Think Like a Dairyman

“The cows don’t milk themselves.”

I’m not sure where this saying came from, but it’s something I’ve said for a few years now, usually when I call a friend during daylight hours and they sound like they’ve been sleeping. Yes, I know that in reality the cows actually do milk themselves, or at least the calves milk the cows, but that’s beside the point.

The point is this: If you want to build anything valuable and lasting, you need to think like a dairyman. 

And the first thing a dairyman thinks every morning is that the cows need to be milked. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t sleep well the night before, or that you’re not feeling well, or whatever. You have cows waiting to be milked, and if you don’t get up and milk them, no one will. This is the stuff that often feels mundane and that nobody else notices much. But it’s important, so do it, whatever it is. Do it every day.

There’s a whole lot more that goes into being a dairyman than just milking cows, but if you don’t milk the cows, you never get to anything else. The same goes for being a disciple, building a solid marriage, raising a family, creating art, changing the world, or any other worthwhile pursuit. The difficult, non-glamourous work that needs to be done every day will make you or break you. 

Freelance Tools of the Trade: Coffee

Not all home offices can have a hammock (though they probably should), but every home office can, and should, indeed, have coffee.

To start, you should try to get some fresh, good quality beans. But let’s face it, you’re a freelancer; coffee snobbery may not be a luxury you can afford right now. My local Costco has a roaster in it, and, for the money, their 2 pound bag of French Roast are my go-to coffee beans most of the time. When I’m in a pinch, or have just deposited a fat check, I might head down the hill to Caffe Ladro and pick up a pound of Diablo. 

OK, once you have your beans, you’ve got to decide how you’re going to brew them. I used to go with the french press, exclusively, but I recently switched to this little Bialetti knock-off from Ikea. Mainly, it saves me from the dilemma of deciding whether to drink all of the french press by myself, but it’s also a different approach with a taste I really enjoy.

Sure, a Bialetti would probably be more legit, but again, for the money, I’m happy with my $14 investment. I just grind the beans (oh yeah, I also have a $30 blade grinder that I got from a friend for free) on the espresso setting, fill the “portafilter” about 3/4 of the way, then tamp it down lightly with the spoon.

Now, here’s where the magic of this little baby comes in. After I put it on the stovetop, I pour some half-and-half (not too much) into the top part. This gets heated up as the water in the lower chamber boils and the espresso shot is extracted, making for a rich, silky cup of coffee. It’s not really an espresso, nor a latte or americano, but something else I haven’t really had before. I don’t really care what it’s called, I just like to drink it, and it’s easy to make for the morning cup and for scaling the 3 o’clock wall.

Gravity Defied

I’ve always wondered why people say they’re “feeling blue” when what they should really say is, “I’m feeling grey.” To me, that’s what depression feels like: a grey cloud hanging in the sky, getting darker and darker at the bottom as the condensation is drawn toward the ground, but somehow it defies gravity.

There’s relief in the downpour, and release. But, for me at least, depression is the extension of that moment before the rain, when the air is bitter cold, and the sun has gone missing completely, and your bones ache.

I wrote this poem to express how depression feels to me.

there is a cloud.
it is not white;
it is not a wisp of a brushstroke;
it does not rush across the sky,
pushed by the wind.

it is heavy,
it hangs—motionless
aching to fall—
but only hanging;
no wind can dislodge it.
it eyes the ground below
—ten thousand feet below—
and wants desperately to crash downward,

but it hangs.

dark purple ascending to deep blue,
never falling.

For me, though, this isn’t the end of the story. If you read this poem and understand it, if you know this feeling, my prayer is that you can also join me in seeing that the cloud, no matter how dark, is just a cloud. It will pass. Of course, if you’re like me, there will be other clouds, maybe even darker than this one. But those too will pass. There is yet hope. 

We live in a world where darkness holds a certain sway. Where despair has learned to masquerade as hope, and darkness often sells itself as light. But there is a true light that the darkness has not and cannot overcome.

