Seven Days in (Almost) Heaven

Or, Why leave when I can watch the global chaos from the comfort of my own home?

I have one week to completely change my life. Or, in other words, I’m on vacation!

I’m not going anywhere, so it’s actually a staycation, but I think that word is not cool. (And, I am a very cool person, even if all of society disagrees.) It’s too hot to go anywhere, anyway; all the places I would go are averaging 120ºF, so I might as well stay home and be hot for free. We have a pool at our house, so you’d think that would be something, but we have yet to fill it because it really needs to be patched and repainted and we’ve tarried; and also because it’s nearly impossible to get anyone to come out and repair or service pools; and, also–news flash–pools are a giant pain in the ass, unless they belong to someone else.

But, being on vacation means not thinking of my job, the gist of which is to try to secure the retirement of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, of all places, the literal home of Friends of Coal. You can imagine how many friends I win and people I influence with this job on even the best of days, but it’s been a smidge tougher since January, for obvious reasons. On top of that, the organization I work for, one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the country, has just announced (yet again) that it will be laying people off. So, this vacation is all that stands between me and full-on, five-alarm-fire burn out. (No presh.)

I thought that spending the week in bed or staring for hours at my phone might not yield the life-changing results I crave, so I have developed a loose framework of feel-good activities for the week. (I am completely changing my life in tiny baby steps, I guess.) These include: arts and crafts, writing, meditation, exercise, and doing horse stuff. (Horse stuff is the stuff you do with horses when it is too hot to get on them; today, it was just hosing them down and hanging out with them in front of the fan while they dried. I’ve included a clip for your viewing pleasure.)

Lastly, by the end of the week, I hope to be ready to soft-launch a project that I’ve been working on quietly for a while now. And, this… well, this is the life-changing part.

With the exception of that last thing (which is big), these sound like simple tasks, but trust and believe: in the midst of all this (gestures broadly at everything), these simple tasks take gumption. Dare I say, courage, even? I mean, take a gander at this first stab at watercolor painting, for example. I was brave enough to do it, and braver still to show it!

My intention is to share my staycation–er, vacation–progress here on the Substack. Every day. I repeat: I will be writing. Every day. See what I mean about gumption? Please be kind about my arts and crafts results!

What about y’all? How are you handling the heat? Or, the figurative, existential fires? How are you changing your life today?