Change Is Scary

by James Duquette

I don’t do well with unexpected change.

Adaptability has never been easy for me; I like things to be understandable and understood, not this chaotic mess that life so often feels like. I am infinitely more comfortable when I know what to expect and the “guesswork” of life is taken out. My parents used to remark that as a child I’d need a two week notice to go to a theme park. 

I was not prepared to come back to the farm in October of last year. I had been out of work for two and a half weeks at that point since, well, life had been less predictable again. I’d been unable to visit the farm for medical reasons for a short while. I came back to find that everything was changing. 

We had moved away from the large tent where I typically worked most of the year, because the park staff at Temple Hall needed to use the tent for Halloween parties. Instead I had to trudge my heavy laptop all the way into the back field for tables that were covered by everyone’s lunches and our flower processing stations. We’d had a change of staff; one of the last things I’d done before leaving on my hiatus was to wish my old supervisor farewell. And worst of all, I wasn’t writing, at least not primarily; I was getting pulled more and more to do farm work. Readers of this blog will remember my woes at attempting to work with Gomphrena - this was when that particular event happened.

I’ll admit, I was overwhelmed by all these changes. The first day I returned to work under these circumstances I was in a foul mood and doing my best to push through.  I hadn’t been given the advance notice I seemed to crave; everyone else had been told ahead of time, but I had missed work for almost three weeks and hadn’t been attending morning meetings.

I had two options of recourse: Adapt, or buy a donut.

I’m half joking, but they were in fact selling donuts at Temple Hall during their Halloween festivities. Having something sweet in my system over my lunch helped me improve my mood and my morale.

Photo by Ethan Roe

The adapting was much trickier.

Part of what helped was the understanding. Here at the farm we’re trying to foster this growth in ourselves and in each other- it is not a traditional office, where your woes get bounced between an unfeeling management and a malicious HR department. At the farm we are promoting a greater understanding of our emotions and our challenges as a neurodiverse team. My supervisors noticed I wasn’t myself.

Fostering growth means working even when it’s hard. It means adapting when pushed. Knowing that my mentors and supervisors understood that this was difficult for me, sympathized with the challenge but still wanted me to continue working as hard because they believed I could, was a powerful force of motivation for me to increase my window of tolerance.

I can still kind of do farm work. It’s not something I’m amazing at, but I’m not completely helpless either. Over the course of the following year my work has involved a renewed focus on writing again- I’ve got a project based on the seasons that will be really quite spectacular. However, I know that if I am asked to work in changing situations again…I can.