I have often felt that life is comprised of a series of distillations. According to it's dictionary definition, the distillation process is used to extract an essential meaning; a whittling down to a core of importance that drives all other purposeful action in our lives--or should.

You may not be like me. For me, this process of whittling and refining, and distilling and extracting can really suck. I don't like it. I like it in theory, but in reality the process of having my core exposed makes me uncomfortable, moody and annoyed at best.

Multi-tasking for me is not an easy feat and, in truth, it really stresses me out. Since childhood, if I am deeply interested in something, it draws me in to itself and shuts out the rest of the world akin to a passionate musician recording a first album in an bomb-proof, underground, sound-proof studio. 

I have a really hard time switching my focus back and forth from different things going on around me. This is especially true when I am engrossed or engaged in a task such as learning something new, writing a blog post about something close to my heart, reading a book, editing pictures or even gardening. 

Needless to say, this isn't a great parenting quality. As a stay-at-home mama who is the primary companion to my curious, inquisitive, incredibly bright, very verbal, high energy 2 1/2 year old wild woman I need all the focus I can get just to keep up with her.

I love being able to stay home with her...but I also feel like it is the most challenging thing I have ever undertaken. 

And then--I choose to take on learning how we can become homesteaders...

Anyone who has not stayed home with kiddos may think...surely, you aren't complaining. Surely you have plenty of time to study about gardening, permaculture, companion planting, no-till methods, veganic soil ammendments, canning, preserving, pickling, bread making, noodle making, dehydration, farming, caring for rescue farm animals...

Sure. Yeah. Tons of time.

So, yes, in truth I have more time than my husband who works 40 hours is away from home about 50 hours per week. He only has a limited number of hours in the evening and he uses that time to spend engaged as a father and a husband. Our weekends are utterly precious and we use each moment as if it were gold. I do have more time than him...but not extravagant amounts by any means.

But, as mentioned previously, if my daughter is awake and not watching T.V. (which we do very selectively but really try to minimize), I have to be fully engaged as a parent to her and this can be difficult at times. Sometimes I simply don't feel like it. Sometimes my introvert self feels overstimulated. Sometimes I just want to finish my dang text message or take a moment and poop in private. Sometimes my mind wanders into the garden even though my body is still in the house. Sometimes being a stay at home parent is just hard. 

You are always on and when you do have a break (naps specifically) you often have a personal to-do list that is about a mile long and still constrained by noise levels. 

WHAT THE HECK IS YOUR POINT WOMAN?

The point of all this rambling (sorry, sometimes it just needs to be journalled out) is that we are in a season as a family, especially now that we have settled into the home we will live in for the next 5 to 6 years, where we MUST answer our WHY. 

WHY do we want to do ANYTHING? Why would we want to homestead? Why would we want to garden? Why would we want to farm? Why would we want to care for rescue farm animals? Why would we want to own land? Why would we want to live in a more rural area? Why would we want to homeschool? Why would we want to implement veganic growing? Why would we want to build our own house? Why would we want to live in the mountains?

What is our why that moves us steadily and in a centering way in any authentic direction?

I can often get tripped up on figuring out a bunch of HOW's (because I like to learn) and get busy or deeply focused (as mentioned above). Simply because of my focus (issue?) alone I have to be very aware not to get too far off the flight path of my why. Because I am also a we my why is part of a collective why for my whole family.

We have not fully answered our core why yet. We are navigating the answer on a daily basis. It isn't always easy to verbalize these things.

It is very important to do so, however, because our why​ will determine our path of life actions. Our "doings" that end up making our life in much of how we define it.
So the ongoing questions that are especially drawing us inward as a family in this season are: What is our why? What are we doing and does it align with our why? Are we willing to be distilled?

To conclude, I will lovingly borrow the words of a fellow journey'er on this experience of living distillation:

THE past few weeks have been a internally very challenging. For many reasons, not all of which are worthy of writing about here, I have felt drained and somewhat heavy. Despite most every day offering some or new skill to master or piece of knowledge to absorb, it has been a time of internal reflection and ultimately, of needed re-adjustments.

As you might be aware, Kyle and I recently launched an Instagram profile, a Facebook page & the Farmstead Journal to share with others our super humble, messy and novice beginnings of a homesteading journey.

I have lately found myself increasingly discontent and dedicating degrees of myself to social media outlets while ignoring the unavoidable internal question (once again) if social media expressions are actually sustainable for me. These new social media creations are not bad unto themselves, and I do enjoy elements of them...however; it also, unfortunately, all costs our family something we value very highly: TIME.

