'I'm Trying So Hard But Everything's Still Going Wrong!'

Keep following your passion wherever it leads.

The Procession of Orpheus (1948), Jane Graverol

Dear Polly,

I'm trying so hard but everything's still going wrong. Let me lay things out for you.

I love gardening and all things plants. I live in a basement apartment in a densely-packed neighborhood. I have a few plants in containers in the driveway, but the containers are small and they belong to my landlord so I can't plant everything I want to plant. I applied for a plot in four local community gardens, but I've been on that waitlist for 3 years with no luck. I managed to find an overgrown parking strip owned by the city and got permission to set up two 3x3 raised beds there, which I did!! But it's SO DRY, I've been hauling buckets of water six blocks from my apartment to the garden every single day and it's just. not. enough. Most of my plants died last year because of lack of water, and so this year I decided to plant chickpeas and native drought-hardy wildflowers.... but they all died too. I'm trying to get a cover crop of clover started so the soil can maybe, MAYBE retain a little water, but the poor little sprouts are just getting baked to death. I know the whole problem here is that the garden needs more water, but it takes me so long to walk there and back that I've been running later and later to work, and I physically cannot carry more water than I already am. I've been trying to haul water there in the evenings as well, but that's been pushing my bedtime back more and more so I've been struggling to stay awake at work... you see the problem here?!?

My dream job is one in environmental restoration, but I don't have the credentials or the experience. I've been trying to volunteer with a local ecology group, but it's been hard to find the time and energy—I still have to cook and clean and do groceries on weekends. So I'm trying to go back to school. I can't afford a state college, so I looked at community colleges nearby. The only one that offers anything in environmental restoration is an hour away. I applied and got in and signed up for classes... but they only offer them on weekday mornings, when I work. I asked my boss if I could change my schedule, and she said I could try but if there's no room on the weekend shift and nobody wants to move, I'll be out of luck. And on top of that, I'm missing a math prerequisite, so I'll only be able to take one of the classes I need. I want to scream.

I know. Crops fail. I'm not mad at the chickpeas for dying. There's no point in being mad at 19 year old me for getting deep in debt to get a degree in a field it turns out I'm garbage at, I didn't know I like plants yet. But I'm so beyond tired. Every morning it's a little harder to get out of bed, knowing that I'm gonna haul more goddamn heavy ass water to pour on some plants that are just gonna die anyway, and then be late to work again for all my trouble. I'm saving up for a house for me and my partner so that someday, MAYBE, we'll be free from debt and I'll have somewhere to plant a huge garden and never have to worry about pissing off a landlord again by growing some fucking potatoes. Plants are my passion! It's killing me that even though I'm giving it 110%, I'm still failing. My sad dinky little garden is dying. I won't even be able to go back to school full time, IF my schedule gets changed. Houses in our city start at $500,000. My nose is pressing so hard to the grindstone I'm not sure it's still there anymore, and it's still not enough.

How can I keep going like this? I don't want to give up, gardening's the only thing keeping me sane, but I'm starting to doubt that any of my dreams are actually achievable. I'm giving it my all. It'd just be nice to have a win now and then too.

Stop the Ride, I Wanna Get Off

Dear Stop the Ride, I Wanna Get Off,

The first thing I want to say to you is that I love you.

I love your letter and I love everything about what you’re describing. I love that you tried to grow stuff in the landlord’s driveway and I love that you applied for plots in local community gardens and I love that you managed to find an overgrown parking strip and got permission to start a garden there.

But most of all, I love that you haul water to an overgrown parking lot every morning.

If independent film were still thriving, if this were the ‘70s or even the ‘80s, this would make a beautiful small story, the kind no one wants to tell anymore because the whole world supposedly prefers flat characters spewing snide pop cultural references in chumpy urban slang while computer-generated shit explodes around them. Thanks to the fact that a bunch of rich motherfuckers in studio offices in the driest, biggest, stupidest city on earth keep saying no to interesting, real people and regular, small stories and yes to endless dipshittery encased in sugary AI fuckstorms, we’re never reminded of what real people do every day.

