Sunshine Blogger Award

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sunshine blogger award

Thank you very much to Matt of Matt’s Views for nominating me.  Matt is cheerful and positive whilst being open and honest about his own struggles.  He writes in a way that is refreshing and helpful.  He also writes about all sorts of other topics as well.  (I learned all I know about Bitcoin and other such things from him.)

For those of you who don’t know the purpose of the Sunshine Blogger Award, it is given to a blogger that is inspirational through their positivity and creativity in the blogging community (again, thank you so much Matt, I am so touched that you thought of me!).

SUNSHINE BLOGGER AWARD RULES:

1. Thank blogger(s) who nominated you in the blog post and link back to their blog.
2. Answer the 11 questions.
3. Nominate bloggers to receive the award
4. List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

 

Here are my questions and answers:

What is your favourite thing about blogging?

Oh, meeting people on WordPress and how lovely it is here, no trolls or anything like that.  I can write about everything and feel so safe.  I’ve made real connections including with two people that I actually plan to meet up with IRL.  It has also solved my problem of what to do whilst waiting for the water to boil or a bath to run (since I don’t read news media or do fb)- now I read blogs, and they are so much better!

Why did you start blogging?

It was such a relief from trying to write books.  Trying to get my amorphous mass of diary style notebook entries into a coherent narrative was such hard work, and my previously fresh live writing would flatten and die.  Blogging is the opposite of that.  I love, love love it!  My early blogs (2014) read as if I’m not telling you everything, because at the same time I’m writing a book.  Which is either published on the blog or linked from it to Amazon where it is for sale really cheap (see my About page for details re how to read my books on the blog/get on Amazon).  So I did tell you everything eventually but nowadays I just tell you everything in the blog and don’t keep anything ‘back’ to write anywhere else.  I mean, I have recently written an article to submit to New Philosopher, about stuff, consumerism and objects, but most of the material and ideas were presented on the blog first.  In the future I intend to submit travel articles, competition entries, etc, but the blog will always have the best of me, the absolute truth, not clipped or caged.

What is your favourite way to relax? 

Eating snacks, going for a walk, doing some yoga stretches, time alone, writing.

What inspires / motivates you?

Writing, ideas, writing, talking with my husband about ideas, writing.

If you could do anything right now, would it be to go to someone or to go somewhere and why?

I am going to cheat and say both- go to Japan to see my new friend and fellow blogger that I met on WordPress!  Because she wrote so beautifully about Japan and because we have connected as writers and as people.

What is your favourite music?

If you run into me as I’m dying at the side of the road, please, I beg you, play me this.  I fell in love with this in 1985 aged fifteen and my love has never faltered.

 

A guilty pleasure.  Actually I’m not even guilty.  She’s okay right?  And absolutely the most amazing thing to watch under the influence.  I super impressed my husband with my music/video choice that night!

 

Top 3 Favourite Bloggers? 

SMUT. and Self-Esteem

Deeply insightful, creative, sensitive.  SMUT blogs about everyday incidents and reflects upon how they affect her.  She offers strategies for dealing with anxiety based on her personal experience and recovery and provides candid stories that explain how her past has affected her and how she has learned to understand herself more.  She’s also a trainee pharmacy technician and a musician.  Smart, capable, awesome.

The Cupcake Witch

Such a good writer.  So very, very smart.  Writes about everything.  Just read.

Damn Girl.  Get Your Shit Together.

I have only just discovered this person via The Cupcake Witch.  Her brief accounts of her childhood are enough to make you weep, feel pity, want to do something for her….  But she has her shit together and not only that, here she is, helping us, which is incredibly generous of her.  What can we do in return?  Read, follow, and be awed.

She offers perfectly pitched, deadly accurate advice in a way that is warm, incisive and very funny, from looking after yourself properly when you have a cold (use balsam/balm tissues from the very start- yes, yes!) to motivating yourself to clean the house.

