When working towards simplifying life, it’s easy to forget to take care of certain things. Relationships, for one. And the quality of your relationships directly affects your well-being.
Remember to be honest with those closest to you, and honest with yourself. What are you trying to achieve? And why? Knowing your reasoning, and being able to communicate it, will go a long way towards easing your transition into a scaled-down lifestyle.
I think some of the things that make this world so amazing are the people who go out and live life like no other. Take for instance Leon McCarron. Contributing writer to Adventure Magazine, author of such books as The Land Beyond and The Road Headed West, he set out after University on a bike ride halfway around the world. Then decided to keep traveling.
According to McCarron:
“There was a time when explorers traveled to mark the blank spots on the map—but now, in the digital age with fast, inexpensive transportation to once-hidden corners of our world, there’s far less call for flag-planting.
Instead, I see the modern frontier of adventure as storytelling; using immersive, adventurous travel to uncover new ideas. Adventure also applies on a smaller scale, one that’s accessible for all. It can be a daily practice in which we choose to do something different, something that creates a new experience—and that can happen as easily in London as it can in Ladakh. Adventure is everywhere, if we know where to look.”
The challenge is to create those new experiences. Look for the miraculous in your everyday life.
After three years, I’ve changed my tagline. No longer am I trying to keep it together. Now it’s all about exploration. I’ll be changing the look and feel of the blog as well, though I’m still committed to daily postings.
That’s been a challenge, but one that’s kept me focused these past couple of months. I’m planning on some positive changes to complement some other of the other projects that I am working on. Hopefully I’ll have more to say on that before the end of the year.
And that’s coming up soon!
I’ve been on something of a spending moratorium. (I’m feeling broke, though I don’t like using that word. It implies something is wrong with me, rather than my financial footing. So when I’m telling myself that I need more work; that I’m broke – I’ll usually stop and say, “I feel like I don’t have enough money.”)
Anyway, it seems that all the money I’m making goes towards bills, which has been the case for the past couple of months. However, there are some purchases I’ve made that have been well worth the investment.
First, my Sony noise-canceling headphones. I bought them just over a year ago now. They have been used while traveling, in meditation, for walks and occasionally exercise, and when I’m working at home. They are a marvelous invention, and for years I said I didn’t need them. Now I’m so glad I have a pair.
A Patagonia Better Sweater Fleece Vest. I think I got this early in the year, maybe around February. It was just starting to get warmer, and in Florida, we don’t think about cooler weather all that much. But again, I’m so glad I have it. I wore it for much of my time Alaska this summer, and it just hit the sixties here last night. Besides, I’ll be up in Pennsylvania later this month as well.
And finally, another purchase I’m loving this year, my Parker ’51 Fountain pen. Now, I bought this at an antique store for $5, so it wasn’t really a splurge. But I cleaned it up, and it works perfectly. My morning journal entries are written with a Lamy AL-Star fountain pen, but everything else I use my Parker for. I carry it with me everywhere. Currently, I’m filling it with a Pilot Iroshizuku teal ink.
And over the past twelve months, these have been my most used items. I was gifted a pocketknife that I carry with me everywhere. So that gets used a lot as well. But these items bring me a lot of joy. Every time I look at them or use them, I’m so glad that I have them.
That is what purchases should be. Something that will bring you continued joy over the course of their lives. Otherwise, it could just become clutter. (Don’t worry, I have that too…)
At least, according to Mark Twain. Interestingly enough, the blush likely developed over many centuries; an evolutionary feature with the purpose of easing us out of uncomfortable situations. A visual representation of fight or flight.
Most of the time we turn away from those uncomfortable moments. But it is when we lean in, as Pema Chödrön says, that the truly miraculous can happen.
Yes, I think that has stuck. I like it. It’s kind of like my weekly check-in, but with less introspection. Just things that have caught my attention.
What I’m reading: Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena by Linda S. Godfrey. I wanted to get one more seasonal read in before November. Well, what to say. Do you believe in spirit creatures, possessions, skin walkers, UFOs, or otherworldly portals? Or not? Either way, an interesting book broken down in case studies.
Additionally, if you check out the @WerewolfReports bot on Twitter, you can keep updated on odd werewolf sightings… If you believe in that kind of thing.
