I’m adjusting to fall just fine, well, except for the 14 chickens that became thirteen, with one rooster. The all-female batch I’d entrusted to Tractor Supply was for naught. A mean rooster is a chicken keeper’s worst nightmare. The unprovoked attacks take a peaceful homestead to a hypervigilant one in a snap. My body still remembers a now-dead rooster, and my friend snatching up toddling Evelyn from his beak attacks and screaming my name repeatedly as if she’d been mugged.
Even though he’s been nothing but a gentleman, my confident stride has turned timid in his presence. Once I heard that crow, registered the upright stance, the deep red crinkle, and my suspicions were confirmed; the retriggering started.
And I hope it’s for naught. Really, I do. I want the lazy calm days to continue, and the synchronized rhythm to persist, for the dark days to remain light.
It’s turn-on-the-boosters time! With three weeks remaining until my half marathon, I’m honing my mindset toward “I know I can” while moving at a pleasurable pace and increasing mileage. I ran for 40 minutes earlier. Wednesday I’ll do 60.
I trick myself, saying, “We’re just out here doing a 5K.” To relax is key. To settle myself down. I need a resilient state of mind, and I’m configuring myself to it repeatedly, like a ship toward the lighthouse’s circling beacon.
I found a very motivated Spanish conversation partner as well. A potential job is on the line for them; for me, it’s overcoming the fear that I can’t. It’s an age-old burden I carry, albeit in my role as a counselor, my writing hobby, and now in advancing my Spanish.
Earlier, as Angel (pronounced Ahn-hell) spoke muy rápido, I failed to grasp sentence after sentence. The insecurity booger danced in front of me like the devil roasting a lamb over a spit, knowing he’d won.
Or has he? Will he?
Driving this stake into the heart of my fear, committing to several conversations each week in Spanish, perhaps I am scaring it. That belief that I can’t do it—when I do, when I show it I can—what does it do other than shrink? Other than submit to the power of my pride, confidence, and knowing that I am capable?
Am I scared? Yes.
Am I pushing on anyway? Of course.
It’s that limbo between intolerable and tolerable where I know I grow. And that’s what I want.
Love always, Jaclynn
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