Damn Girl…. knows that an inspirational fridge magnet is actually going to do fuck all for you, but cleaning out the fridge will make you feel better.  (Okay maybe that’s going a bit too far; I rarely clean my fridge out, but doing the dishes and having a tidy up will definitely help.)  She helped me summon the motivation to clean the bathroom and vacuum the carpet last weekend when the house was a mess and I didn’t much feel like doing it.  (And I didn’t even know I was in need of any help, but that is her whole point.  We need her, we just didn’t realise it before.)  If I could only read one thing forever and ever, it would be her blog.  She is amazing.  I am begging you to go and see her.  (Oh and thank you so much Cupcake Witch for doing your post recommending her.)

Where are you from?

Norfolk, in England.

What is your biggest passion?

Writing. 

What are you most excited for in 2018? 

Leaving my job and going off travelling.

What is your dream job? 

A bit of writing and a bit of cleaning- deep ‘extreme cleans’ or light, helping older persons with cleaning, shopping etc, I don’t mind.

My Nominations

Andiamo Bambino

Narrow boat dwellers, travellers, minimalist adventurers.

Ann Coleman

Ann is warm, funny and honest.  She talks about everyday things that people don’t usually discuss, such as what it’s like the first time you have to take care of your parent, and how you only find out that you can do it when you do it, and what that feels like.  Ann also talks about her home cleaning habits, see the post I have linked to, which really made me laugh.  She is a self confessed clean freak but I just know she’s not judging any of us, she’s far too nice.

Bethany K

Such beautiful photographs, it is as if a real window opens up on my computer and there is a bird, a butterfly.  Bethany practices mindfulness every day and despite having many personal challenges she is a positive inspiration every day.  And I think she’s a vegan, so she’s really kind to all living creatures.

The Cupcake Witch

One of my Top 3 favourite bloggers.

Lisa Anniesette

I like Lisa’s blog because she writes about lots of different things.  I have linked to a very interesting piece she wrote about a book she got out of the library.  Also she is a vegan and posts nice recipes.

Paul Green at Mindfumps

So funny, so talented, and with such an engaging, kind and warm personality.

One Black Tree

Currently living in Tokyo far from home.  The post I have linked to is an absolutely beautiful description of Tokyo, as soon as I read it I said that’s it, I have to go.  She is also incredibly brave, she wrote about losing her indoor shoes with no money to buy any more, and about being left without access to all her money for three days with barely enough food and not speaking fluent Japanese, yet she stayed calm and aware, and wrote about it for us.

Sam, Living!

Always cheerful, super hardworking both work work and blogging, with a lovely attitude towards people and the world.  Currently in Sydney, Australia.

SMUT. and Self-Esteem

One of my Top 3 favourite bloggers.

Whatismaria

Very helpful in depth articles, the one I have linked to is about what to do if you feel overwhelmed.  Also posts nice vegan recipes.

 

Nominees, if you want to do this, use the questions I answered above, but I am changing the last question, from What is your dream job? to Describe your dream day.

 

Thank you very much for reading.

Update

Tags

Cats, India, Netflix, Travel, writing

This is Alfie the cat, sitting in a sunny spot on top of the shed in the garden of his new home.  We can’t take the cats travelling with us.

So, dismantling your home is stressful.  Selling a house is stressful, with  last minute things such as electrical safety tests, extra expenses, and we won’t even know it’s really happening until contracts are exchanged, which could be weeks away.  But the buyer has been round, she brought her kids, they ate Foxes Party Rings (vegan) and picked out their bedrooms, and their mum and I vowed not to pull out.

I’m working out my notice and in true me style trying to cram as much in as possible.  I’ve even got a student right up until I leave, but luckily she is awesome.  I want to enjoy it as it’s my last hurrah, but I don’t want to enjoy it too much as I intend to literally burn my career and never go back to it once I leave.  So when stuff happens that I don’t like such as stressful things I have to deal with, I feel pleased in a way because I can say, well that’s to remind me why I don’t want to do this anymore.  (I am perverse, I know.)  And there’s been matrix tests, you could call them, such as a new IT system installed so that I was locked out of my computer for a week.  Or was it just a good opportunity to take my foot off the gas and empty out my filing cabinets, which had to be done at some point?

