This weekend has been beyond gorgeous and I have to admit I am a little sad to be sitting down to write my last post for Roots of She. It feels like my venture here is ending right as so many other wonderful things in my life are taking flight. The arrival of spring is always an invigorating time for me and that is especially apt this year, as I work to launch my own organic farm. It has been wonderful to share the first tiny steps of that journey here with you at Jenn’s site and to get feedback and encouragement from all over the globe.

I wasn’t sure what to say here with my last post, at least until Jason was making his usual rounds online this morning. Shirt.woot.com puts up a new tshirt every day and we love to check them out as they are usually good for a chuckle. Today’s (pictured below) seemed perfect for me as it was titled “I Will Not Blend” and featured a fox – one of my favorite animals. It reminded me of one of my first posts on Roots of She, titled Blend In, Or Shine Differently? Reading back over that post, I realized what I wanted to say here:

First, thank you to Jenn for asking me to write here. Second, thank you to Jenn for telling me I belonged here when my doubts started to creep in. Between the date that I committed to writing for Roots of She and the date of my first post, I started to get to know the other members of this season’s tribe. And I’ll be honest: I felt intimidated. I felt out of place. I felt like I didn’t blend. I e-mailed Jenn and told her I wasn’t sure if I was really a good fit for what she was looking for – these other women were older and further along in their careers, and their daily lives (and often livelihoods) were centered around their own art and their own businesses. I was a full-time teacher, part-time kickboxer who was nurturing a dream of a farm and wishing she actually had time to paint. Jenn assured me that she had asked me to write here for a reason and that she wanted five different voices here – it was quite intentional that we weren’t all coming from the same backgrounds. So thank you, Jenn, for encouraging me to stick with this.

Next, thank you to the readers here at Roots of She. Thank you for supporting Jenn’s project. Thank you for supporting the writers here and leaving comments and providing feedback. Thanks for clicking through and checking out the websites of the sponsors. Thanks for taking time out of your day to read our thoughts and hear about our lives, and making this website into a community rather than a static collection of pixels. Thank you for the new friends (and penpals!) I’ve made through this website. I look forward to making the transition from a contributor to a reader of Roots of She and cheering on the next season of writers.

Finally, I’d like to thank myself for sticking with this. Writing for a deadline is new to me and presented some challenges in self-discipline. Right before my first post was due, a friend committed suicide and I fell apart for a few days. Jenn was kind enough to extend my deadline, but I was kicking myself for falling behind from day one and felt like I was letting her down. I’ve tried to stop beating myself up about it but that wasn’t simple.

More than anything, I am glad that I decided not to blend in here. I’m glad that I decided that it was okay to stick out and not fit in. It was worth the risk to be open about myself rather than trying to fit my posts to what I thought readers expected to see. Thank you for being open to what I had to say.

“I Will Not Blend” by Tasha Chapman

Even as a new season of contributors steps into place here at Roots of She, I hope we will all still run into each other from time to time. I blog over at Inward, Upward and you can also follow the progress of Great Fox Farm. I wish you all a wonderful spring!

For years now, I have talked about “what I want to do someday.” And for years now, it has always sounded something like this:

“I want to live off the land and be as self-sufficient as possible. I want to run my own organic farm and CSA (community-supported agriculture). I want to teach people about sustainability. …Someday.”

When would this day come? My answers varied as the years passed by, adjusting to fit the timetables that never resulted in actually starting my farm. I kept telling myself that the day would arrive soon — it was just over the next hill of obstacles. After I had taught for a few years. After I had gotten out of debt. After I had decided where I wanted to settle down more permanently. After, after, after… and the day just never arrived.

This winter I got a wake-up call though. I’m up for tenure at my current teaching job, and if I don’t get tenure, my current school district can’t rehire me for the next year. There have been some things going on that made me wonder if I would get tenure or not, not to mention all of the current battles being fought regarding collective bargaining, unions, etc. I started to get worried. What would I do if I lost my job? What would I turn to next in order to support myself?

The answer seemed obvious: well, then maybe it would be time to actually start my farm finally. I was relieved once I came to this realization. And then the strangest thing happened: I started to hope that I would lose my job or not get tenure, because then I would finally be free to start working on my dream.

How silly is that? Why have I been spending all this time not working towards my dream, when it is so obviously what makes me happy and what I want to be doing? Why should I wait even another minute to begin working on this?

So now, I don’t care if I get tenure or not. I am starting to work on my dream right now. I am not quitting my teaching job, but I am done waiting perfect moment to start my farm and start working towards my ultimate goals. So I am starting the farm and the CSA this season, on a small scale, in the backyard. I will keep teaching as long as I am able and will simply do both at the same time. But I won’t wait another year to start working on this. I won’t spend another year chasing my dreams and just spinning my wheels. Because I’m not here to chase my dreams, I’m here to live them.

So now I just have to figure out how to go from this:

to this:

One step at a time, friends. It’s going to be a good spring.

Over the past two months of writing for Roots of She, I’ve noticed a trend with my posts: I seem to focus a whole lot on self-improvement, both for myself and for others. This is a pretty accurate reflection of what my daily life looks like – I am constantly looking for ways to better myself and continue to push forward. I worry though that this might give the impression that I am not a happy person, or that I am never content.

So this week, my post will be very different. This week my post is about celebrating exactly who we are right now, in this moment, no self-improvement needed. Because while it’s great to strive for a better tomorrow, what’s the point if you can’t stop appreciate where you are today? I worry that I am so focused on my long-term goals, that I am not stopping to celebrate the steps along the path.

Let’s take a moment today to acknowledge all of the hard work we are doing and all of the victories (both great and small) that we have already won. I challenge you to write down at least 5 things that you are proud of or excited about that are part of who you are right now (not who you hope to be later on).

I’ll go first:

• Health: I’ve lost ten pounds, am down a pants size, am eating healthier, and am exercising regularly again.

• Work: I am more on top of grading and lesson planning than I have been any other year that I have taught.

• Art: I am working on a new series of paintings for the first time in ages.

• Dreaming: I am taking the first big, scary steps towards starting my own business.

• Heart: I am doing a better job of communicating with my partner and I am making more of an effort to socialize with my friends (rather than being a hermit, as is my tendency in winter).

Even though tomorrow I will continue the process of evolving and growing in new directions, I can honestly say that I am very happy to be the me that I am on this day. I hope you can look at yourself and say the same. Please feel free to share your 5 things in the comments below – we would all love to help you celebrate your accomplishments!