Letter From the Forests of Arduinna

On being "too productive," and August updates

It’s now past the middle of August here, and I’m watching through the window of my office a light rain fall and trying not to think about the summer that never really came.

As much of the rest of the world has been either on fire or experiencing extreme heat, we here have had weeks of relentless rain and flooding, broken up by a few days of sun but very little heat.

Besides all the massive flooding of which I wrote previously, the ground floor of our own house flooded two weekends ago. We watched it coming, my partner and I, sheets of rain running over the surface of the land too drenched to soak up anymore. The field next to us, in which stands an ancient oak next to a spring, looked for an hour like Niagra Falls. The stream across from the house sounded like a river.

And then the water came in.

We have a “wet vacuum,” one of those machines that sucks up water. Unfortunately, it broke just as we began the cleanup, and so we had to resort to a more basic method. So, for the next four hours the three of us (myself, my partner, and his 78 year old mother, who lives in a separate apartment her son built for her in the house) sat on dry ledges and wrung out massive bath towels into large buckets.

Of course that much water significantly damaged the wooden floor, and there is now a fault in the wall which will make the next flood worse if it isn’t fixed, but we had it pretty good. I hauled about 500 liters (about 110 gallons) of water by bucket out of the house, but that was really the end of it. We could have lost things or even people, as others did.

That was two weeks ago, and it’s been a little over a week since I have written an essay here. I was getting a bit grumpy with myself for this, like I’d become lazy. Then I looked back at the previous months and noticed that, apparently, I averaged 10 a month, which is really a lot. So it’s probably okay to not do so much writing sometimes.

Of course, I’m still actually writing, just not always here. There are now three more excerpts from Being Pagan soon to be published, totalling together 17,000 words. Add in what else I’ve written and I’ve already written near 30,000 words this month, and this is…a lot.

Maybe too much, I sometimes think. Since that flood, I’ve been thinking about how little time I take to do anything not related to work, or housework, or gardening, or the gym. The most I ever do that isn’t “productive” is play a video game (yeah, despite my anti-tech sentiment, I do like one occasionally)¹, go for an occasional long bike ride, and that’s it.

This week, though, I did take a little time to do other things. My sister was on vacation so I watched her house a few days and roamed around the city and met a few friends. I had a rather pleasant time with my favorite willow tree and sat for an hour along with the river:

But while in the city I also did a lot of work, and made a new druid journal (available to subscribers at the link below or also at Patreon).

Druid Journal 46: The Vale of Melusina

While I absolutely enjoy doing these things, I’ve started noticing I can’t easily justify to myself not doing such things, and that’s not a good thing for the long term. It’s making me all a little too serious, and a lot less fun to myself at the moment.

I think that’s why I find myself mourning this summer. Days of profound sun coax you into doing nothing “productive” and instead just being; their lack has meant I’ve had to coax myself into doing nothing, and I’m not so good at convincing myself.

However, I think this is also an effect of leaving social media. Social media gives you all the “feeling” of having an engaged life without actually causing you to engage. It’s the ultimate productivity tool, really: you can masturbate your social desire without ever once leaving your home or computer. Thus, you never need to actually stop working.

Leaving it (now over 3 weeks ago) has probably just reminded me I want something more, and this feeling of grief over a short and atypical summer (though this is probably the new typical) is really just the re-awakening of opiated desire for life.

And even as I’ve been writing all this, the rain has stopped and the sun has come back out. I guess summer has just decided to do everything on its own time, resist the productivity and predictability we demand of it.

Speaking of predictability, Alley Valkyrie and I recorded another episode of Empires Crumble. This one is on Afghanistan, and it was sunny when I recorded it and you can see this in the video version (available to supporters below or at my or the Empires Crumble Patreon.

Empires Crumble 27: The Grave of Empires

There is an earlier episode, called Pandemic Thinking, which is just now available in audio version to the public (as all our episodes are, about ten days after their supporter release). That episode is below, or you can find all previous episodes at Soundcloud, Spotify, and on iTunes.

And as I’ve mentioned, several more excerpts from my book, Being Pagan, will be posted soon: “Of Gods and Spirits,” and “The Other.” Both of those will be at Another World on 1 September and also released to supporters here and of my Patreon that same day.

And of course the book itself will be released near the end of the year, and is currently available for pre-order (saves you a few dollars). If my writings on paganism interest you as much or even more than my political writings do, you’ll really enjoy this book.

I had a bit more to say in this dispatch, but as I said the sun is out again. I’m going to go feel it on my skin some with a cup of tea, and will save those words for the next essay.

Be well, and much love.

—Rhyd

PS: If you would like to access supporter content here, you can become a paid supporter at the button below. ²

1. Only one, actually. Starcraft 2. Add me if you ever want to 2v2 sometime.

2. Everything eventually goes public, so if you cannot afford to support you will still eventually get to see all of this.