No, it’s not like that…come on now. Nice girls might write about being naked, but they certainly don’t write about “dumping” in the sense that guys might immediately consider the word. I mean it in the “less is more" sense.
Growing up in historic Concord, MA, we were deprived of ready access to all the cool things; like fast food restaurants, movie theaters and malls. What we did have in ample supply, however, were enough references to the 1700’s that a teenager could care less about. One that did stick with me though was about my neighbor of long ago, Henry David Thoreau. When he lived on Walden Pond, he lived incredibly simply. So simply, in fact, that he chose not to get a rug for his little cabin. To do so would mean he’d need to get a rug beater. If he got that, he’d need a rug hook to hang it on when he beat it, and so on.
Thoreau believed that acquisitions didn’t make him happier. His experiences did. I’m sort of somewhere in between on this. I like nice things, but I certainly don’t believe they lead to happiness.
I’ve been focused a lot on what I can add to my life to make it richer. After trying for ages to fit exercise into my life, I stopped making excuses and figured it out. I’m now in a routine and hitting my gym for a solid hour 3-4 times a week. And I’m loving it. I make time for my kids first, and then fit in other things that I want to do around that. Attempting to have a social life, enjoying whatever hobby strikes me that week…I’ve got a lot of non-work stuff filling my limited free time.
One problem though…nothing has come off my plate. Ironic, given I wrote about saying “no” the other night. I like to be busy, I like to say yes. That’s not a good thing though. I need to prioritize and realize something has got to give, before that thing that gives is my sanity.
So as long as I'm revisiting Concord memories tonight, I'll head back to one of my favorite places to go when I was a little kid and take a note: the dump. Sounds gross, right? It probably was, but when I was a really little kid, before we had trash collection, we had to haul our trash to the dump. This was in the days long before recycling and sorting everything out. My brother and I used to love to go with my dad on Saturday mornings so we could look at "treasures." The things that other people had discarded, like unwanted dishwashers, or big toys that wouldn't fit in a garbage bag. For some reason, we found this rather magical.
And now, I'm in need of going to the metaphorical dump, and getting rid of some of the things I now longer need on my plate. So this week, I'm going to carve out time to figure out now that I've added some things that are making me feel good, what I can get rid of. There has to be something to earn me back an hour or two, right? I'm applying the same logic I did to my working out. It's something I felt was really important, so I figured out a way to make it happen. So if I can find just one thing that exists in my calendar regularly that doesn't need really to, I'm dumping the excess.
Not sure what it is just, but can't wait to figure it out. I feel more productive already.
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