Outside of work, an uncancelled insurance policy took £700 out of my account, we got it back but not before we’d spent several hours applying for an overdraft extension and a credit card (both declined), extending the credit union loan and getting a payday loan to survive January.  But we sorted it all out without panicking.

I got ill, me, who never gets ill, actually sick with a vomiting bug and two days off work.  Both feeling super stressed but not sure why, just the move, the process.

And of course we’ve been ‘planning our trip’.  We are actually getting out of the living room and going on an actual trip, involving flights and visas and cards and travellers cheques and slinging a load of first aid supplies and a few clothes into a small-medium sized backpack and going off to see the actual world!  Our main preoccupation has been how to avoid the super hot heat and although our plans have changed multiple times, and probably will again, we currently have a rough plan sketched out.  Firstly, go straight to India as soon as we can.

In other news:

Here are my newly healed tattoos which complete the (mainly cover up) work on my left arm.

The white rabbit is inspired by The Matrix film, which is twenty years old next year.  If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it.  If you have seen it, I recommend watching it again.  Just a peony to go on my right arm to cover the old tattoo there and I am all set!

In cultural news:

We at last finished watching Walking Dead, so are up to date with that.  I was ill and so watching it made me feel better, my husband wasn’t ill so watching it made him feel worse.  I don’t know why we do it to ourselves but we’ve invested so much time and energy in it that it seems a shame to just stop watching, even if it isn’t exactly enjoyable.

Also re watched for the umpteenth time the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, watched three episodes of the fantastic Black Mirror, and because Black Mirror was a bit scary, an episode of BoJack afterwards.  (I’ve been ill.)

Blogging, I’ve been having so much fun reading people’s blogs, just spending a couple of hours reading people’s old posts.  So much better than tv, newspapers or magazines.  Actually, a million times better than magazines.  I have been introduced to someone new to follow, and someone else I’ve just spent time reading her old posts.  I just have so much respect for the people whose blogs I read, for their honesty, bravery, authenticity, and for giving me the privilege of being shown into their worlds.

And writing.  How many times must a lesson be repeated until it is learned?  Writing makes me feel better.

 

Thank you very much for reading.

 

 

An object cannot compete with an experience

Tags

Beliefs, Ketamine, writing

I finished work and walked to my car.  For a few moments I sat in the driver’s seat with the door still open, feeling the fresh evening air, aware of the big tree nearby and the fields surrounding me.  I felt the pull of the outdoors, a longing to stay there a little longer.  But I also wanted to get away from work so I drove home, still feeling torn, wistful for the cool air, the big tree.

I decided it would be a disservice to myself and to my husband to arrive home not feeling right, so I parked outside town and went for a walk.  (Previously I had written off the idea of going for a walk after work when it is dark, except for around the town.  In the summer I sometimes go for a walk across the fields after work, and of course even in winter I can do this on my days off.)  I walked out of town along a footpath and down little lanes and roads, a circular route that we often do in the daytime but that I have never done in darkness.  I stopped to hug a tree, feeling its body against my belly and resting my cheek against its bark.  It was such a little thing, but it made such a difference, doing something different and realising I can have a proper walk after work even in wintertime.

So the next day I thought, that was so good, I’ll do that again.  Likewise, with doing a good yoga session, not eating late, and continuing writing an article, I made plans for the evening based on the previous evening.  But when the end of the working day came, I was tired and hungry, and it was raining.  I didn’t feel like going for a walk.  I went to the fish and chip shop and bought chips.  At home, I ate a whole portion of chips, followed by two vegan ‘magnums’ (from Morrisons).  Too full of food to do yoga now, so I sit down and write my article.

