Busy

There are times in life when I am so busy that a sustained routine is all that keeps me going. I get up at the same time every morning. I eat the same thing for breakfast. I wear all the uncomfortable underwear in the back of my underwear drawer so that I don’t have to do laundry

All it takes is one unexpected wrench to be thrown into my life, and I have no recourse.

I actively avoid this type of life, but like the uncomfortable underwear in the back of the drawer, sometimes I end up with it anyway.

I’ve been doing fieldwork for the past two weeks. That means I’m on a tractor instead of a combine, and going 5-8 mph instead of 2 mph. (The speedometer is broken on this particular tractor, so I’m just making a ballpark guess about those speeds.)

It goes like this: I pull the disk behind my tractor, turning over the soil. My co-worker follows with the harrow, to break down the soil. Then I drive the land plane over the fields to smooth them out. Again, my co-worker follows with the harrow to break the soil down even further.

My boss told me that we had PLENTY of time to get this done, and so I could work whatever hours I wanted, basically. So in some ways it was my own fault that I was so busy, as I could easily have taken off work earlier.

Two things kept me putting in the long-ish hours, though: First, I knew that taking a day off would force my co-worker, coming behind me on the harrow, to also take a day off. Second, I just wanted to get DONE.

Somehow, fieldwork is much more tiring than combining, though.

Last week was Vacation Bible School, and I did the story for the children every evening. So I’d rush home from work, edit the section of story I was going to be presenting that day, and then rush to VBS.

After VBS I’d sit down at my computer, thinking, “couldn’t I just do a quick post on my thoughts from the tractor?” But I would be too depleted to try.

Oh well.

On Monday, Pauline Scheffel, a sweet older lady at our church, passed away. Her funeral was on Friday.

Thursday I said to my boss, “how long do you think it will take to finish up this field work?”

“You won’t finish today,” he said.

“I know, but I have to leave at noon to go to a funeral tomorrow. Do you think if I came at eight I’d be done by then?”

“Good grief, it’s not October. Just come back Monday and finish things up.”

“Oh. Okay.”

So tomorrow I finish up fieldwork, and hopefully I’ll be able to spend the rest of the summer writing. I know it doesn’t seem like there’s much time left, but bear in mind that my school doesn’t start until the end of September.

I am glad that the busy is over.