The Safety Net In Life…

I have a job.  It doesn’t pay.  Actually, I have tons of jobs that don’t pay; writer, cook, cleaning lady, accountant, beekeeper, hospice volunteer, just to name a few.  This is a job that just feels right.

In earlier stages of my life I took jobs I wanted, and never had to think about how bills would be paid.  I was the accountant to our finances but had no input or control over the cash flow.  I chose to work at the racetrack in San Fernando, Trinidad.  No, let me rephrase that.  I whined, cajoled and hung around until someone took pity on me.  It was life altering in terms of my personal growth.  I buried fears, mostly rational, and walked into those paddocks every day as the only female, the only caucasian, amid a sea of swirling horses and humanity.

Yep, that was me in 1980.  Sexy in the Aerosmith T-shirt, right?

My new job is not so perilous or unusual, yet I think it will offer the same amount of self discovery.  I am back to shoveling stalls, this time on a farm across town.  The humans will be at work, so my few hours will be spent with five horses-currently of unknown personalities, two Vietnamese pigs who have already shown a distain for snuggling, and three inquisitive mini donkeys.  .

There is no safety net this time.  I look at the path I am on and remind myself of the Zen saying  on my birthday collage, leap and the net will appear. Perhaps a foolhardy belief but the lunar pull of this job is too strong to ignore.  I don’t know where it will lead to down the road, I just know it feels right.

For years when we owned the farm, my greatest joy was to get everyone off to school or work and settle in at the barn with the radio on NPR and steaming cup of coffee.  My barn was always cleaner than my house, cleaner than most people’s houses in fact.  There is something beyond the aerobic exercise in slinging shit into a wheelbarrow.  Your mind is totally freed from the activity your body is engaged in.  I am looking forward to those morning meditations and promise to introduce you to my new “kids.”