Originally posted August 11, 2025 on Substack, by Marquel Stuedemann
The other night, I was outside as the sun slowly faded below the horizon after casting a beautiful show of deep oranges and warm moody yellows behind the blue backlight of the sky, fading darker and darker. The task was a tedious one - reassemble the 96+ pieces of hardware around the new raised garden bed that I failed to fully assemble a previous night, now paying the price for my half-stitched effort. The endless whipping gusts of the last two days of brutal spring wind did its best at pulling apart and flapping the metal pieces upon itself, pulling out one screw at a time until only about half remained in place, and still half of what was left, hanging on by only a few threads.
It was a rare, quiet moment. Just me. No baby at my hip or monitor to continuously watch. Just me, the dogs, and the project before me. Nice enough to manage the cooler temps and now-manageable wind whistling. Still not an ideal time to assemble such a thing, but it was necessary nonetheless. And somehow, peaceful, despite the chore before me.
I slowed enough in those very moments re-connecting bolt and screw, after a harsh couple of weeks of chaos and catch-up, to remember a friend going through a big thing. GOSH how could I have not remembered to text her yesterday? I checked in, catching up on the latest update. Looking around to soak in the setting as I awaited her call with more updates.
As I looked around, I took note. Watching my dogs chase each other and take turns running sprints to the next alert spot a couple dozen feet away, following the slightest twitch of the grass in hopes that some little critter would be there to play their version of cat-and-mouse. Between darts here and there, they paced more slowly, noses to the ground, occasionally glancing up, as if smiling, and taking in the other smells perfusing through the air.
That is how we should be living, I thought to myself. Purely in the moment. Enjoying its full bliss with every sense.
I imagined my counterpart, perhaps on this very plot of soil, 150 years earlier. She, too, overlooked the horizon, finishing up her chores at dusk after putting the kids to bed, taking in the scenes, perhaps also worrying and praying for her loved ones like I was in that moment.
With one major difference: she wasn’t also worried about the dozens if not hundreds of other things that notably weren’t crossing her mind from endless scrolling reels of social media and all the horrible things happening to people around the world, across the country, and even her own very town a few miles away. She would probably hear about the neighbor's house fire in the town over, or a lost relative of the grocer, but not for a week or at least days after the fact. Rarely in real time, and surely, not at the volume at which we are exposed in our modern, tech-inundated world.
Were there still sheriff encounters and shootings and babies dying too young and droughts and not enough water and bad politics and bar fights? Since the beginning of human history, yes. Some to a greater degree, some less, depending on who you ask.
I twisted another turn of the wrench, now more-wisely utilizing a phillips screwdriver for the other side, adding a few extra turns than I did before. These bolts were going to withstand any wind, this time, now that I had learned a lesson about doing things right the first time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cherished psychotherapist with the sweetest South African motherly tone, as if affirming my very thoughts, posted this the next day:
Coming back to the present and having to remember my friend was going through something difficult behind the mass of scattered thoughts and anxieties and fears was the sad realization. My 150-years-before counterpart may have also had friends to worry about. But she had the value of the simplicity of that. Without the buzzes and reminders and alerts and have-you-heard or are-you-keeping-up-with pressures that keep us all watching the news and scrolling despite how hard it’s hitting our minds, like a head to a wall repeatedly. And again, even after a gaping wound is suffered.
Another turn, another bolt. I try my hardest to combat the distracted, ADHD-type tendency I have to jump around over systematically approaching a problem, a process. Finish this row, move to the next bolt. Repeat. It sounds simple, but for a brain working overdrive, often scattering from one unfinished task to the next, this level of consistency and seeing a project through to the end is like racing uphill. Still, I persisted against my norm. Against my pull to the phone’s every buzz. To the noise, the distraction, the constant input. I only listened to the quiet, noticed the turkeys gobbling and roosters calling in the distance. Frogs beginning to sing their melodies, too. It was amazing that this orchestra was taking place right outside my door nearly every night, and most nights, I barely caught it.
Row complete. Onto the next. I find another bolt in the grass, tempted to jump to another spot. Resist. Keep going.
My long-ago prairie-woman counterpart was able to go outside and do chores, perhaps tedious ones, like this, and simply listen to the chirping and gobbling, as I was, and perhaps even worry about her friend or another loved one, but that was it. She probably noticed the symphony every night - without the constant flow of an air or heat system and pipes running. She certainly wasn’t waiting for a phone to buzz seemingly every other minute. How free her mind could have been?
Times were not altogether “simpler” then, of course. And perhaps, she, too, had her fair share of spinning. But I can’t help but wonder: what would it be like to toil and pray and wonder, without all the extra noise?
I could have easily been frustrated with the task at hand. After all, it was tedious. It was the second or third attempt, and I had to search and find all kinds of little metal pieces in the grass. I didn’t want to do it. But yet, I came inside after over an hour of effort in the breezy cool of the night’s spring chill, with a grin ear to ear.
For once, I did feel a glimmer of what it may have been like in a simpler, less media-ingested time. To do something tedious under the last of the day’s sun rays and only listen to the gobble of the turkeys. To be still long enough to consider a friend, pray earnestly for her, and even call her and ask how it’s going, being fully present with every word.
I enjoyed the simple turns of the wrench. And even the freedom to worry about my friend and check in with her. I was even able to see an easily distractible, once-unfinished project to the finish line. I came inside, legs cold to the touch, proudly proclaiming to my husband that the task was done and I combated all the things my scattered mind normally would have pushed and pulled me from to even do it in a systematic way, ensuring it was done right. It was as if a messed up, cris-crossed wire in my brain had straightened out.
A moment of wonderful simplicity. Begging curiosity in my mind - what would multiple moments like this, stacked on top of one another, do for my own mental cries?
Maybe, just maybe, we have the freedom to still choose the mental freedom of a simpler, slower life. A life less weighed-down with the expectation that we, alone, will somehow solve the world’s problems with our worry (disclaimer: we can’t).
A life full of taking in sunsets and doing tedious, annoying things but still having the brain space to intentionally pray and care for others, shouldering burdens in the realist sense. Perhaps that would actually change the world. And it gives me enough hope to put down the phone to complete a chore under the sunset again tomorrow.