Dear World: I Am Learning the Lost Art of "Sucking It Up"

Nothing is ever that catastrophic (even if there are earthworms in your fingernails)

Hello, I’m Ash! The Middle Finger Project is a best-selling newsletter & book about how to reinvent yourself bravely. On weekends, I send Notes from the Farmhouse: tiny missives documenting my return to America after 20 years abroad, the 1800s farmhouse I purchased in the countryside against all reason, and the things I’m learning about how to be in charge of your own life. (So far, my only neighbor is a 200-year-old ghost who is pissed at me for gentrifying the neighborhood.)

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There’s something in my room.

I am going to kill it.

I can’t tell you what it is yet because I don’t know what it is, but the scratching and gnawing in the middle of the night is something out of a horror movie.

It’s probably a mouse, or a rat, or a squirrel, or a flesh-eating chipmunk, and it’s probably chewing on the spray foam that was installed with the new baseboard heater, and trust me: one year ago, I would have not been even REMOTELY chill about this. But living in the country has taught me something very important:

You’re fucked.

Suck it up.

You’ll be fine.

***

That’s not the only exciting thing that happens on a Saturday night around here: at midnight, I was woken up by a different noise.

Clang clang clang clang.

CLLAANNGGGG, CLANNNGGGG, CLAAAAAAAANNNGGG, CLAAAAAAANG.

CLAAAAAAAAAAANG! CLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!

Do I even want to know? I thought, as I rubbed my eyes open and stood up to look out the window.

OH MY GOD, FIRE! FIRE!!!!!!! There’s a fire!

I am freaking out, running down the stairs, grabbing the extinguisher under the sink, and realizing—at the most inopportune time—I have never actually used a fire extinguisher.

This fire is huge. It’s the biggest real-life fire I have ever seen. It is on the road. And, it’s making a beeline toward the house.

I see cell phone flashlights heading toward me—I am not the only one who heard the noise, saw the flames.

“He must’ve been driving right on the rims!”

I look down and see the lines the car has tattooed into the road. It smells of gasoline. There is gasoline everywhere. That is what has caught fire.

The car, though, was gone. And sooner than I would have ever imagined, the fire was gone, too. I didn’t need to extinguish it; it died as quickly as it began.

There are scrape marks heading straight into my lawn.

I do not sleep for hours, worried the road will spontaneously combust, and the fire will come back for my little wooden-clad house.

***

The flesh-eating chipmunk wakes me up again at five. I have a real vendetta now. This thing doesn’t realize I have suffered the cockroaches of Costa Rica—and I will take no prisoners.

***

Earlier in the day I hopped on my new four-wheeler—the most hillbilly thing I have ever said—and I drove across the road to the neighbor’s horse farm. She is outside on a tractor, mowing the lawn.

“Brought you a Yeti full of wine!” I yell. (Also the most hillbilly thing I have ever said?) It is Oyster Bay, from New Zealand. I love a New Zealand Sauv Blanc. I think back to a time while living in Chile, I had a raucously fun night with a group of girlfriends and a Kiwi wine maker, who had just opened a funky new wine hotel in Valpo. Sometimes that seems like forever ago, sometimes it seems like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like I have lived one hundred different lives—every year a brand-new one to try on.

I like this, I have decided.

Just like I have also decided I like horses. We pet a horse named Eggs. Don’t you want a horse named Eggs now????? The cool thing about Eggs, however, is that he has gone through a bit of self-reinvention, too: originally he was purchased for $3,500. Today, he is worth $50,000. That is the value of good training, good people, and good work, I learn. I can’t help but think about how the same thing applies to us: when you’re young your “worth” in the marketplace might be $25,000 a year. After you get some good training, with some good people, and do some good work, however, your salary might shoot up to $100,000 a year.

Isn’t that crazy?

You can have an all-new life in just a few years.

***

Speaking of an all-new life: there are certain things I simply do not care about anymore: wearing makeup, getting dirt underneath my fingernails, breaking a sweat, touching gross things. I mean, okay fine, NOT ALL GROSS THINGS. Only, like, earthworms. And only, like, with a shovel. Does that count as touching it? I think it does, because I have to look at it. And that’s pretty much the same.

***

Some guy tried to tell me that Trump did—are you ready for this?—brilliantly in the debate; that his lack of preparation was a deliberate statement; that Kamala is such a joke, she isn’t even worth his time to prepare for.

(I’ll pause so you can digest that.)

Isn’t it fascinating how two people can see the same thing and interpret it so differently?

Reality is constantly being negotiated.

***

I bought 40 mums. They are all red, every last one of ‘em. I am going to plant them in the window boxes around the house and the cottage—a smorgasbord of big red autumnal blooms to match the big, red autumnal front door. My mom’s voice echoes in my head every time I pick up a pot: gentle, now. Don’t hurt the roots.

Plants are different from us: if their roots get hurt, they often can’t recover. They have trouble getting reestablished. They call it “transplant shock.”

We go through transplant shock, too—just think of the last time you moved and had trouble making friends—but we are much more adaptable. We can re-establish ourselves, given almost any environment. Human beings are tough. We are elastic and resilient and we can overcome a lot.

Replanting ourselves over and over again is how we survive.

Over and over and over again, after you have lived one hundred different lives, in one hundred different places, in faraway lands at a time that feels like both forever ago and just yesterday, when you were lighting tiny little fires all over the world, making scrape marks on your own road…

…you have grown.

Nothing has ever been catastrophic.

You have always found your way to the sun.

Unlike plants, maybe we don’t need to be so gentle all the time. Sometimes roots need to be tore up. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is transplant yourself.

And sometimes, whether you are 18 or 81, the only way to grow is to go.

Because no matter where you land, one thing is true:

You will be okay.

You always are.

You will endure.

Even when there are flesh-eating chipmunks, and even when there are homicidal car fires, and even when there are earthworms in your fingernails, and even when there are delusional voters coming for your braaaaiinnnsssss.

You’re fucked.

Suck it up.

You’ll be fine.

I promise.