Real people work very hard at what they love, in spite of their exhaustion, in spite of their aches and pains, in spite of their fears.

But if someone brought your story to a studio, a very dumb, very powerful asshole would say, “No one wants smart characters, no one likes opinionated women, no one would believe that some bitch would drag ten gallons of water across six city blocks just to grow some fucking chickpeas.”

I know why you do it, though. I have three acres of land that keep me up at night all the time, and I can’t afford to do anything about any of the problems created by my land. I thought I would grow fruit and flowers, because I did that in my driveway in the driest, biggest, stupidest city on earth for years. I watered everything every morning, except during droughts, which were heartbreaking. Then I got these rainwater-collecting barrels, and every time it rained, I ran around moving the rain from the barrels to a series of huge trash cans (cheaper than barrels) in order to keep collecting rainwater.

I spent hours upon hours, sweating and hauling buckets around. I would run around in circles in the rain doing it. I loved it so much. Every time it rained (not very often) I would put on a raincoat and I’d have a smile on my face, ready for action. When I had 20 trash cans full of rain water, I felt so rich. I felt so happy. And then I would lug the rainwater around in the yard, which was also time consuming and difficult and tiring.

One day I came home from a walk and saw my neighbor showing his friends the trash cans full of water that were next to his driveway. I couldn’t hear his words but I could tell that the vibe was “This stupid obsessive moron spends most of her time moving rainwater around in circles instead of just using the hose like a normal fucking person.”

I didn’t care. My rainwater was a big part of my joy at that point in my life. I had two little kids and three dogs and a husband and a full-time job but I loved my rainwater obsession anyway.

It wasn’t just the water itself that mattered to me, in such a dry place. It wasn’t just the plants themselves, which were incredible — the stuff you can grow in dry, hot places when you have water? Dr. Seuss types of fantasy plants! Gorgeous, insane plants!

I loved the work, too. I loved being outside in the rain, even when I groaned at first to think of the hard labor involved. I loved seeing the barrels get full in just a matter of minutes, and doing my best to save all of that water – sweating, hauling buckets. I never asked my husband or kids to help because I knew it was my thing. I loved my thing.

I think… Okay, not think. I KNOW that a part of you loves hauling those buckets of water to your garden. I know it sucks that the garden is too dry and it feels like a failure. But the hauling itself is not the problem. The hauling is the gift.

And the one thing that rich idiots in very stupid places don’t understand at all is that the hauling itself — the needless, pointless, excessive work — could be the gift. They don’t understand that you can do work that’s tedious and ridiculous and useless and feel absolutely fulfilled by it anyway. They’re too rich to know what regular people know. That’s why when people get that rich, they get less happy.

Rich idiots — not all rich people, just the wasteful, lazy, ignorant, deeply confused idiot rich — don’t understand how work can be valuable in and of itself. They don’t understand having a deep, soulful relationship to work. They don’t know how it feels to do something slightly unhinged and to love it precisely because it’s absurd and has so little value, and so little benefit, and there’s so little logic behind it.

Gardening is a little bit illogical in general. It takes tons of time. Go buy a cheap apple grown on an industrial farm and be done with it. Why waste your time and money and energy?

But you understand. An industrially farmed apple, bathed in pesticides and herbicides, is not the same. Organic gardening is a tedious, nightmarish, endlessly taxing blessing from heaven above. You see the sky, you feel the dirt, you smell the air, you sweat, things die, weeds encroach, and it makes your life better, every single day. Passion lives there, in that meaningless, endless toil. Romance lives there, in that gargantuan task that will never be finished.