Yesterday it felt easy but today it feels hard.  I feel in a funk.  I’ve also got the bathroom to clean, as someone is coming round tomorrow, and duvet covers to change.  I think, should I do all that now, and come back to writing later, should I stop altogether for today.  Because writing is the most important activity, I keep writing and I do break through to a place where the work feels like its going well and I am back, enthused.  I clean the bathroom, change the duvets, then, breaking more of yesterday’s rules re don’t eat late or stay up late, I eat a plate of nuts and sultanas, have a cup of tea and stay up writing.  When I eventually feel like it I do plenty of yoga and really enjoy it and feel good afterwards.  Everything gets done, I feel good and apart from the early part of the evening, I enjoyed the whole thing.

Trust the process…  I don’t want to not enjoy my evening; enjoying the evening is more important than completing a manuscript; the two are interconnected; I want to enjoy the evening at the time of living it, not just afterwards in retrospect based on what I have achieved.

I can assist The Process by altering the order of tasks, by eating snacks (trail mix seems to be the thing to sustain me through an evening of writing, even though the little pieces of coconut are impractical and messy).

Learning to play the evening, not like a game, but maybe like a musical instrument, or like making something out of words…

Managing the dialectics of making and following through on plans versus doing what you feel like at the time.  Every day is a day to both make and rip up the plan.

Because, what is more important?  To enjoy the evening or to get things done?  Same re life.  Maybe by being a bit aware and a bit flexible, it’s possible to do both.

 

A little over a year ago I took ketamine for the first time and experienced the falling away of everything.  I knew that the carpet was red and we had a woodburner, but those things were very far away.  Lying curled up on the sofa, unable to move.  In the centre of a sensation of nothingness/awareness that at the time I conceptualised as being like one bubble within a sheet of bubble wrap.  Nothing physical was left, only feelings.  Lying curled up on the sofa with my husband, I said:  This is what love feels like.

Since then, we discovered the person I have referred to in previous posts as my ‘awareness advisor’.  From there we realised that beyond all emotions, beyond love even is awareness, and made that the goal.  Whilst raising our awareness we also explored the ideas around why we are here, what is the world, what is the real truth, and so on.  The central idea is that we are living in some kind of generated reality, some may call it a computer simulation, some may call it a dream.  Right now, I can believe that this world is a creation.

(If I were going to label myself, I could call myself a vegan, a minimalist, a hippy, an atheist, a creationist.  But it’s probably best not to, as I doubt there’s a club for me to fit into).

A creation made out of my thoughts, and/or the creation of mine and others’ thoughts.  At the height of being deep into all this theorising, I did spend some time contemplating everything being a creation of my thoughts, meaning, everything is in my head.  Everything, even all the people I know.  Now, when trying to embed a theory or wrap your mind around a strange new idea, it is useful to be completely immersed in it.  This particular belief is also really handy for dealing with difficult people, and for encouraging oneself to look inside at ones thoughts, responsibility and actions.  It can create more of a sense of personal agency, and that’s useful.  It also helped me conceptualise my reality.

But, then here’s the thing:  life is a richer experience when you regard it as real (even if you don’t believe it is).  Riding these two opposing horses is I suppose what it’s all about for me right now.

And so by being really there within an activity or when with a person, it’s possible to engage completely, to have an experience to cherish and value whilst at the same time maintaining an underlying belief that one is living in a dream of one’s own creation.  Because if that’s true, one has the agency to make each person to person and activity experience even richer.

But beliefs are objects too and it seems that as we declutter our possessions our beliefs seem to fall away too.

My husband saying that right now he does not believe in anything.  Although it felt true, he felt disconnected and unsettled for a few days.

The ketamine experience, me desperately trying to hold onto the red carpet and the woodburner.  If all we are left with is nothing, no possessions, no beliefs, what do we hold onto?

There’s an image that goes around Facebook, with a man saying to Jesus, why don’t you do something about all the wars and starvation and suffering in the world, how can you just let it go on?  Jesus says to the man, I was just about to ask you the same thing.  Those aren’t the exact words but I’m sure you get the gist.

I sometimes think if we were to be parachuted down here and saw things with fresh eyes, we’d be amazed at what we accept as normal.  What, human beings let other human beings sleep outside?  In winter?  In sub zero temperatures?  But don’t they suffer, don’t they get ill, might they even be at risk of dying of the cold?