What I’m listening to: Lore, from Aaron Mahnke. Specifically the Trick or Treat episodes from 2016 and 2017. But, listen to whatever you feel like. Or, watch the video series on Amazon Prime Video!
What I’m spending time with: Switching over my recording from Audacity to GarageBand. I host a radio show twice a week, which is prerecorded and aired on 107.1 WZEA. Until recently I had used Audacity. However, since updating the MacBook, my microphones don’t work for recording. There’s a cumbersome workaround, but I’d rather have a simple time making my episodes. So I’ve been looking at the GarageBand recording platform. It seems that there used to be a Podcast recording option, since removed, but it works fairly well. I’ll give it a try, and either continue on it, or switch back when the new update for Audacity comes out.
Other things of interest this week:
Halloween. The candy is out, and the houses are decorated with pumpkins, cobwebs, and other scary paraphernalia.
I do love this time of year. It’s October, and that’s a great time of year for me. Busy. But great.
As you unwrap the candies and snack away, waiting for trick-or-treaters, or watch scary movies to celebrate, I hope you remember what it was like when you were young. When monsters were real, and magic lurked behind everything you didn’t understand.
I think there’s joy in living life that way, which is why we get to be envious of youth.
Happy Halloween.
I have trouble keeping with the habit of gratitude. Actually, building habits in general is challenging for me. I believe for most people. Too easy to be distracted, or too many things of interest.
I’ve been good with my yoga practice, and with writing on the blog. Not so good with morning journaling. This year was exceptionally sporadic in the morning journaling.
Gratitude is another one. I’ll go for a few weeks, then fall off. But every time I start, there are consistent elements that pop up. And maybe it’s because I write gratitude statements first thing in the morning, but that first list always has one thing: coffee.
So as I drink my coffee, know that I am extremely grateful to the Dominicans who picked these beans; to the roasters (one day I will roast my own); and to the companies that made the Ninja coffeepot, the mug, and the creamer. I couldn’t see myself starting the day without them.
As I progress in my blogging, I start to think I’ve used titles before. Like Letting Go. I search. I don’t find it. Maybe the search bar doesn’t work like I mean it to. Or I actually haven’t titled one Letting Go. I don’t know for sure.
Either way, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Letting go. Of the past. Of stuff. Of the personal baggage that I hang on to. It’s little things.
This item went to the trash tonight:
I had purchased it from a street vendor in Jamaica – exactly which area I don’t recall. I was in Jamaica for a mission trip with my significant other. She and I are no longer together. I also have no relationship to speak of with any of the church members that went on the trip.
I think I paid $10. I could have gotten it for cheaper. But the words of a very persuasive priest came back to me.
“While talking with a parishioner,” he said in his homily, “she was bragging about how she had talked the seller down on some item she purchased on vacation.” [I believe it was in Mexico, but it could have been anywhere].
He proceeded to ask her, “Are you saying that you’re proud of taking away the money the this person needs to care for the family, put food on the table, and keep a roof over their heads?” This particular priest is an odd, joy-filled individual.
He then said, “I guess I shouldn’t go on vacation there. I’d be haggling the price up.”
So in looking at this strange coconut bird feeder, an authentic carved item from Jamaica, I couldn’t bring myself to haggle the price down.
But it no longer serves me. I took this picture of it to have the memory, but item itself has been let go.
I can remember my first computer. A two megabyte tower, DOS-based operating system. It took actual floppy disks, and I played some text-based game on it. At the time I wasn’t much of a writer, so I don’t know that the thought even occurred to me to write on it.
That computer is long since gone. Since then, I’ve used several desktop PCs, switching to MacBooks in college. I still have my original MacBook, now only usable when plugged into the wall. The next MacBook was a Pro-series, 15in. monster, and didn’t work as well as it first had when I switched it in for a 13in. last year.
Then my iCloud filled up, and I spent about two hours yesterday moving documents, videos, and miscellany to a portable hard drive.
You see, we accumulate things in our digital life too. Maybe more-so than we acquire actual things. And as they exist in 1s and 0s, we’re much less likely to do anything about them. But each additional file is one more thing that we have to worry about, say when we’re looking for something specific.
How many flash drives, CD-ROMs, and hard drives to you have to store your additional files?
Sometimes they are very important. I’ve got friends working in digital media who need a TB hard drive for each day of filming. But we have to be honest with ourselves. What do we really need?
Michael's Musings 