If it’s hard for you to believe that, I understand, but if you’d like to believe it, if even a small part of you longs for it to be true, I’d really like to talk to you. I’d like to talk to you not because I am some sort of guru selling a secret formula, but because the true light of the world has found me and changed me.

The only reason I don’t lose heart, don’t lose hope, don’t sink deeper into the darkness is because I have been saved from the despair of depression by Jesus, the true light of the world. I’d love to share with you who Jesus is, and how “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in [my] heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Working from a home office has its benefits and challenges. Comfort shouldn’t be one of the challenges. Here’s one of the ways I make myself at home in my home office.

Rest

Seems people are throwing around the word rest a good bit these days. Some elevate the conversation to something verging on mystery by tossing in solitude, while others go straight for the jugular with the invocation of sabbath.

In most cases, though, the unfortunate reality is that most of us just want to create a safe little bubble for ourselves where we can exert unchallenged power to do (or not do) whatever we like. Ironically, this kind of “rest” is actually just an expression of a deep restlessness — masquerading as passion — that drives us to consume new and better in pursuit of a long-promised, but completely illusory self-actualization.

In the end, the diamond mine we think we’re digging in turns out to be a bottomless pit. This kind of rest is really a conscious death.

I wrote this poem a few years ago after excitedly digging for what I imagined to be the diamond of rest/solitude/sabbath, only to find myself clinging to a ledge with nothing but a deep darkness below. 

Sun and moon run their circuits.

Streaking through the sky,
daylight and darkness dance.

The world buzzes and hums,
obscuring the unsettling fragility of life
that lives in the silence,
in the fallen leaves,
the rotting carcasses,
in ash and dust.

Beyond the deafening din,
apart from all that moves:
the bloom and the fade,
creation and destruction,
the unending cycle of activity;
we burrow deep for our escape —

to feign disentanglement,
to be unmoved,
unchanged,
uncycled —

cultivating an isolation, where, 
if we have pretended well,
we feel secure

until the lights fade
and the coldness grows around us,
and within us we find a haunting darkness

isolated by a passion that feels eternity.

The Garden in Winter

Spring is here, and it’s naturally a time when amateur gardeners think hopeful thoughts of an abundant harvest in Summer and Fall. But gardeners who know better have been at work in their gardens all Winter.

And there you go: another huge life lesson in the form of soil/seed/rain/sun/sweat.

You see, a garden isn’t planted or worked (even though that’s how most of us talk); a garden is cultivated. And cultivation doesn’t stop.

Cultivation is a labor of faith, hope, and love. You cultivate a garden in the same way you cultivate a relationship. You care for it, foster it, pour yourself into it, even in Winter when it’s dark and cold and bleak and your memories of warmth and sunshine seem like the remnants of a faded dream.

I’m not a very good gardener, but I garden in spite of that. Sure, I love a ripe, home-grown tomato as much as the next guy, but it’s the profound lessons like this that are the real harvest for me. 

I wrote this poem years ago as we were planning our move from California to Seattle. Five years on, it’s the poem I remember most often, am most satisfied with, and that continues to produce a harvest in my soul.

I turn the compost
and pull the weeds
in the garden I soon will leave.

It is January, but the
sun, with its Spring-warmth,
makes me think I should
be planting tomatoes and beans.

I’ll be gone before Summer comes
and another will
reap Autumn’s harvest;
I’ll plant a few tomatoes, still.

New/Not new.

Nothing I think/say/write is new. It just isn’t. But then there’s this sense that it is new. New to me, at least. And maybe new to you, too.

Whether new or not new, I hope whatever I think/say/write will at least be real/honest/hopeful. That’s the point of putting it out to wherever/whenever it is you’re reading this. Trying to think/say/write something real. Trying to be honest about the wrestling match of new/not new in my life. Trying to remember and share the hope that holds the paradox together.