Click For Inspiration

Now, this is obviously not me, but this is how I feel when I know I have a lot to get done!

There are so many things throughout the course of a day that truly need my attention, that I have absolutely NO desire to do.  Being your own boss has lots of perks, but for this country girl, there is one huge drawback - MOTIVATION!  Whether you're a freelance writer like me, a seasoned artist, a craft connoisseur or even a stay at home mom, you probably thrive with the adequate motivation.  So, to help us all, I've put together a list of things that inspire me.  I hope some will inspire you, too!

Disclaimer: If you are one of those energetic do-it-yourselfers who don't need caffeine in the morning and never let the dirty dishes pile up in the sink, this list is probably not for you.

Here's a quarter... call someone who cares...
When I am lacking inspiration and just need to feel a little better about procrastinating, there are two people I call.  They let me bounce my big (and sometimes crazy) ideas around.  They give me feed back.  They tell me that some things just take time.  We may talk for five minutes or we may talk for an hour, but I always hang up feeling a surge of motivation to tackle whatever it is I am dreading.  Thanks, Mom and Tiff... for listening!

Catch a flick...
This may sound really strange, but when I am needing true creative inspiration, I watch movies that I loved from my childhood - and some more recent ones that I like for no apparent reason whatsoever.
Now, granted, this does nothing for me when I need to do the dishes -- except for giving me an extra hour and a half-long time frame in which to NOT do dishes. 
It always lends inspiration when I need to write or put together some create savvy business idea.  This is probably due to the fact that these movies always remind me of the magic of my childhood.  The following short list is a sample of some of the many movies I go to when I need a pick-me-up.  Some are more current than others and some are markedly strange, I'll admit.  I can't guarantee that they will work for you, but if you think back, you probably already have your own list.

• Anne Of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea
• You've Got Mail
• The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (the old one from the 70's)
• Hocus Pocus
• Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken
• Sleepy Hollow
• Drive Me Crazy
• Twilight (yes... all of them... I know... don't judge)
• Beauty and the Beast
• Tombstone
• 19 Kids and Counting
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
• 200 Cigarettes
• Dirty Dancing
• 16 Candles
• Son In Law
• Pride and Prejudice
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• Persuasion
• Reality Bites
• The Parent Trap (not the new one... the 1960 version)

Get OUT!
Sometimes all I have to do is leave the confines of my home and smell the fresh air to find inspiration.  I'm sure my snooty suburban neighbors find it strange that I sit in a lawn chair in my front yard and work on my laptop or read a magazine.  Take time to enjoy what's around you, like the sunset or the stars or the sounds and smells of the great outdoors. (Side note: If you are my neighbor and you are actually reading this, I'm sorry for calling you snooty.  Seeing that I have only actually had the opportunity to meet a grand total of four families in my neighborhood, I don't think there is much danger there.)

Sunsets at my suburban abode don't even compare to sunsets on the prairie.

Change gears...
I can make myself sit at my computer all day and write.  It makes me cranky and grumpy and has caused me to gain a lovely 10 pounds that I am still trying to work off.  Bleh.  I have discovered that not only is my writing better when I change gears every hour or so, but my rear end fares far better as well.  It's true.
I try to switch between sitting activities and standing ones.  Sometimes I do the dishes (only because I have to, not because I like to), sometimes I work in the yard, sometimes I clean house, sometimes I just go out and play with the kids.  Work, play, work, play... this is supposed to be fun, right?

If you have to have neighbors, you may as well enjoy them, talking to other adults during the day often boosts my creative juices... and breaks the pattern of reading Dr. Seuss books and refereeing kids scuffles.

Take a break...
This is by far my favorite tool for inspiration.  I give myself complete release to do something frivolous.  When you work for yourself, every minute that you are not working, you are not making money.  I used to feel very guilty if I wasn't at my computer, pecking away, writing mundane article after mundane article.  Now, I realize that if I sit down and watch TV for an hour or browse at Hobby Lobby without feeling guilty about it, those mundane articles become a little less mundane and my work pace actually improves.

These solutions may sound simple, but actually doing them when you have an entire to-do list with nothing actually checked off yet, can be a challenge.  Take the challenge and chill out, do things backwards... as my dad always says just before the last steer has been worked, "If you girls would have started with this one, we'd have been done a long time ago."  Thanks, Bob.

