by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Just a Beginner.

I don’t know if I heard this from Mel Robbins or Brendan Burchard. Actually, I might have heard it from both of them in their own ways, but essentially they said, “Never feel ashamed of being ‘Just a beginner.’ We all start somewhere.”

As I navigate through this transitional phase and consider what I truly want to do next, I keep coming back to how scary it is to put myself out there. Generally, I know what I need to do, but, in some ways, fear is holding me back from implementation. It’s not the fear of failure. It’s not even the fear of success. It’s a fear of being vulnerable. A fear of being my authentic self in a world that is alarmingly cruel.

But this statement, “Just a beginner” keeps popping back up in my head. I am just. a. beginner.

What I’m realizing, though, is that I also have an underlying fear of not being a beginner. Perhaps, to the point of self-destruction. I do not want to be seen as an expert. In life (and in farming), we have to be adaptable and flexible with all of the unexpected things that get thrown at us. It has to be acceptable to grow and change.

I got to a point in my food safety career, where people considered me an expert. And it kind of terrified me.

Expert is defined as someone having comprehensive and authoritative knowledge in a specific area. By that definition, I was an expert. But I felt like I couldn’t be wrong. I couldn’t change my mind. I put so much pressure on myself to know and be right. Always. I burned myself out and kind of resented that I was supposed to be this end-all-be-all decision-maker.

But the pressure wasn’t entirely just me putting it on myself. There was an expectation that I was supposed to take the fault for a team of people who all contributed to the decisions made. I could be held personally accountable for natural environmental conditions where causes were nearly impossible to identify. This mindset was/is entirely unfair.

And the expectation was industrywide. Since the food safety representative held the certifications that qualified them as the expert decision-maker, they were the responsible party. Seemingly, it didn’t matter that the guy signing my checks could override my recommendation. And really, that’s all it was, because I wasn’t the final decision-maker of the business.

In this regard, food safety burned me. It made me feel like having comprehensive and authoritative knowledge was a bad thing. We live in such a litigious society that people need to hold someone accountable. That most likely person was me. And as things in food safety became increasingly complex and regulated, the more scary it became to be the responsible person. So much so that it drove me to leave the field altogether.

This was my experience with being an expert. I doubt that being an expert in different areas comes with these expectations and responsibilities, but it has made me fearful of gaining too much knowledge that people don’t give me the grace to continue learning and growing and changing. Of course, I know that I cannot control other peoples perceptions and emotions, but when people are so quick to make judgments and assumptions, it’s hard to not feel fearful of being vulnerable, especially without context. And people do not consider context.

For now, I’m just going to replay the “Just a beginner” mantra and remind myself that we all start somewhere. But realistically, I’ve been expressing vulnerability in this blog for years. Apparently, it doesn’t get easier. So I will just continue to feel the fear, and do it anyway.

by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

All the Things I Have Done.

This morning, I sat in my office, sipped my coffee, and looked around, pondering the thoughts that have been in my head all week and which I wanted to dive into for this post. As I sat there, I thought less about the chaos that happened over the past week and became overwhelmingly grateful. 

There are little reminders of the life I built for myself all throughout the room. The books on the shelves remind me of all the knowledge I’ve accumulated. The photos of my dog remind me that my heart is still healing from the loss. The lanyards and name tags from conferences and expos remind me of meeting incredible people from around the U.S. who are passionate about produce. The jewelry box my cousin made reminds me of the times he used to babysit us. It holds the watch my grandma used to always wear, and it reminds me of her. 

I reflect quite a bit, but it’s usually on individual things, like the conversation I had with my uncle, the op-ed I wrote that was published in the paper, the interactions I had with a colleague, or the behaviors of a family member – all things I thought I would be writing about this morning.

But this room in my house tells a story about my life, and I never really took the time to consider the story as a whole. I mostly just reviewed certain chapters. As I had been reflecting on all the things I could have done, the artifacts in this room show me all the things I. have. done. 

The collection may be of things, but many are meaningful items that represent my uniqueness. From the spiritual (bible verse written on a 3×5 card) to the practical (bills that need to be paid), and from the playful (camera and GoPro) to even the little weird (javelina skull), each represents a different area of my life that brings me joy. (Yes, even the bills. They mean I am financially independent with the luxuries of a roof over my head, electricity, and internet.)

It’s so easy to get caught up in the trap of what we think our lives could have or should have been. It’s also easy to get caught up in the “I wish”-es. It’s hard not to compare or want otherwise for yourself, (past or future), based on the influence of others. 

But we were not meant to follow anyone’s path, except for the one God has planned for us. As I reflect on the journey that got me to this point, I can’t help but be reminded that He knows exactly what He is doing. I am where I am supposed to be, and all the things I have done make me who I am today. And the things that I have done are a great reminder that who I am today has limitless potential for tomorrow.

by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Dreams.

I have so many unpublished post drafts in my dashboard, countless others in a Word document, and several others in a Google Drive folder. As always, I’ve been taking some time to reflect. When I read through these posts, it’s an insightful reminder of the emotions felt, lessons learned, and journey taken over the past year.

