some musings on life, while tending to the vineyard
Yesterday I went to bed yet a little too excited about having made so much progress on this website during the day; I even bought alexinthe.farm (at or on seemed like fair choices, too!); luckily, this didn't have such a great impact on the rest of the night.
As for today, we would, again, weed out some plants; this time, the vineyard needed the work. So far, this has been the hardest one: the grass is, at times, really strong, and it has made both my wrists very uncomfortable. I have a long-standing climbing lesion on the left one, but the right one, as far as I know, is alright; but both are, at the moment of writing, a little sore. This is the first time I've had to excuse myself from a task and do something else, as I'm a little afraid of worsening a case that has repercussions in other areas of my life (climbing, in particular, exerts force in pretty much the same areas of the wrist and hand). I'm keen on evaluating whether the farm work will make me stronger or fitter in any sense, but I should take it with caution.
On the other (non literal) hand, this sort of work is very enjoyable. Having woken up at 6AM, I meditated a little and put some reading on A Vida: Modo de usar; getting physical work in very early in the morning – 7AM – is something very different from the usual routine in the city, and I appreciate it. Not only that, these long working bouts (we were to stop at 11:30AM) are the perfect times to get up to speed on some podcasts, and I had a chance to listen to Andrew Huberman talking with Tim Ferriss. I've heard about Ferriss for a while although I have never delved into his ideas; it was an interesting conversation.
They talked about many ways to get oneself set for success (whatever that might be, or, more generally speaking, wellness and being at ease with oneself), and there were some interesting ideas thrown around. Ferriss mentioned the many potential benefits of living in a high-density area (something like New York, San Francisco, etc.), which I associate with generally living in a city: the chance for serendipity, to be surrounded by very high-driven people, the opportunity to network and connect to like-minded individuals; it made me daydream about a possible next destination, but also what I'd like to do in the near future. I haven't been programming much lately; in fact, neither have I been writing. Ferriss mentioned working late in the night or very early in the morning, and I might been missing that as well – the alone time for deep focus hasn't been too much present as of late, but this is still a period of adjustment (I've only been in Slovenia for two weeks and a half, now).
There were also some book recommendations; Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence, Brain Energy, Bad Science, Built to Move and Don't Shoot the Dog; of course, I won't read them all, but it's always good to know about more books out there.
Later in the morning, I did change up the aural scenery for a bit, and revisited some of Don Cherry's incredible anthology record Organic Music Theatre: Festival de jazz de Chateauvallon 1972.
Later in the day, we also had a long meeting about the upcoming library opening, and some of our plans for it; and, late in the evening, some of our farm friends would join us in a fire. We baked and ate some homemade bread; Nataša and Daniele brought a vegan cake for the celebrations (celebrations of what? I suppose solstice).