Oh yeah, rough sleepers die all the time.  But why aren’t you all outside your local city hall, protesting until there’s not one person left without shelter and food?  Why don’t you all club together and help those people?  What, you mean people just walk right past them?  You don’t take them home with you, even when you have spare rooms?  You don’t even pay for them to stay the night in a budget hotel?  What, sometimes you just walk on by without even stopping to say hello and give them some money or buy them a meal?!  What kind of world is this that you live in?

I’m opening with this to make two points:  one, that I am most certainly very far from perfect, ethics wise.  I have two spare rooms, I do not have homeless people staying with me and sometimes I don’t even stop to give money or food.  Two, that what we accept, what we think of as normal, is all down to our conditioning:  the ideas we have been fed from early childhood and into our adult lives, from our parents, teachers, other adults, authority figures, the government, the media, advertising and so on, as well as what we actually see around us each and every day, reinforcing what we have been taught, making it seem normal, and well, it’s always been this way.

I am sure you have your own special something that is closest to your heart.  This is mine:

I don’t really like having to call myself a vegan.  I eat exactly the same foods that everyone does, I mean most people eat vegetables don’t they?  But what I don’t eat is animals.  To my mind, there shouldn’t even be a word for someone who eats plant based foods, isn’t that what everyone eats; most meat eaters don’t generally eat only meat.

For those of us who love animals, and by this I mean those of us who love ALL animals, not just the ones society labels as pets, wouldn’t it be better to have a word for people who eat animals?  But unfortunately for us it isn’t some kind of underground thing, where there’s special clubs, restaurants and hidden away shops where people can go to eat animals, it’s everywhere.  It’s in almost every shop and establishment you can think of.  It’s so everywhere, that everyone thinks it’s normal.  It’s got to be okay, right, because everyone’s doing it?  And it’s not like these animals that people are eating committed suicide, died of natural causes, or were accidentally killed (except a very tiny proportion e.g. ‘roadkill’).

They were brought into this world for one purpose only, and then they were transported to a place where, alongside loads of others, they were killed.  And it’s not just a few animals, it’s some enormous and wildly depressing number.

To return to the ‘pet animals’ versus ‘food animals’ point, I have known of people having pigs and chickens as pets and being very fond of them, seeing them as having personalities and regarding them as a member of the family.  I read about a woman who has a very small flock of sheep and each one comes when she calls their name.  Likewise I’ve known British meat eaters getting very upset about dogs being eaten in countries they went to on holiday.  I think the distinctions are arbitrary.

I’m not criticising individuals.  Like I said, there’s much to criticise in my own life, my car ownership, for example, would seem lazy and careless to some, whilst ‘society’ deems it normal.  It is our society and conditioning that I am questioning.  Plus, this is my ‘thing’, one of the central pivots that I live by and so I’m sharing what that feels like, I’m opening up to you.

🐂🐤🐺🐐🐑🐥🐹🐕🐩🐈🐱🐀🐭🐰🐓🐇🐢🐷🐵🐌🐚🐠🐝

The Minimalists

Tags

Minimalism, The Minimalists, Work

The Minimalists is a Netflix documentary.  It is what I watched last night whilst trying not to cry about the cats.

I remember reading some time ago that people as they get older tend to stop wanting to read fiction and instead turn to autobiographies.  I understand that, although it is hard as in my experience a lot of autobiographies aren’t that well written, or else the best and only really good bit in it was the bit that was read out on the radio that got me to buy it.

That said, even if there’s one good bit in a book, if the bit is really good, it’s worth it.  Chris Packham’s bit about suicide in his book Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, about all the wonders that he’s seen, which encouraged him, and then about his dogs, which stopped him.  Guy Martin’s description of the big crash, that was the bit that was read out on the radio.  But the bit I really liked was him walking home after a hard day’s work mending trucks and seeing all the houses with people sitting around a big screen tv and him saying:  You don’t get that time back at the end you know.  I love, love love that, and I say it to myself regularly.

Anyway, maybe the visual equivalent is getting into watching documentaries on Netflix rather than watching films.

