Today I got a lot of straight forward physical work done. I had a big bin of burnable rubbish which I slowly worked through burning. We have set a possum trap to stop them eating our apples. It was not working properly so I fixed that. I have broad beans growing, nearly ready to pick, but needing supported and tied. I did this, feasting on the sugar snap peas growing nearby. We had a really nice lunch with salad vegetables from the garden and an egg each from our hens. After lunch we went down to trim the goats' feet. We have two goats, and with cunning, goat nuts and gentle talk we caught them and I went about the business of trimming their hooves. The only hiccup was that at the end of each treatment we would hold the whole foot in a bucket of copper sulphate solution. I was lying on the ground holding the goats leg when suddenly the goat kicked out, I ended up getting a mouthful of this horrible tasting liquid. But I enjoyed the farm work. I was then asked to look at the electric lawn mower. The switch mechanism was not working, so I went about pulling it to pieces. I could not repair it, no matter how hard I tried. Like so many things these days it was a throw away item which was not made to be fixed. I looked through my hoarded electrical stuff and found a switch. I adapted it, fitted it to the mower and was so rapt when it worked with the blade going in the right direction. (I think if I had the wires around the wrong way it could have gone backwards) I moved from that to fixing a speaker on a stereo we used at the drop-in centre, but to fix that I first had to repair a plug on my soldering iron. All this long winded story to say I really enjoy doing plain old fixing things. My mind is concentrated on the thing at hand, and work is forgotten. I see results straight away for my efforts. It is simply a good way to spend a day off. .... but....
Incoming stress... "I know its your day off but....."
During the day I received four work related phone calls. One was a chaplain catching up on stuff I did for him last week when he was on holiday. Two were somebody from one of my chaplaincies wanting to make an appointment for tomorrow. The fourth was the chaplaincy office wanting me to do some work in a different workplace tomorrow. Each one brought a certain level of stress. I had the details of my work last week at my church office in town, my memory could not remember names. Full of self doubt, I ask myself, "Will I be up to helping the person who wants to see me tomorrow?" I will have to move my normal Tuesday timetable around to fit them in. Now I have to fit it all around this new piece of work. But at that job I have to meet new people, do some new things, and walk into a strange, potentially strained situation? I get so stressed about that sort of thing. My essential shyness sneaks in and raises my stress levels. I'll do it and cope, but it feels like every week has extra stuff in it when I am trying to cut back on stress levels. These calls did mar an otherwise good day off! One day I will deal to my shyness and self-doubt. When I grow up maybe? ;-)
Email conversation... Early in the day I responded to an email a guy on the Night Shelter Trust sent me. He replied and I replied back to him. He responded with this simple but straight forward email...
"Agree.
Why are you doing emails today – this is your day off – go for a run!!!!
K"
That gave me a giggle.
No comments:
Post a Comment