinking. Day. is a fight for my marriage.

And it is more than just acknowledging that a marriage is more than sharing a house and a bed. This is an every day effort to meet her needs. And, beyond that, to help her to heal as well.

I had a hard time learning not to internalize the pain of others. In fact, we still struggle with it.

We met a boy recently who had a similar type of bone cancer to our daughter’s. He, too, had his fibula removed but his was transplanted to replace his left humerus. We met them at a fundraiser and shortly after he began to struggle with the combined weight of chemo and recovery from surgery. It was hard not to cry with the family. But that is not our battle. That is not our calling. That is not our purpose.

Certainly we reach out to that family and seek ways to support them. But their struggles are not our struggles.

I woke up one morning and realized Julie and I were next to each other but far, far apart.

That is our struggle.

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How did this happen? I love Julie. She is my best friend. Or she should be…

I have given this subject some thought. I believe I prioritized the wrong problems. I fought the wrong battles. I empathized with the wrong people.

I avoided doing what I needed to do because it was hard. It is easy to sympathize with a family on 9. It is hard to deal with Julie honestly and openly. Especially when neither of us were in the wrong…we were just apart. That’s a tough problem to solve! And it requires more than just time. More than just trips away together. I don’t want to be overly prescriptive in this post because your marriage is not my marriage. I’ll just say I had to find ways to discover who Julie is today… 20 years and 4 children and 1 cancer after I met her. She is not the same person she was even 14 months ago. I am not either.

Marriage is hard but I think Julie and I are both fighting the right battle now. We were both distracted and our efforts were misguided. We suffered. But I think we are back on track.

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The Painful Place Between Willing and Wanting

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I am willing to wash the dishes. I don’t want to do it but I am willing to so our house will be clean.

I want to eat a chocolate chip cookie. I’m totally willing to eat chocolate chip cookies too.

You down?

Let me bring it to the farm. Julie is willing to milk the cow but she doesn’t really want to.

This really is not about milking the cow. It’s certainly not about chocolate chip cookies.

It’s about that wide and disheartening gulf between the things we are willing to do and the things we actually want to do.

What does Julie want to do?

That’s a very important question.

It turns out, more and more, that what Julie wants is not to run a farm while I’m at work. So year by year there is less and less farm. We started butchering layers today and there is no replacement flock.

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Why is that disheartening? Isn’t that a bit of a strong word?

Well, the shrinking farm is not disheartening. That’s a reality and a consequence of our daughter’s illness.

The disheartening part is watching Julie wither away as I impose my will on her.

…watching us grow distant as I want what she is only willing to do.

OK. So now what?

Now we address the problem. We make small adjustments to our routines.

We want chickens but we don’t want to wash 40 dozen eggs Monday morning. How about pigs? I love having pigs. But pigs on pasture cause her a lot of frustration. So I have to find simple solutions to the pig problem to make it as hands-off as possible…while still honoring the pig’s design.

And milking. Every year milking led to crying. And more crying. But not this year. And why? Because we realized that we don’t need 2 gallons of milk every day. More on milking another time.

I’m not as concerned about the kidlets as I am about Julie. They approach a number of chores only reluctantly and want to play video games. Part of the deal for them is doing things they don’t want to do. But what about me? What about Julie? Yes, we do a number of things we are willing to do but don’t really want to do. I drive away from the farm every day because it’s the best thing I can do for my family right now. But I don’t want to do it.

However, I see that differently than making Julie, who is a willing participant, do things she doesn’t want to do all day.

Because it leads to resentment if she is never allowed to do the things she just wants to do.

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I am being vague here. I don’t want to share too much about my beautiful wife…putting her on display for all the internet to read. But mistakes have been made. And we are working to ensure they do not continue.

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Take a moment to ensure that you and your other both want the same things. Ensure that you have common vision, not division.