Rain, Rain, Please Don't Go Away

Amber once said, "as farmer's daughters, we learn at a young age to pray for rain." This statement is entirely true to this day as 20-something-year-olds. I pray for rain daily and long for the sight of green grass in the ditches beside the highway near my parents' house.
Tonight we got lucky enough to have a small rain shower. No matter where you grew up rain always smells the same. I think that smell is possibly the best part of a rain shower. I will never get tired of standing in my front yard in the rain, feeling it come down on my skin.

Our garden comes to life, soaking up every coveted drop of sustenance. 

The calm after the storm right after the sun goes down is one of my favorite times. Those moments where it's not quite dark yet and the only thing besides the single cloud in the sky is the blinking lights of the radio tower a few blocks from my current residence. I don't think I will ever get used to living "in town," as my dad says. It's hard to remember that you can't run outside and yell or wrestle your sister in your front yard when your neighbors may or may not be inside calling 911.
I will be on the lookout for more June showers, maybe I will even be able to get better pictures next time!

Suburbia: Country's Distant Cousin?

Although my heart is in the country among the sage brush and sweeping plains, my geographic location currently places me in suburbia, also known as "Pleasantville" or as my children often call it "who-ville."  We call it this because although all of the houses in this particular neighborhood, though relatively new and well kept, all have similar neutral colored siding and identical slate colored roofs and greatly resemble each other.  Let's face it, if it weren't for house numbers and street signs around here, it would be hard to find your way home.

Every night, just after dark, I walk.  I do this because it reminds me that singing crickets do still exist and because it gives me a little time alone with my thoughts - and, as strange as it sounds, because it is the only thing that reminds me of life in the country.

I quickly exit my neighborhood on foot and abandon the sidewalk in favor of the grass.  Although it is uneven and less stable underfoot, it is preferable to the unnatural rigidity of the pavement.  There are no paved roads other than the highway near our country home - and a smart country gal doesn't walk down the highway.

I jog/walk down the side of a busy street near our neighborhood.  It is strangely devoid of street lights and reminds me of the 3/4 mile of dirt road running past our house in the country, lit only by the moon at night.  This may sound a little strange and creepy, but I love the outdoors at night.  Everything that is hot and dry and reclusive during the day seems to come to life with shadows and mystery after sunset.

The dirt road by our farm at twilight.

It is a well known fact among country kids that if there is a tree - you must climb it.  There is a small grove of trees nestled in, what I assume is the back of some ritzy addition, on the northwest corner of this dimly lit street and another busy street directly across from a Walgreens.  Every time I walk by this miniature urban forest, I seriously consider jumping the wrought iron fence and scaling the medium sized oak tree in the middle.  It is, in fact, so tempting that I have taken to walking on the opposite side of the street in hopes that the constant stream of four lanes of traffic will deter me from trespassing.

The best part of these nightly strolls is the smell.  Even in the city, the smell of freshly cut grass mingled with flowers and fresh air creates a summer time medley that not even the most talented of candle makers can accurately capture.

As a side note, when the wind blows from the south, the sweet smell of summer time is often masked by the putrid stench of dog food being made at the Purina plant a few miles away.  It makes me long for the smell of the pig farm just a mile from our house in the country, which smells decidedly better than freshly made dog food. 

So, if suburbia and the country are actually related, I would have to guess that they are second cousins twice removed and differ greatly in genetic material.  Having said that,  although my GPS shows me planted in the middle of suburbia's expansive grid of city streets and a large population, somehow, it never fails to remind me of it's distant cousin, the country, and home.

"Paints the Perfect Picture of What It's Like Growing Up in the Country"

This is the epitome of growing up in the country. I never quite understood people who could live without stars at night or Oklahoma sunsets. I don't even see the point of living somewhere other than the south when you know you're going to lose the beauty. Amber and I make a lot of jokes about growing up as the "ranch hands" but the truth is we wouldn't be anywhere close to the people we are today if we hadn't grown up in the manner that we did or with the people we did. It took me living in the big city while getting my degree to realize that there really is no place like home when this is your home.

This picture is only a small portion of the family members.
The nieces and nephews we grew up with were more like cousins and the brothers and sisters were like aunts and uncles. We didn't necessarily understand this until we were older, though. Although we are an entirely mixed and complicated family, we are entirely integrated with each other. We enjoy each other, even if outsiders don't enjoy us. I tend to warn people before bringing them into my grandmother's house during a holiday not to be overwhelmed. We are large and loud and completely insistent that outsiders join in on the chaos that is the Phillips family. I also joke that we love picking up stragglers. You can guarantee that there will be at least one or two new people at any given holiday... especially Fourth of July.

