I've got my coop style all picked out and pinned. I've read a couple dozen books and am hooked on a number of backyard chicken websites. I'm obsessed. Books. Magazines. Articles. I'm a chicken book worm.
Missed one thing, though. One thing I didn't read...
I didn't read the laws in my area. I thought I read them. I thought I read them real well. I didn't see anything pop out at me, but then again, my eyes were crossing and my mind tripping over the legalese. I scanned websites, looked at online versions of local laws and regulations. Nope! Nothing about not having chickens! I thought I was golden.
But then I checked out a few of the backyard chicken website forums and learned the cold, hard truth. I just found out this week....can barely even type the words..........
I can't have chickens.
I'm zoned residential. I mistakenly assumed this was not the case. I've got a farmer's field behind me and a number of people down the road with their own flocks. No worries, I thought. I'm as right as rain.
Yea. It was raining alright. Raining tears of bitterness all over the broken, shattered pieces of my crumpled dreams.
But nevermind, I told myself, I can work on my other dream! You know, the writing one! I will someday write a novel or some incredible post that fetches the hearts and minds of all the readers, ever! Yea! That dream!
Except my big girl needs to get her Girl Scout stuff ready for this weekend. Aaron is smack-dab in the middle of his quest to find a well-paying job and could really use a second pair of eyes. A coworker is getting married and asked me to draw up a proposal for some planning and assisting work. Spring is right around the corner and I want to get a jump start on some indoor seedlings. My little girl is ready for potty-training. Did I mention the big girl came home from school and told us she was getting a referral for punching someone? It's my father in-law's birthday and my brother in-law is in town. I need to run out to the co-op tomorrow and pick up our grass-fed meat from Wallace.
Hmm. I didn't even touch on the normal household tasks and errands.
What? Oh, yes, writing! The writing dream! I'm sure I'll find time to work on that at some point this weekend.....right? I'll get settled, pull up my nonexistent laptop, and buckle down, right away! Just as soon as I finish a few things.....
But first....I'll just checkout my Facebook feed. Oh look! Ree Drummond just posted another beautiful post about her beautiful life in the country, with horses, and cows, and land, and cooking shows, book deals, blog followers galore! Did I mention my Life Dream, the big one, the EVER AFTER dream, is to someday live on a ranch with horses? My preferred location has always been Montana, but heck, I'll take anywhere. I'll take anywhere.
I'm not jealous. Nope, not me. I'm positively, absolutely, unequivocally not jealou............
....yea no. I'm jealous. Ragingly, crazily jealous. How does this success happen for people? I read about it all the time.....every single issue of Country Living will showcase some crazy couple named like Parrot and Francois, who left their "crazy life in the city" and quit their "stressful corporate job" to live their lives in the peaceful solitude of the country, with their artisan button-making, or unique antique store, or homemade goat cheese. This really happens. Ask Parrot, she'll tell you.
But so far, it hasn't happened for me. I've got a lot of beautiful things in my life, but those dreams? Those things independent of my daughters, marriage, home, and job? Those things that are just for me, not mom, not assistant, just Jen? They're not working out.
So I've got the perfect solution.
Just give up!
Writing. Chickens. Montana. ------- ain't gonna happen, right? Give up! Move along! Settle.
That is what the world expects you to do, right? After all, what would we do with a world full of dreamers? We need somebody to dedicate her life to making the dreamers' dreams come true, right? Didn't some guy named Tony say something like that?
And really, when we stop to think about it, where have dreamers really gotten us? Dreamers don't actually create anything worthwhile in their selfish pursuits of insane, unrealistic goals. Electricity? Pheh - light a candle. Books? More like doorstops. Ain't nobody got time for happy-joy-joy people and imagination and architecture and music. We've gotta push papers and listen to someone else dictate what we should do, how we should look, what we should think and feel.
So that's a great idea! I'll just give up! No point in fighting for something that will never happen, right?!
Walt Disney was wrong.
What did he ever do, anyways? Make a creepy mouse come to life? Create magic and popularize storytelling through motion pictures for children around the world? I bet that just happened, though. I bet he just woke up one day and that fell into his lap. He prolly never had a single setback. pssh. Disney.
Oh and Eleanor Roosevelt?
What does she know. So she lost both her parents at a young age and married into a complicated family. So she dealt with infidelity and argued with her disabled husband about immensely important things like race and human rights. That couldn't of been too hard. What would she know about turning dreams into reality? She was only the voice for American minority groups during one of the most discriminatory periods in American history. I betcha she was just born into that kinda thing.
And then this guy.
*snort* Victor Hugo. Prolly had an uncle or something in the publishing biz. What would he know about hard work. Who cares it took 17 years for Les Mis to be published. Not me. Not this girl. I'm giving up.
I'm giving up because it's too hard. It's not working fast enough. It's scary. It's impossible. I'm not doing it.
Wait......I'm not doing it?
I'm not doing it. My dream isn't working out because I'm not doing it.
Hmmm. So.....I'm giving up on my dreams because I'm not making them happen. That's like standing in front of an open refrigerator full of food and choosing to go hungry because I don't want to make a sammich. Anyone who knows me knows I'd do just about anything to eat, even if that means cooking the food myself.
Guess it seems kinda silly I'm so willing to fill my stomach but so quick to starve my soul.
Perhaps I should reconsider this plan...this giving up plan. Perhaps if you're reading this and feel exhausted and ready to quit, you should reconsider, too. Sure, it's going to take a whole lot more than two slices of bread and some lunchmeat, but then again, we're not talking sammiches here.
We're talking chickens.
We're talking writing.
We're talking Montana.
Sweet dreams to the dreamers.....especially those who have given up. Thanks for reading.
Jen
jen@jenniferludwigsen.com
