Resistance And Doing The Thing + New Harvest Design!!

A huge thank you to Hannah Sutton for her artistry and design work for The Harvest. Hannah hand-drew the logo above, based on a picture of my actual hands holding a peony. You’ll see a few other design elements, and I hope they add to your reading experience.

It was a cold day, with unending drizzle and a blanket of grey.

I’d been to the farmers’ market in the morning and bumped into neighbours and friends. My market basket was filled with all the best ingredients to make a hearty winter soup.

When I got home, I could not decide whether to go for a run or start painting the guest room, my major project for the long weekend.

I painted my first room when I arrived with my final set of foster parents at fourteen, and I was hooked. To be able to pick up a paintbrush and change my environment, and how I felt in that new environment, was healing.

Since then, I have painted more individual rooms than I can count, and every one of the four houses I’ve lived in since then. I like the process of painting, but what I really love is the end result.

About eight years ago, I hired a local business to paint most of the rooms in our family house. I was amazed by how quickly professionals get the job done. A whole house in three days. I wondered why I hadn’t thought to get help earlier (finances) and thought that the way to do it in the future was not to do it myself.

So, I dramatically declared to myself and others that I would no longer paint any more rooms; thirty-eight years of painting was enough! Since buying the farm, I have completely disregarded that declaration and have painted all the rooms.

For thirty-eight years, my ongoing resistance to starting any painting job has been the prep. The taping of windows, the edges, the dust sheets, and the locating of the trays and brushes.

This time, I decided to get everything ready the night before so that the following morning it would look like I had already begun and all I needed to do was continue. So, on Friday night, I taped up the windows, put down the dust sheets, and found the correct brushes, old rags, and sugar soap.

After returning home from the market, I planned to go for a run and then apply the first coat of paint. But when I got home, the drizzle had turned into rain, so I decided to wait.

‘I’ll wait for better conditions.’

Then I realised that by the time I’d painted the edges and windows (which always take longer than I think), it would be too late to run before it got dark.

Changing out of my painting clothes into my running clothes, the rain was still falling, and the fog was closing in.

My resistance was strong, but within ten minutes of being outside, I thought, ‘It feels good to be out here.’ Within twenty minutes, the endorphins were flowing, and I remembered that I actually enjoy running in the rain.

Making my way further up the mountain, I see families, groups, and solo hikers out in the drizzle, rain, and fog. I’m not sure if they had the same initial resistance to being out in the weather (some of the teenage walkers seemed to be walking with strong resistance vibes), but we were all in it.

On my return journey, running down the hill, and with no warning at all, the sun suddenly bursts out.

The warmth of the sun on my face, the way it reflected off the rain, and illuminated the colours in the tree trunks felt magical.

I burst into tears.

In the sun’s warmth, I think, ‘You knew this was going to feel so good when you’d finished.”

After lunch, I continued painting; it felt so good when I’d finished on the Sunday.

Most of us have projects and actions we resist starting, even when we know it will always feel better when we finish.

Sometimes we must do the thing before we feel the thing.

Wishing you a weekend of doing the thing.

The Living Field - A moment of pause. A farm memoir. Stories, pictures, and living lessons from a life on the land, where kangaroos, kookaburras and peonies thrive.

Inner Harvest - To journal at your pace, in your own time.

Harvest Gathering - June 18