My husband said that maybe everyone has to experience capitalism and materialism before they can begin to reject it, and so it is fitting that this documentary is American and the movement is being started by super successful people.  These people are smartly dressed, ex high powered career people.  They are not scruffy unwashed hippies.

Oh, and to go off topic for a moment, their teeth!  How do Americans have such incredible teeth (or why do us Brits have such bad ones?  What is the American situation with fluoride?  We have it in our water and in most toothpaste, but some people think it blocks your third eye.)  My teeth are considered good by British standards, but they are not white like kitchen paper, or white like a thick blanket of freshly fallen snow.  It is one of the few things that annoys me about the Walking Dead, although it’s not unique to that show.  Their teeth are still perfect, wouldn’t they be stained and worse, have some missing either from decay or having been knocked out in battle?  Are they all still flossing?  Have all the dentists survived?  I have to suspend my disbelief about the teeth, I complained to my husband.  What, that’s the only thing you have to suspend your disbelief about?! my husband said.

So back to the message of the Minimalists.  I agreed with everything.  It was just what I needed.  If anyone thinks what I am doing is weird, I can feel reassured.  I could even say, ‘I’m a minimalist, there’s a film about it on Netflix’.   I love Netflix.

The people in the documentary had fewer clothes, but they loved them all, and they tended to be better quality, thus showing how we should be both less and more materialistic:  really value and take care of the things we have.

Obviously this would be terrible, but I used to say that I’d like to lose everything in a house fire, so that I could just start again.  This shows what a gloom merchant I was, but my husband is saying he isn’t going to keep any of his clothes (aside from ones he’s taking travelling) and I’m seriously considering doing the same.  I was going to keep work clothes and warm clothes.  But if I’m not intending to do the kind of work that entails shapeless black trousers and modest frumpy tops (a lot of the patients I work with are sex offenders), and my warm clothes are all either poor quality/worn out, isn’t this my golden opportunity to fulfil my long held dream and get rid of everything and start again, with a few well chosen quality items from Cotswold Outdoor?  Alongside my more recent dream of getting rid of everything and just being left with a backpack?  (Plus duvets, pillows, blankets and a few essential crockery items left in someone’s loft or garage for our return.)

It’s not just stuff, it’s ideas I’m realising might be superfluous distractions and worth shedding:  my step grandma picks up litter everywhere she goes, with no gloves, then eats cake at the cafe.  No wet wipes, no alcohol gel.  I’ve never heard of her being sick.  Spending time with her also made me wonder whether all this concern about nutrition is really worth it.  She eats a cereal bar for breakfast, then goes out to the cafe for coffee and cake, followed by a good walk.  As far as I can tell she doesn’t eat lunch, I know she never cooks at all anyway.  She grazes on custard creams and chocolate chip cookies and in the evening she has white sliced bread with organic lettuce and tomatoes.

I’ve been wrapping my mind around letting go of my career, and what that means, prompted by interactions with three separate people on the subject.  At work, one of the admin staff told me to ask the admin people for help.  We’re not here to have a career, she said, so we just want to be busy, it helps the day go quicker.  She is a smart, interesting person, with whom I had a good chat about Christmas and minimalism.  We’re not here for a career, rang in my ears.  For so long, I have been all about the career, but what if I could just become the kind of person who wasn’t bothered about all that?

Then there was this blog  about changing attitudes to work and different ways of working, and our happy little exchange in the comments section.  Lastly, me and my husband working out that if we lowered our overheads by living on a boat and sharing a car, maybe we’d only need to work an average of 2-3 days per week each.  We bounced around ideas, cleaning houses for letting agents, especially really filthy houses.  Neither of us is bothered about cleaning up shit.

Just think, he said, if you weren’t bothered about it being a career, then you’d be free to just do anything that came along.  It made me think that the whole career thing is a trap, you think you’re getting something special and even feel superior sometimes, I am very sorry to say, but really, by letting go of all that, I’m free to make my life, rather than my career, the centre of my life.  And that is what The Minimalists are trying to teach us.

