Tag: time

Hello Darkness

No matter how I try I just can’t seem to drum up much enthusiasm for Halloween this year. I don’t have the mental energy to come up with the wonderful ideas to salvage this one. Or so it seems today, with only 3 days left to pull a rabbit out of my hat. Normally I would be busily working on costumes, making zombie sugar cookies, decorating with our Halloween stuff, and ordering some scary movies from the library or planning a one-shot horror run for the family. I’m tired. I’m drained right now. I know my sweet husband feels the same.

We started this year with the horrifying wildfires in Australia and California. Gods, those seemed like the worst thing, didn’t they? I have loved ones in Australia and CA and I was so worried about them and about all the animals and other people caught in such shockingly bad situations. Obviously the year had to get better from there but it so Did Not. The fires in Australia were brought under control eventually, and even CA had something of a respite but the world situation just got worse. CA is on fire again, has been for what feels like ages and that is almost the least of my worries, not really, it’s still a big worry. Most of my worry time is used for the newest rise in Covid-19 cases and the political unrest in the US. Watching a sitting president fan the flames of hate and violence is not something I ever thought I’d see. My son came of age watching it, and hearing how the climate is collapsing, and now a global pandemic… and people wonder at the nihilistic sense of humor Gen-Z has. My son literally turned 18 in quarantine. So did a lot of kids.

This year horror is all too real and it’s everywhere. I feel like I can’t turn on my computer without finding out yet another unarmed POC has been blatantly murdered by police. The protests over police violence continue but get less and less coverage even as the police use tear gas on peaceful, unarmed pregnant women, small children, and everyone else who dares ask that POC be treated as human beings. I can’t open my computer without seeing yet another highest cases per day report as thousands die and other thousands flock to the President’s super spreader events and refuse to wear masks and scream their approval of the continued denial of science. And there is so much more. So much hate and violence, so much despotism and inhumanity. Even my dreams are filled with stress.

So, I don’t even know why I want to salvage Halloween. Horror is the new normal. 2020 is such a shitshow. And yet, whatever distractions we can manage should be managed. My son, a freshly minted adult, needs me to find the good, to focus on the brightest hopes I can, to provide whatever structure I can in this, the upside-down I never thought we’d live in. Things are crazy enough for him without mom abandoning the rhythms of the seasons and all the celebrations that mark the passage of time. So I keep fighting to stay as positive as I can. I cook our meals, plan and run RPGs, provide the little luxuries of favorite foods when I can, and talk about the future as if everything will be alright because he, and my girls, need to believe the future is worth showing up for.

So I guess I have a Halloween feast to plan, some zombie cookies to bake, and I’ll need some pumpkins to carve into Jack O’Lanterns too. The bridge to the future will lit by candles and guarded by leering pumpkins.

More & Less

I want to change my life. This isn’t about being fed up with staying home, disinfecting my groceries, never seeing people in person unless I live with them, etc. Hopefully things will get better in those ways if we can all just not make things worse for a while and amazing scientists can create a super good vaccine. I mean I want to change my day to day life, the way I live, the way I spend my time. I also would love to save money, because we have dreams, we want to travel and see the world someday… when people can do that sort of thing again.

See, I don’t think it’s possible to calculate how much time I’ve wasted watching T.V., playing solo video games, screwing around on the computer, and so forth. It’s an unknown quantity, but it’s BIG. Binge watching is my default. If one show is good 8 in a row is better. I’m not saying these activities are utterly without value, not at all, just… when they become too big for their britches, well, what do you end up with? What are you left with in the end? Nothing. And it’s worse than that because, if these activities take over, you’ve LOST something that can never be replaced: Time. Our lives are made of time but we can never make any more of it. I heard this somewhere recently but it’s escaping me now: “We can’t make time, we can only take time.” It is the most finite of resources and we sell it away so we can eat and be warm and safe and, crazily, we “kill” it, whiling away hours on top of hours in mindless or useless pursuits. And then we wonder, sadly, regretfully, why we don’t have time for important things.

Question 1 for myself: What do I want more of in my life?

  • Experiences
  • music
  • baking & cooking
  • time with my hubby to relax, unwind, and connect
  • time with the kids w/ real interaction and meaning
  • sharing of life skills with the kids
  • reading
  • art
  • writing
  • a neat, restful, peaceful home
  • better health
  • time in nature
  • laughter
  • time with friends
  • Connection/Community
  • fun!
  • Enthusiasm!
  • LIFE!!!!

Question 2 for myself: What do I need to cut out to get more of what I want in life?

  1. T.V. (or excessive TV, since a little bit is ok?)
  2. Mindlessly surfing the web, playing online games etc.
  3. video games, maybe can keep a litte? but seriously, fun as they are: what do I have when I’m done?
  4. Less time in my room alone. (Basically accomplished by dropping 1-3)
  5. We can and should drop at least 2 of the 4 streaming services we currently have. (how did this even happen? I mean, all together they cost less than cable would but STILL.)
  6. Clutter/excess stuff
  7. junk food
  8. Take out food/eating out mindlessly.
  9. most alcohol (ie “it’s Tuesday” is not a real reason to open a bottle of wine)
  10. Shopping.

Shopping. Shopping is huge. It’s an activity that is just begging to be abused especially in our consumer culture. I have used shopping as a social activity when I didn’t actually need to buy anything, as a pick-me-up when I ‘m blue, (OOO, look, Bargains!) as a sport, (again, bargains, I am Awesome at it!) as a way to kill time while waiting for someone, something, some event, etc., because I deserve __________, a treat, etc. and from a feeling like I might be missing out if I don’t go. I need to appreciate all that we have and stop adding to what is already too much.

Our worst budget-offense seems to have been take out meals. I don’t know how it got that way aside from me getting burnt out because I am the only one who really knows how to cook and I get wildly sick of doing it sometimes. That and migraines, poor sleep, stress, and how damn easy it was in the days before the sickness came to just order food and go and get it. We justified it way more often than we should have. Between that and my shopping “for bargains” because I know that was more money than I would probably be willing to accept, we must have been spending a ton. Somehow, our savings is actually trending in an upwards direction despite not having the rental income from our little apartment. We are both working from home but our income has dropped by a significant amount with the apartment empty, yet somehow, because we have barely had any take out and I haven’t been shopping as a sport, our savings has grown. And that with an increase in grocery spending.

Note: These revelations are brought to you by; The Year of Less; by Cait Flanders, and time spent in my 30 yards from the house getaway spot: The Airy-Fairy Peace, Love and Granola Hippie Fort & Art Studio. I’ve seen some harsh reviews of Cait’s book and I seriously just don’t get it. My guess is that people bought it wanting/expecting a how-to spend less kind of book, but it is clearly a memoir. The author is super clear that the book is basically all the stuff she went through while on her spend less journey that she didn’t include in her blog. So, it isn’t some step-by-step how-to book, though she does include her shopping ban rules, revised rules and some tips to get people started on their own journeys. What I find in her book is inspiration. Her life is/was very different from mine. She was single, in her 20s, and had a drinking problem and a spending problem that were both dragging her down. She was starting and developing a career and just in a very different place from me. I am a grown woman, well into adulthood, I am married with 3 adult and near adult kids, a house, etc. We don’t have the kind of debt she did. Getting drunk and forgetting things isn’t a thing. (my memory issues are more age or stress than anything else) But this young woman’s memoirs have much of value for me. She figured out some really important things well before I did and I’m so happy she decided to share her story.

So, thanks Cait! I am definitely going to keep working at this.