{"id":5113,"date":"2022-06-02T13:48:27","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T01:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersweekly.co.nz\/?p=5113"},"modified":"2022-06-02T13:48:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T01:48:29","slug":"making-room-for-the-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersweekly.co.nz\/opinion\/making-room-for-the-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Making room for the now"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Several strands of my life have interwoven to bring about change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having written that, I realise that you will be expecting something of immense importance or significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe for me, but I think you will be disappointed where we are going with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve started burying the odd mate so the fragility of life, indeed of one\u2019s own life, is now considered and confronted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overlaying this is the realisation that my farming career of 40 years is approaching its own conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week I woke up for my 63rd birthday and it was raining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lay in bed listening to the rain drum on the roof while my good wife delivered me a cup of coffee instead of the usual reciprocal arrangement and then she went off to sort out a cooked breakfast as requested. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A birthday does still give one some advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mused on how I might use this day productively to improve my life and came upon a plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a constant irritant that troubles me more than it should and could be easily fixed with just some of my time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for no reason I can fathom, it sits there bothering me and yet I don\u2019t help myself by dealing to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, today was going to be the day given the rain, the prospect of death at some point and the looming end of my career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was determined to finally get stuck into cleaning out my workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used to keep on top of it with the imminent arrival of my father-in-law for an annual visit, but he\u2019s been gone for nearly a quarter of a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main incentive was my growing concern that I might actually leave it too late and my three sons would gather some time after the funeral and do it themselves, with a mixture of amusement and disparagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always feel troubled when I go into someone else\u2019s workshop that is tidy, ordered and there\u2019s little pictures on the wall of a tool and all the actual tools are in their place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It shows the signs of someone on top of things and in control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or of too much time on their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m no hoarder but don\u2019t like to throw out; something that may have lost its use but is still too good to chuck out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sentence makes me now wonder what the definition of a hoarder might be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve saved you the trouble and looked it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hoarding disorder is where someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crikey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a good breakfast I entered the lion\u2019s den.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out went all the rusty nuts and bolts that I\u2019d overlooked for four decades in favour of the newer shiny ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never going to be used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Same with the second-hand gudgeons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stripped the used, although still functional, trough valves of their unbroken arms and dumped them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite a bit of furniture that I\u2019d grown up with, but Jane replaced with fancier models, headed for the fire heap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second-hand running machine that I\u2019d scored for dropping a tree for a townie, but never actually used, got dragged out to the heap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My old faithful pack that came with me through uni and around the world a couple of times was difficult to bid farewell to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Donald load bars, weighing unit and printer should really have gone to a museum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had replaced the old mercury scales in a technological leap, but in turn been superseded by several advances with the latest reading the EID stud tags and blue toothing the data to the weigh scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No difficulty throwing several decades of accounts onto the fire heap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not being certain if the requirement was now five years, I erred on the side of caution and retained the last seven financial years, should IRD like to spend many happy hours trawling through my affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane came out to encourage the cathartic cleansing going on and immediately spotted her discarded childhood ice skates used on the dam in the depths of a Middlemarch winter a lifetime earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She remonstrated and an intense discussion ensued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said if she wanted to keep them, they were going to the house not staying in the workshop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They got thrown out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perfectly good neon tubes for lights that no longer existed went off to meet their maker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it went on and a further half-day later in the week was needed to complete the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I now have a tidy and empty shed, with absolutely no clutter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I moved my golf clubs into a more favourable position than where they have been stuffed and noticed one of the golf shoes was missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A job for today is to clamber through everything discarded on the fire heap and hopefully find it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several strands of my life have interwoven to bring about change. Having written that, I realise that you…\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":5114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t