R.C. (or Bobby, as I like to call him) is the glue that holds us all together. There have been hard times in our family just like everyone else's. Sometimes all you need is for Dad to tell you that everything will be okay.. "so quit your crying. There are cattle to work and fences to build. I'll wait for you in the truck."
I'm only partly kidding about that. Dad is a tough one but he has made us all survivors. I think he and I clash the most because we have such similar personalities. I helped him on the farm all through my high school years. I quit about a hundred times from the time I was 14 until I was 18. While other girls were working in clothing stores and waiting tables I was chasing a black steer down the highway in cowboy boots and sweatpants, wishing I had remembered to shut the gate!

Humble Beginnings

My sister and I are the youngest of six children. There is a 14-23 year age gap between the four eldest and myself, then my younger sister came along five years later. For the two of us, life began humbly on a ranch in the country near a small town in East Texas.

When I say I grew up on a ranch, in no way does that mean that I was a cowgirl with a show horse and fancy western boots. Occasionally, we had horses, but they were for rounding up cattle, not barrel racing. I also had boots, but they were suited more for working in the pens when the East Texas weather turned the soft ground in to rancid muck and greatly resembled galoshes. I would liken myself more to a glorified ranch hand.  Normally, ranch hands are boys, but since my brothers were grown, I guess my dad decided girls were just as able if trained early enough.

A little background information on our operation....
Our dad runs a cattle preconditioning operation where he buys heifers, and stocker and feeder cattle when they are old enough to be away from their mother.  Often these cattle are not even his.  Other, less inclined, cattlemen pay him to precondition their cattle before they turn them out.  He facilitates the transition from being with the mother to being independent and eating grain and grazing.  This is not as simple as it sounds.  It involves carefully screening and immunizing the groups as they come in based on their appearance and their geographic origin, as some locations are more prone to certain health issues than others.  It usually entails de-horning and branding each calf - a stinky process that can be smelled for a mile when the wind is blowing.  It also involves castrating the bulls, which not only changes their anatomy, but their name as well.  A castrated bull is called a steer.  Unless they are going to be bred, it is more desirable to have steers in a herd.

The whole process takes place in a cattle working chute with an array of tools including enormous needles, a somewhat clean, but far from sterile scalpel, a pair of pliers that my dad always wears in a holster on his belt, an ear tagger, a branding iron and a dirty Styrofoam ice chest full of medicine with used needles embedded around the top.  All of these things are set up on the back of a flat bed farm truck. 

I officially became a farmer/rancher at the tender age of 10.  Our dad traveled three to four days a week buying cattle and during those days, I was officially responsible for feeding all of the cattle on our property at that time.  He would leave a note on the back of a sale barn card telling me what to feed in which pen and just before twilight, I would head to the barn to ready my steed.

My trusty steed was an old beat up riding lawn mower fitted with a small wooden flat bed trailer.  I would load it up with 30 lb. buckets of corn and "cake" feed that I would catch from the grain room in our barn.  I would drive down the half mile of pens that lined our "driveway" and carry the buckets in and distribute them among the four troughs in each pen.  In the pens with bigger cattle, I could only carry one bucket at a time because I had to carry a whip in the other to ward off the more agitated ones.  There were quite a few times that I abandoned my buckets and jumped up on the metal fencing,  very similar to the way rodeo clowns do, to avoid being charged.  At that point, I would scale the fence back to my "steed" and dump the remaining feed over the fence into the dirt.  Hey - it beat letting them starve for the night and they always ate it all anyway.  I'm sure it was just a little grittier going down.

Inviting friends to stay the night was always interesting.  I'm not sure if riding along with me to feed was mystifying or traumatizing to them.  In any event, I eventually stopped inviting guests when I knew my dad was going to be out of town.  It was way to much to explain, and honestly, I was annoyed when having to do so.  This was literally a way of life for us and I felt judged and misunderstood when having to answer a million ridiculous questions from ignorant "city girls" about my very grown up ranch duties.  I also found the endless stream of "yuck" and "ewww" and "gross" that inevitably ensued completely annoying as well.

I picture my inner monologue as sounding somewhat like Hank The Cow Dog for those of you who are familiar with him.  If you're not, you should be.  It's a book series - Google it!

When I was 13, the dairy market crashed and our operation essentially went under.  My dad still had a house and acreage near the Oklahoma panhandle where he was born and raised.  So we packed up and headed west.  Our operation in Oklahoma eventually grew and although my sister and I have fancy college degrees and numerous professional accolades, when we come home, we're still R.C.'s girls, those Phillips gals and often, the farmer's daughters.  Enjoy.

Click here to view the entire "Working Cattle" Gallery.