Unfortunately, I’m a day late but it’s been one of those weeks where nothing seems to be going as planned and I can’t even blame the goats for that, this week anyway; they’ve been pretty good. Every wave of rain we are blasted this week has me repeating the mantra: We need the rain with as much hay as we feed… We need the rain with as much hay as we feed. Despite repeating that over and over and over I am sick of the mud and sick of my shoes squishing and sick of having to empty muddy feeders. My plans for being on top of everything have slowly swirled down the drain and I’m currently just clinging to life day by day and counting the days till we dry out and I can find my groove again.
I had planned that my article this week would be a splendid, okay maybe not splendid but at least readable, part two of determining the value of a goat from a seller's point of view. Well… That’s not happening. I don’t have the brain power for that this week; nor am I feeling even slightly organized, and those are a bad combo to try and write something that I hope will be useful. Since we’ve had the rain and all the mud in combination with the end of spring show season wrapping up it’s easy for me to start feeling burned out. For the record, I also feel like this a lot after I’ve had a particularly nasty kidding or have lost a favorite goat.
For me, because I am a person who thrives at having as many irons in the fire as I can possibly fit (this also doesn’t mean that I am getting all of it done because I’m usually a tackle one thing at a time but I like to have things going and I like to be busy), burnout can be a pain. Whatever the cause of it, it sucks the enjoyment out of something for you and you even start resenting it. Whether it’s horses or goats or writing, I’ve come to understand that burnout is just a phase or a part of being so deeply devoted to something.
I’ve flip flopped so many times in and out of things because of burnout that even I feel a bit of whiplash thinking about all the times I wanted to quit. I didn’t understand and no one ever told me it was perfectly normal to want to quit. No one tells you how much of yourself you sacrifice for these things you love. And no one definitely doesn’t tell you how tired you get after hitting brick wall after brick wall after brick wall. But you do and it’s normal to want to quit and it’s normal to be tired and fed up and need a break. It’s normal to feel like you can’t keep doing this, or even go through phases where you absolutely hate it. It’s normal to not like things (or people) that you love. It makes us human.
My key to it is to keep moving forward. Every morning is a fresh slate and there are definitely mornings that I have to sludge through it and when I have several of those mornings tied together I remind myself that it’s normal to feel that way and that it’s a choice I make every single day. I know that for me, I have a tendency to focus way too much on all the things I haven’t gotten done (probably because I usually have too many irons in the fire again), but I do. I focus on the fact that I need one or two more pens that I don’t have. I focus on the fact that I don’t know where I’ll be milking next kidding season at the moment since we are still sorting out the milking area. I focus on the fact that I’ve only made one show this spring when I had in my mind planned to really buckle down this spring and be a weekend show warrior. I focus on all these things that have a tendency to pull me, or weigh me down. I catch myself doing this so often and that’s when I have to go sit somewhere quietly and tell myself to slow down and to remember everything that I have done. And then I have to go through a list of everything I have accomplished.
I don’t know how many of you are like me and you get set on this one path in front of you and as soon as it starts getting harder you start feeling like it’s impossible but if you do that try taking a moment and thinking about all the baby steps you’ve made to get where you are. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Remember why you started all of this in the first place and you’ll probably be as surprised as I was the first time I realized my burnout was directly connected to the way I was thinking about things.
I hope this helps you guys. Happy Tuesday… I’ll try to be more on time in the future. Don’t forget to drop some comments down below or give us a shout out on Facebook. We love hearing from you guys!
#juniperglenfarm #burnout #pleaseletthemudgoaway #whiterabbitlate #isitreallytuesday #focusonthegood