Dogwood Chronicles #9
I love to romanticize the journey. The singular focus on something like the pursuit of artistic craft, its a high ideal for sure. There's this book, Mastery by Robert Greene. He talks about a mentality one can adopt of romanticizing the suffering and sacrifice for the greater payoff. I lean into this my first spring as an apprentice. As I'm prepping to move from the housing I just moved into 3.5 months ago to a much closer apartment, I get strep. No sweat, I often am subject to it, and the VA sends me the atomic level I need as a chronic sufferer. I take no days off. Antibiotics make you sensitive to the sun. Resultingly, my hands look like lobster claws. This is the price I must pay for me to live my dream, I don't care.
Also, something has fucked up my knees to my mid shin. I'm afflicted with a myriad of skin maladies, you guys. Woe, the lowly garden apprentice.
Tyler is gone this week. From our conversations throughout my first 90 days, he has made it clear that I am free to go to my level of comfort working on any tree, usually given a list of must-accomplish first. When that list is finished, there's always more work to do. It is incredibly exciting to make the big cuts alone, to push trees to be better this year than they were the last, and in turn pushing myself.
Our largest intensive classes are happening next month, can't wait.