Unless you want to move to North Carolina and work in my garden for free because I’m nearly bankrupt from buying my garden, I don’t have an immediate plan for you. But I do know that you need a new job, and there’s no reason that job shouldn’t be in a field that’s related to gardening. There’s no reason at all that you can’t scour the earth to find a place where someone with your ENORMOUS PASSION is not only appreciated, but cherished.

I also know that a bunch of very smart and thoughtful people in the comments section will offer their ideas, because so many people who read Ask Polly understand the true joy of working very hard at things that have very few tangible benefits or rewards. We are united in our passion for insane shit that doesn’t add up in any clear way and doesn’t make sense to anyone who would rather buy into the absolutely sick vision of constant consumption and dissatisfaction and addiction that rich idiots are getting rich from perpetuating.

Read the comments closely. You need to be working in another field, not doing arbitrary work for someone who is inflexible and doesn’t understand how absolutely precious a person with your enthusiasm and intelligence is.

Commit to changing jobs right now. Transfer all of your passion into work that sustains and inspires you. It’s important. You deserve that gift to yourself. You deserve to feel good about your career and your future. Set financial concerns aside for the moment and focus on how you’re living. You don’t have to suffer to make money. There are better paths forward for someone with your energy, optimism, and resilience.

Okay? So that part is settled. The only other very important thing for you to understand is this: I love and admire your romantic vision and your passion so goddamn much that I’m crying right now. I wish I could send you a big sack of money to buy an empty lot and put a working garden there. If you start a GoFundMe to do this, I will contribute and publicize it. I want you out there doing what you love. (I’ll add a link here if you do start one!)

So along with planning a new path forward career-wise, I want you to feel this moment. Embrace the romance of every second you spend dragging that water across the city. Work hard to love and admire and respect your efforts the way I do. Honor the pure satisfaction you feel whenever you do that job without feeling embarrassed and depressed by it. Notice and savor how good it feels, when you wake up extra early to haul water and you’re proud of that, and you make it to work on time, and everything is right in the world, even though the plants aren’t thriving yet.

Whatever happens next, I know for a fact that you will thrive as long as you can love those moments of hard labor that make you so happy (sometimes without realizing it). I hear that you’re at your limit right now. Take care of yourself and make adjustments. Be bold. Whatever you do, though, you need to have some faith in yourself and what you love. Because I know for a fact that you’ll continue to be an ebullient force of good in the world and you’ll build a beautiful life for yourself no matter what comes next. I know that you’re inspiring so many people today, too, to think of something impossible and difficult and stupid and small and pointless and DO IT.

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT.

Because that’s what joy is made of. Joy is doing the small, pointless, ridiculous thing that you love in spite of the fucked up world around you and the rich idiots who trick us out of understanding what our bodies and minds and hearts are made to do. Joy is doing the tiny, absurd, imaginative thing that you love, that reacquaints you with the faith inside your chest, the steady beat of your heart that won’t give up, the compassion inside your cells. Joy is remembering that people are good and this world is gorgeous and irreplaceable. Joy is believing that it all adds up, that it all matters, that your dumb, small, deluded thing is the reason you’re alive.

Please never stop believing in who you are, and loving how unhinged you are, how pointless you are, how ridiculous you are. That’s passion. Never ever change.

Grow more plants in the dark of your basement. Save for your big garden. Find a new job that’s related to gardening, with more flexible hours, working for someone who understands your passion and how rare and special it is and how rare and special you are. You will find your people in this world. You will be supported and loved everywhere you go. Trust me. Open your heart and see it. Miracles await you.

And to every single person who read this and thought: “I’m like that, too.” Miracles await you, too. Believe it. Love who you are, every single day, and celebrate every stupid, small, pointless thing you love with all of your heart. When you love more than your heart can possibly stand, you yourself are a miracle.

Polly

---

Thank you for reading and supporting Ask Polly! This job is my passion and I’m grateful to every single paid subscriber for keeping Ask Polly alive and thriving! If you’ve read my words for years but never been a paid subscriber, consider becoming one today.

Send letters to askpolly@protonmail.com.