While my feed may lead you to believe I do nothing but pose with flowers on the farm, I promise I do other stuff, too. Like pose with the buckets.

(Seriously though a huge part of flower farming is sanitizing buckets to keep the blooms as fresh as possible. At least once a week, someone’s on scrub duty—this time it was me.)

I want to be better than I was yesterday. I’d like everything I make and do to be more informed and more refined than the last. Pursuing anything less seems like a waste of the very precious time I’ve been given in this body and this life.

But this kind of drive easily slips into perfection, which has ruled me before.

The difference is fear.

Am I afraid of being enough and doing enough? (Perfectionism)

Or am I appropriately grateful and rightfully in awe to be doing and being at all? (Presence)

The former means contraction. Feelings of worthlessness, depletion, insecurity, hopelessness.

The latter seems to lead to openness. Satisfaction. Curiosity. Joy.

All I have to do is stay grounded and present with my task, my action. The moment the past or the future creeps in, I’m dealing with my own mind, which means comparison and fear. Everything good is happening Right Now.

Salvia stole my heart this season. I love the tedious harvest with all its chances to pick and strip a stem better than I did the last.

Move, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
(Rumi)