As I have always found to be true: social media is a strange beast of it's own kind with it's own unique good and bad. It can be useful AND it has the ability to very quickly steal our time and attention. And, not just time and attention in and of themselves but time TOGETHER as a family and attention given to the real human beings in our lives.

The floodwaters of social media's pull toward unproductive mindsets is strong & it's endless and potentially insidious requests of time investments may not ultimately pay we think it will. The promise of some type of "successful" social interaction is never quite achieved (though it is "tickled") and because of this it can perpetuate the drain on us even further.

It might sound like I am very much making a case against social media use. But I am not. As is simply (and impersonally) the nature of non-human sources of social interaction, disappointment with the promised outcomes is highly likely.

So maybe a new perspective of social media would be helpful.

Realizing that social media is just that--a type of media--is important. AND, in a less charged way, it is simply not human. Now it can be released from being something it is not, nor will ever be. We are the "benefitters" in this scenario. 

It is necessary to release social media from the expectation that is will ever be a soul-nourishing place to meet a need for relationships.

It does not, nor will ever, be a replacement by itself for living connection and fulfillment of relationship with others. We all know this and yet this may be what we continue to ask of it without really acknowledging or realizing it. Thus, setting ourselves up for disappointment.

I am slightly chagrined to admit I have done this many times.

On the other hand, social media CAN facilitate the initial potential for  relationships to develop. It just can't ever be those relationships itself. 

And that is okay. It is not meant to. It can be valued for what it is and released from what it's not.

Kyle and I started sharing our personal journey to make connections and build community, not for popularity, prosperity or for "likes & follows" (though admittedly the current pull toward those things is strong and ingrained deeply in our culture's psyche).

Being the one who primarily handles the engagement of our social media I have had to take a step back recently and pay attention to a nagging and creeping frustration and the potential soul-draining nature of these outlets. I have had to stop and refocus what it is we want (and what is realistic and healthy) in using these platforms for developing human connection.

It can be easy to be "driven" by social media's glittering promise of some golden social potential. We get it. And truthfully there is real marketing capability for businesses in our modern social-based media...especially Instagram. Being on the road to a home-based business this makes it all the more naturally complicated.

But, is trying to live up to some expectation set by our culture toward another form of image-based popularity-driven context for sharing our lives worth what it can costs us if we are not aware and clear of our own purposes for using it? 

Social media can be a very useful tool... or it can be an bottomless pit. It can be a means of making connections and promoting a worthy business endeavor or it can be a sharp knife that cuts away at our time and energy no less quickly and heartlessly than other forms of media or entertainment. 

I don't want that loss for our family.

When I look at the real reasons we do this; why I specifically will choose to continue to engage in the social media thing (and how to keep it healthy for us) it is for the following reasons:

• To locate potential connections with people who are doing what we are doing or dreaming the same dreams.
• To learn from others at different points along the spectrum of similar journeys.
• To begin to establish a living community of like-hearted people and engage in story-telling with each other.
• To do things that are enjoyable and worth their cost in time, such as: create beautiful pictures as a form of art & story-telling, writing and journaling for our own hearts and possibly as a source of inspiring others as normal people living everyday lives, sharing what we learn, as we learn, and hopefully making the elements of a lighter, freer, simpler life more real and accessible to those for whom those qualities make their hearts alive.

What we are not looking to social media for:

• Popularity or prosperity gained in exchange for our time together as a family (vs. the time we agree upon as worthy of its exchange for a yield of some true value to us all).
• Showing how incredibly awesome we are.
• Falsely creating a picture of some beautiful unreality of our lives that does no one any good but rather only promotes our culture's unhealthy issues with "Instagram'able lives" or Hollywood-esque expectations.
• ANY type of affirmation. Thank God...or we'd be depressed! Social media is not real-life social feedback. It is made up of algorithms that aren't really human-nature and based on a precept of making connection but never really being connection in it's own context.

SO, all this said--social media does not have to be shut out altogether. Maybe it should be understood better for the machine it is though and not confused on any level with any true source of affirmative validation or social connection unto itself. 

It has natural limits and it's mystic is unfortunately its greatest stumbling block. If social media can be taken out from behind this mystical veil and shown for what it simply is: a computer-based algorithmic-driven non-human tool...then it can be released (as can we) and used wisely and well for just that purpose. As a tool for greater connection potential.

Beyond it's very unmystical potential of pre-arranging a possible connected however, the responsibility or onus of true and living connection with real and non-computer people lies with each of us alone (or rather to not be alone, I suppose).

If we feel lonely or disconnected, no manner of social media with EVER fill that need or void. Even as an introvert (maybe especially as one), finding and making social connections is one of my greatest challenges. This is even more true in this season as we settle into a new state and learn to live in a place where we know almost no one very closely.