You can’t take a cat in a backpack around India

Tags

Cats, family, Grief, Losing a pet, Pets

I suppose it was a good example of cosmic ordering, wish-fulfillment or just simple serendipity.

Just before Christmas I was ordering at the bar of my local pub.  It was around ten years ago.  I was with my old boyfriend.  My son, who is allergic to cats, had moved out.  The landlord said to me, so, what are you hoping to get for Christmas?  All I want for Christmas is two baby cats, I said, surprising myself, I didn’t actually think anyone was going to give me kittens for Christmas.  Quick as a flash, the landlord said, Peter over there’s looking for a home for two cats.  Peter’s son and daughter in law had moved back home, the daughter in law had two cats, Peter had dogs who chased cats, so the cats were currently living outside.

The next day I went to their house.  Halfway down the road a beautiful grey cat appeared.  As we came closer to each other, he gave a big meow and literally leapt into my arms.

But you can’t take a cat around India in a backpack, so this weekend I took them to their new home, my grandfather’s second wife, my step-grandma, I suppose she would be called.  She lives alone in a dear little house surrounded by gardens.  Her own cat died a few months ago.

I dealt with things in my usual way:  I filled a whole side of A4 with my ‘cat plan’, got super stressed out about finding exactly the right boxes (to make them nests that they could hide away in, with my blanket and pillow inside) and thinking about solving all the possible eventualities that could occur in the year we are away.  But all I really needed to do on Saturday was take them and their food over.  I stayed all the afternoon, stayed the night and stayed the whole of the following (yesterday) morning, long enough to see that they had both ventured out of their respective hiding places.  They didn’t use my boxes, the house was full of corners and hiding places.

Arriving home, no calling ‘puss puss’, no cat waiting for me by the car, seeing shapes and shadows everywhere that looked like cats.

When my dog was at the vets and I thought he was about to die- he did- I washed all the walls down where his waggy tail had splashed mud everywhere.  Not to forget, but thinking, if this is going to be my life, dog free, then I might as well bring it into existence now.  (Actually I cracked and got another dog two weeks’ later).  Now I have this strange urge to wash blankets and vacuum and have everything fluff free.

The last night we left the bedroom door open so the cats could sleep on the bed.  We don’t often do that because even though it always seems like it will be cute, they always end up disturbing us by washing loudly, sleeping on my pillow and on my hair and scratching my face until I lift up the blanket so that they can get into bed.  They did all of those things, and those behaviours were still annoying, even though it was our last night with them.  When people or animals die, people often beat themselves up, saying, if only I’d known it was going to be our last day, maybe I’d have appreciated them more, maybe I wouldn’t have got irritated…  But knowing didn’t seem to make that much difference.

Lying on the floor of the sitting room post yoga with my blanket over me, one of the cats kneading me and then settling down upon me, I concentrated hard on this being the last time, but I couldn’t enjoy it any more than I normally do.  I’ve had a rich experience with the cats, I’ve loved them and cuddled them and enjoyed being with them, so much so that I couldn’t amplify that experience any more just because it was the last evening.  Which I suppose is a good thing, it means there’s no regrets.  But it does bring me face to face with the bare facts:  Much more than decluttering old photographs, selling the house or giving away the furniture, more even than leaving friends and family for a year.  Dismantling the cats’ home and breaking up our little family:  This is what I am prepared to do to live the life I want.

I cooked dinner quietly, declining offers of help, and with no music or videos or blogs for distraction.  Sorting out the laundry, realising I didn’t need to worry about the cats sitting in it.  Same with leaving jumpers on the sofa or carrier bags lying about.  So sad.  Feeling kind of anxious, bent out of shape.  I had already been for a walk, already had a burst of creative energy and written loads of notes.  It was evening and cold and dark outside.  So I did what usually works in such circumstances and did some yoga whilst listening to music on YouTube.  It didn’t work that well, maybe the music was too sad.

I broke the five second rule last night (don’t get emotional about anything for longer than..) but it’s got to be okay to feel sad sometimes hasn’t it?

