Bunker Hill Road, before the storm. I am getting interested in this barn, not quite as much as Kinney Road.

August 14, 2008 – Raining, as usual.
 I got a message from someone far away the other night, and it was a little too familiar. I was, this person said, living her dream – rolling farmlands, surrounded by animals, and gripped by a desire to write. What she wanted, she said, was my life. How could she get it, she asked?
  It is easy to write e-mails, especially from far away, and I appreciate the good words and nice things she said about my writing. This is part of the rich dialogue I sometimes have about my farm and work.
   But this message disturbed me at the same time, and I believe in being gracious, especially about compliments, but the truth is, it wasn’t a compliment, and it wasn’t about me, and not about my life.
  I can’t read all of the e-mails I get anymore, and can’t answer them all, but I did answer this one. I wrote a brief response and I said I was sorry for her message, and no one should live anyone else’s dream. They should live their own. Sheep, rolling farmlands and animals are not a magical password to a good life, anymore than money or power. Or being a writer or a photographer. Life is just not like that. The face you look at in the mirror in the morning is yours, and it is yours on a farm, or in a suburb, or in the middle of Manhattan. If you don’t like it there, you won’t like it here.
   I believe that if you are living someone else’s dream, rather than your own, it is false,  it will fail you, and you will be as unhappy and unfulfilled as anyone, and perhaps even more lonely.
  This is a fantasy, not a dream. It is not about me, and I wrote that to be honest, to call someone else’s life a dream diminishes it, no matter how well intended. I said I hoped she might live her life, not mine. I love my life, and am grateful for it every day, as I learn every day that it is rich in joys and sorrows. I don’t want anyone else’s dream, and take no pleasure in being anyone else’s.