….That’s what the Voice says to me as I’m staring into the last of the fire.  This has been a heck of a day on the learning curve!  I woke up freezing because I ran out of gas last night and had no heat on a pretty chilly night for Florida -and for me.  And I’m wrestling with trying to get the empty tanks off,  uncaffeinated because it’s too cold inside to make coffee.  I have no time to deal with it because I’m going to the farm to glean.

Will gets them off for me and Bill calls out as I’m driving away to tell me where to go get them filled – I foolishly thought anywhere – and straps them down so they don’t roll around.  Buuuuut, I still manage to break my portable tire inflater thingy when I slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a super long line waiting to get on the I-75.  This spunky chick fills them at the Shell station while other customers wait.  I ask if she’s the only one there.  She says she is and if they don’t like it then they can go to another gas station.  Her spunk kinda feels like what I need right now.

And then I almost poison myself after I hook the tanks back up.  The carbon monoxide alarm is going off and it finally dawns on me, thank God, to check the stove.  I had a knob turned on.  Then I can’t figure out why the outside speakers are on.  I can’t find the dog food sample.  I forgot the address to mail in my truck title to get new plates.  I trip on a rope.  I can’t figure out if I should text Joey or not.  I want to write but I also want to just listen to loud music.  I find myself absentmindedly making a playlist.  I haven’t done that since the last time we were together.  I name it Sunny Stride.  I start to text him that, then I erase it.   I feel his “I miss everything too” text, strongly.  It’s been hanging with me for days.  In Lowe’s they were playing a song about how a spark can turn into a flame and love can burn once again.  I feel bad for leaving him, as ridiculous as that sounds.  Feels like a co-dependent tendency.

I know this is my time.  My big time me-time.  To do this thing that I’d always regret not doing.  However it turns out, I think maybe it’s just that I do it that matters most.  I did replace the flusher thing on the tiki bar toilet – that was easyish.  I stare at the fire.  That’s when I hear it.  How I can’t fail.  How nothing really bad happened today anyway.  How I got coffee and I got gas and an electric heater so this never happens again.  And how I survived.  “You don’t have to try so hard to figure it all out,” I hear.  The Voice is calming me as the fire is warming me.  It’s not really real and nothing bad can happen.  I always think something bad can happen.  “We became actors, not reactors”  As the flames go to a bright red glow I think, maybe this is that crazy everything-is-about-to-shift-and-change energy.  It’s all in me, it all starts with me.

Yesterday at Sunday dinner, Steve says to me, “You’re out here doing this on your own?”  “Yeah,” I say, “I’ve got a boy back home but basically I’m on my own.” “What do you do?  Are you retired?” he asks, confused.  I say I flipped a house and this was the best thing I could think to do with the money.  Later in the night, Bill’s mom asks me about the same thing.  She says it’s good to be with someone though; someone sitting in the seat next to me in case I get drowsy.  I agree; it is.  And I’m totally open to that.  “That’s just not the way it seems to be shaking out right now,” I explain

But I mastered some stuff today.  And I was so glad to have my own little space to go to.  With my little fridge and my little sink and my little hot water heater (which I wish wasn’t so little).  I close the door on the wood stove and on this day.  And as I walk back to my trailer, I hear a comforting idea: you’ve been given an incredible gift – the opportunity to become comfortable within your own company.  I think this is really important for me right now, somehow.