Voluntary simplicity

Tags

Belonging, Minimalism, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

It turns out that what I am doing is ‘a thing’.  As in, with magazine articles, sites and blogs and forums dedicated to it.  I know I shouldn’t be surprised at this, but as someone who grew up without the internet I continually have to remind myself that IT HAS EVERYTHING.  That whatever I can imagine, is there, and that there is a ‘club’ for everyone.  Well almost everyone, but more on that later.

I was chatting to my stepson when he came up after Christmas about what it is like for young people with the internet having your mates post embarrassing pictures of you etc, where we got away with it with only each other’s memories which were hazy at best, but also about how you don’t ever have to be embarrassed about not knowing things, because you can just discreetly look them up.

I have huge holes in my knowledge partly from studying only a health course at university and so only knowing about limited field, and also from being lazy- I could have educated myself by reading huge books on history and philosophy, as my husband has, but I haven’t.  Plus I don’t watch and wasn’t brought up with much television, so my popular knowledge is patchy, compounded now by not reading magazines or newspapers.  Which is probably why I only came across the term ‘voluntary simplicity’ last week.

I ‘fit into’ this category in terms of the following:  in September I reduced my hours from working five days a week to four days a week, valuing time over money.  I have also been seriously decluttering:  I have given loads of stuff to charity and have arranged to give away the furniture when we go.  We will be keeping only a double futon and mattress, a blanket box/seat, two small wooden boxes, some storage baskets, a pouffe, a lamp, essential kitchen items, warm clothes and work clothes, a bit of camping stuff, a few tools and a small amount of basic crockery/kitchen stuff, all for our small space minimal life on our return; plus essential paperwork, and some sentimental items- I have mine down to one A4 box file of loved clippings, poems, photocopied pages from favourite books and two little Chinese cat ornaments.  Not bad for a person who has been here for 47 years.  Other than that, it will just be a backpack each with our things for travelling.

My son’s old schoolbooks, plaster handprints, special craft projects, and childhood drawings, which are all carefully mounted in polypockets in lever arch files, I will give to him to reminisce with/have a laugh with his girlfriend over, then they can be stored in my mum’s loft if he doesn’t have room for them.

My son is completely on board with my plans, whereas the older generations are finding it a little more challenging.  So before everyone arrived on Christmas Day my husband and I said, best not to mention too much about us selling the house etc.  My son said yes, he understood- he has been on the receiving end of much unsolicited advice from the older generation about getting normal job.  My husband and I completely support him doing his own thing and being an artist, so we laughingly said, just remember, we can always bring up how you haven’t got a job yet.  My son said, yeah, and I’ll say, hey what about mum and John, giving away all their possessions to live out of a back pack!  We all laughed.  I know it’s not nice to criticise others but it’s a good way to bond, and we’ve all struggled with the forceful opinions of the older generation as we’ve tried to go our own way.  I have explicitly told him that he is free to do whatever he wants, and he knows that he is.

Back to clubs (and categories and tribes).  It’s great that everything is a thing and that there is a group for everything but the trouble with me is that I don’t just do one thing.  I mean, I am into lots of different things but of the different things I might only be into one aspect.  It’s like if it was a Venn diagram, I’d be out there at the edges, part of loads of things but not intersecting with anything else, always just at the edges of a scene.

I might declutter and live somewhere small, but I drive a car and have zero interest in growing my own vegetables.  And I probably think pretty much like an original hippy, but I don’t look like one.  I like to do a bit of yoga and drink smoothies and eat healthily, except for when I don’t, so I can’t really say I’m part of the kale smoothie yoga club either.  And sometimes I like to be irresponsible and unhealthy.  But I only do it sometimes, my life is not infused with constant drama and hangovers, so I’m not really part of that scene either.

My life has always been like that.  Maybe travelling will be good for that, because I really won’t belong, so my outside will match my inside and be completely congruous- as a traveller I won’t belong anywhere.  Or maybe as a traveller I will actually belong anywhere and everywhere!

With metta