Many posts do not get published, because my thoughts feel incomplete or I feel the post will be read in standalone judgement rather than in the greater context of who I am and what I write about. I don’t want my thoughts on a specific topic to be taken the wrong way, especially when I am usually always open-minded, inquisitive, generally speaking, and most importantly: still learning.

I wanted to be a writer ever since I can remember. When I look at successful writers and how they got their start through blogging, the story is mostly the same: frequent publishing and sharing – neither of which I really do. They say that to be a professional writer, you need to have been published and paid for your work as a main occupation. Sounds stressful to me, honestly. I want to be comfortable with the words I publish. Topics are usually meaningful, and my thoughts cannot be rushed to reach a deadline.

Dreams change.

Sure, I would love to see my name atop a best seller list. But today, I am content. It’s not a dream I want to chase at this stage of my life, and I am pleased to publish what I want when I want to my handful of readers. (So thank you for stopping by. ☺️)

I’ve actually been feeling professional contentment for a few months now. And can I just tell you how freaking amazing it feels?

A master’s degree was something I kind of always wanted, but never really thought I would get. Done. ✅ And I recently started a new job at the level I had been working so hard to reach. ✅ The milestones I set for myself have been achieved, and at this point, I don’t have anything specific on the horizon. It feels so. incredibly. peaceful. to be able to just enjoy the view. 🌅

But that’s not to say I’m not working on other goals. At Facts from Farmers, we’ve been non-publicly working with growers in our community to do amazing things for our farmworkers. I’ve been spending intentional time with family and friends, and giving myself the grace to know when I won’t be bringing them my best self. And Kali and I have become BFFs while leisurely working on our roping partnership.

This is more for me than it is for you, but it’s okay to plateau. It’s okay to put dreams on hold. It’s also okay to scrap those dreams all together.

I’ve been hustling for 10+ years to get where I am. And truthfully, where I am, isn’t even a dream I knew I had until I started working toward it.

When I intentionally think about when people refer to life as a crazy ride, I can’t help but chuckle how true the statement is. It is full of unexpected twists and turns. There are uphill climbs that you anticipate, where the downward side may be an unexpected drop or a relatively smooth transition. It might be like the Haunted Mansion, where something jumps out and surprises you. It might be like Indiana Jones, when you’re focused on the giant rock coming toward you, but God has other plans and sweeps you away to something else.

I’ve said it time and time again, we learn, we grow, and we change. It would be silly of us to think that our dreams don’t evolve too. But more importantly, we need to recognize when those dreams do change, or diminish, or come true.

by : lacylit10 Farming

Where Food Grows.

I was talking to a friend awhile back about educating consumers on where their food comes from. Based on what we see online, it seems that consumers have an interest in learning about it. They are vocal about non-GMO, organic, antibiotic-free, free-range, fresh, and local produce. They get up-in-arms any time there is a recall or outbreak. They like farmer’s markets where they can see and meet the farmer. They like U-Pick stands where they can set foot on the farms themselves. It seems there is opportunity to bridge the gap between producers and consumers.

But then my friend asked, “But do they really care?”

This question has been swirling around in my brain for almost a year. I can’t shake it, because I think his implication is right. I think people want to want to learn about where their food comes from, but they don’t want to put in the work to do it. They seek out easy online resources, listen to non-credible people, and jump to their own misinformed conclusions. They find sources that align with their preconceived bias, closing them in an echo chamber of inaccuracy.

I experience this from my own friends and social network who ask me questions about what I do. Let’s take the ever popular organic argument as an example:

I tell them organic uses pesticides and chemicals that are of naturally-derived materials. Their food is fertilized with chicken shit and ground up fish turned into liquid. They look at me in disgust, then continue to swear that organic is healthier, even though there is no scientific evidence to prove organic produce holds more nutritional value than conventional produce. They continue to believe the carefully curated marketing campaigns of companies who are making loads of money off their naivety. They believe all of this over the knowledge and experience of someone they know and trust who manages crop inputs and oversees the safe production of their food.

Theoretically, people want to know where their food comes from, but they don’t want to know the nitty-gritty.

They don’t want to know that sometimes you have to spray organic twice as much, because the natural chemicals don’t work as well at controlling pests and diseases. They don’t want to know about the multitude of competing regulations that we are navigating between. They don’t want to understand nitrogen uptake and pH levels. They don’t want to learn about crop rotations and organic matter. They don’t want to hear that markets can drive decisions, because they simply see themselves as the end-user.

A.G. Kawamura is a third generation farmer and former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. He wrote an op-ed for Agri-Pulse around this time last year. In it, he says what has become one of my favorite quotes on agriculture in recent times:

Most assuredly we will remember why agriculture is important the day we return to a world of scarcity.

We are so fortunate to live in a country of abundance! We can be picky, because we have so. many. choices. Those who are hungry and are given a meal never question if the produce is organic. They are happy to have food in their stomachs.

For every ten people that say they have an interest in learning about where their food comes from, I bet there’s probably only two who legitimately care. So to my friend, here’s what I say: Those two are two more than we had before.