One interesting thing about blogging, is the constant pressure to come up with the next project, the next post, the next great photo.
I've often wondered what on Earth some bloggers do with all the 'stuff' they generate through blogging. I mean, I admire their creativity and ingenuity, but wow. They must suffer serious Clutter-bug-itis.
I know from my own experience, that I have a craft room full of paraphernalia associated with my blogging efforts. Some of it, like my beautiful lace above, is relevant. Much of it is not.
No more.
As my youngest child sails into her final 4 months of high school and prepares to enter Tertiary Study, and my husband and I prepare to retire, I think it becomes important to audit our lives. In fact, auditing your life is an important task at least once a decade.
Think about it. The way you live is constantly changing and morphing. We all know about the changes from singledom to married life, then from couplehood to family. We then make this quantum leap to 'retirement' without considering all of the smaller changes in between.
I know that I am a very different person to who I was 19 years ago today, when I married my husband. I'd already been married, had been a single mum for some years and I had three sons, one with a severe disability. It was the second marriage for my husband too. Being older, we both had very definite ideas about the life we wanted together, and we've worked hard to attain our goals.
Initially this meant seeing my sons, and my husbands only son, settled into adult life. This included my disabled son, who has Cerebral Palsy. Alby (as we call him), had very clear goals himself. He'd seen his older brothers finish school, and move out of home, and he was determined that he too, would live an independent life. Husband and I moved Heaven and Earth to make this happen in an era where this was mostly seen as pie-in-the-sky dreaming, and Alby has his own home, a team of Support staff, and a life that would be the envy of most able bodied guys his age, never mind one who is totally physically dependent.
It meant seeing our daughter through her formative years, and into young adult life, offering her the opportunity to pursue her dreams. She has a passion (and a talent) for the Performing Arts, and 15 years of dance, drama, and singing lessons, that kept us poor for many of those 15 years (lol!), have seen her well prepared for whatever comes next. Even if that's Zoology, her other ambition! She's in the top 1% of her school academically too, so that's not unrealistic. We're nearly there. Whatever she chooses, the rest is up to her.
So now, we make choices about who WE are for the duration of our...hopefully long...life together.
This means some serious discussion, and some hard choices about home, business, and the things for which we'd like to be remembered when our work in this life is done.
It means asking ourselves, as we have unconsciously for the decades prior to this one...who am I?
I cannot speak for my husband here. That is not my place. But I see my role as:
Wife and Companion
Mother and Mentor
Grandmother and Teacher
Friend and Confidante
Sometime Volunteer Costume Seamstress
Cake Decorator
Cook and Recipe Imaginator
French Lifestyle Admirer and Imitator
Blogger and Writer
From this point on, if something in our home does not fit into one of those categories, it is literally...GONE.
Auditing your life is more than saying 'yes this is who I am'. It's ridding your life of anything that does not fit that description. It's letting go of all of those Fantasy Selves that we all have. Fantasy Selves are those parts of us that make us part of the 'one day' brigade. As in "one day I'll have a succulent garden and I'll use that wheelbarrow and that old bicycle with the basket on the front to make a Pinterest worthy succulent display", then said wheelbarrow and old bicycle lays around getting in the way for ten years before being taken to the Waste Recycling Plant. I'm not guilty of that particular one, but I am guilty of others. In my lifetime, I have been the Sewing-all-my-own-clothes Self, the Emergency-Prepper Self, the Homemade-Gift Self and the Feed-my-family-for-under $100-a-week Self. I'm proud to have been all of those Selves for periods of time in my life. Those Selves suited who I was at that moment. Those selves helped me achieve many goals and dreams.
They are not who I am now.
Are you clinging to Selves that do not represent who you really are any more?
For many, many years, part of my own 'description' was 'Money Saver Extraordinaire', and I was proud of that. My Mum was a Money Saver Extraordinaire, and I wanted to honour her memory by following in her footsteps. So in adopting that title, I was determined that I would be the best I could be at saving money. I earned a bit of pocket money writing for an online newsletter by doing so. I contributed generously of my own time to a money saving forum for nearly a decade because that was 'Who I Was'. My very self, was wrapped up in being a Money Saver Extraordinaire.
Now that my family are grown, and I've spent the better part of 50 years of my life, living lean, making do, and being frugal, I am reaping the rewards. I thank my stars for the lessons I have learned, the friends I have made, the people that have come into my life either as Mentors or to be Mentored because of that Self. I've been so very fortunate.
BUT Money Saver Extraordinaire, is not who I am now.
Now, thanks to having been Money Saver Extraordinaire for so long, which allowed me to see some of the world, for one thing, I am French Lifestyle Admirer and Imitator.
This Self has lead to commencing a year long programme of upgrading and renovating our home. We are now in 'this is our forever decor' mode. Thankfully my husband is a French Lifestyle Admirer too, so on this, we are in agreement.
We have started by renovating this vintage kitchen hutch, which I'd had for 25 years. Someone had broken a panel of the leadlight about ten years ago, and I've been dithering for years on whether to fix the leadlight panel ($800), or just paint it white in keeping with my French Country ideas and replace the glass with something simpler. Well, I guess you can see which way we went...
This, along with my recent kitchen appliance win, has started us on the road to renovating for our 'forever home', and it's a good feeling.
You don't have to renovate to start on the road to your forever home. Maybe it just means discarding the items in your home that you've been keeping for all of those Fantasy Selves. All of those 'one day' projects, all of those 'I'd better keep this just in case' projects. All of the paraphernalia that came with being a person other than who you are today and for the foreseeable future.
Sit down today, and ask yourself who you really are. If you are one of my blogging friends, maybe ask yourself, as I have, whether your blog remains a true reflection of your life, or whether in blogging, you've become chained to a lifestyle that is no longer authentic.
In commencing my New Year, New You posts for 2017, becoming an authentic Blogger and Writer, was part of my mission.
I hope that you, dear reader, are enjoying the journey with me.
