Wintrospection

My little support trio have departed...we were Uli, a German horse lady, and Ola, Polish, who worked in zoos and on city farms with animals before, she's a Demeter, they both are. I miss them, even though we only spent 3 weeks together. Now there is a new wwoofer with me, and friends of the owner, a German family.
Its also xmas. But i dont care.
This place is trying me, testing me, and i want to get to the bottom of it. Im uncomfortable - physically because i sleep in a van and essentially live outdoors, and now it rains and is COLD. Mist envelopes us here atop the mountain, entrancing me. Everythings wet. We didnt bring wood in, so fires are hard to start.
Im uncomfortable working with animals, when i never have before and i feel untrained and unsupervised. Im comfortable with the owner of this place, who is negative and expects so much and doesnt acknowledge my hard work or pay heed to my concerns. This is the crux of it - i know i have been in her position, i know i have acted like her. I want to know how i can help her feel more positive, less despairing and alone, because thats what i would have liked, before, at the housing coop in Ipswich.
Im uncomfortable making a decision to fly to a hotter, more conflicted, country, when the prime reason is to be with someone whose company i enjoy. It feels like betraying myself. I am invited to Granada for New Year by one of my closest friends, i spend ages online looking up buses - this also an outmoded inappropriate option for me. I thought i would cycle back up through Europe, camping alone, visiting projects slowly, taking in the land bit by bit, in ergonomic chunks. I am preoccupied by this indecision, the crisis of the FOMO (fear of missing out), too much possibility within my reach. And whilst im in the middle of nowhere, avoiding the decadence of consumer xmas, my brain is still full of this old, modern thinking, which i would never have had the chance for if i hadnt been born in england, now, 2013, soon to be 2014.
Ive discovered i am workshy, at the same time as having enthusiasm for manual labour and challenges.
Today i went up into the forest to clear deadwood. After an hour of making up songs about water in its different aspects, i was in abject dragging-heels-mode, straining my ears to hear the lunch horn, hoping for relief. Do i need a holiday from my holiday? Embarassingly, in the afternoon Dina showed me how to take the goat herd up onto the high campo, where you sit with them munching grass and acorns until sundown. But 5 minutes after she left me with them they galloped off, out through the gate and back down into their stable - whilst running after them the umbrella specially modified for goatherders broke - and then in pursuit of stragglers i got shocked by an electric fence! Haha, im the worst goatherder ever.
I searched for and snapped off canas for the rest of the day, weaving them into the stock fence to stop future escapes. By goats, who were probably smirking at me.
A few days ago i almost had my nose broken by a horse wheeling in the darkness. At solstice me and Ola finished plastering upstairs in the straw bale house. Its done by hand and the lime, much wetter than what i call a normal mix, splatters into your face. The sand and clay we use in and on the walls is dug from the site, everything is done by hand, you have to switch on a generator down below if you need to use a power tool; its pretty backbreaking.
On the upside, the sunrises are breathtaking and empowering, and the evenings spent talking by the Baldur (woodburner), learning to knit, as much chocolate spread as i want...singing out over the landscape, much banter, visits to the olive press to fetch oil whose ingredient we picked ourselves, day-trips top the city eating pastel de nata de cerejeira, sharing a van with someone i can stay up talking with... All very satisfying and fulfilling. Simple. I am learning, Jim, just not what id expected...