Sometimes I spend a lot of time thinking about the things I write. I do research, ask other people for input, and just live with ideas to see how they evolve. Other times, however, something strikes me and I just want to jump on it. One watt thoughts are those observations that happen in the moment and are simply fun to think about. Enjoy!
Old Dog Stuff
My sweet old dog paces a lot at night. She sleeps most of the day so perhaps she has her days and nights mixed up. Whatever the reason, it’s a pretty harmless practice but it creates noise. Just a little bit. A clicking noise from her nails tapping the tile as she traces her loops around the living room, kitchen, and hall.
It makes me crazy. Then, I feel guilty because it makes me crazy. She can’t help it, of course, she’s just old. But that clicking sound just gets on my last nerve. I want to be patient and stoic. I’m not. I just want to make it stop.
Also, she’s having accidents from time to time. You never know when you’ll come home to a room full of turds that might have been walked through or a throw rug that’s soaked with urine. It’s not really that hard to clean up, but just the thought that I might walk into that is stressful.
She was a rescue; someone let her go near my husband’s office. When he saw her roaming around day after day he decided to bring her home. Our attempts to adopt her out proved futile. Since she’s a pit bull mix there was no taking her to our local animal control shelter; that would have been a death sentence. As hard as it was to take her in, we knew we had to. She was awesome and tough. She deserved a chance.
That was eleven years ago and it was difficult. She was not housebroken which meant we cleaned up many accidents and endured a lot of frustration. We already had an aging Dalmatian at home who was getting cranky. After a few months, however, everything got better. She learned to wait at the door to go potty, she got along beautifully with her older “sister,” and she proved herself to be a badass watchdog. We all became one big happy family.
Now here we are. She still loves sniffing the wind in the back yard and napping in the sun. Chewing on Kongs and occasionally chasing her tail or the cat. Her ability to scare the bejesus out of anyone with her bark is still intact. So I need to take a deep breath and recognize the commitment that family requires. She deserves nothing less than to be totally comfortable and happy.
I’ll just stock up on Nature’s Miracle and detergent. And keep a supply of rags handy. It’s not a big deal. Besides, she would do it for me if she could.
Can Reducing Wardrobe Clutter Really Improve Your Life?
I’ve found and have been enjoying a new blog called bemorewithless.com. Obviously it’s about simplifying but there’s considerably more to it than just throwing things out or donating the clothes and other items you no longer use.
Courtney (the creator and writer) claims that simplifying her wardrobe made getting ready in the mornings much easier. Fewer items in the closet means fewer decisions and therefore less decision fatigue. That made me wonder: why would that be true? Would it work for me? Could that idea, removing extra stuff to reduce the stress of choosing, work in other areas besides getting dressed?
I especially wonder about how it might apply to eating more healthfully. If a streamlined wardrobe makes mornings better, could a decluttered fridge work the same magic? It may seem obvious to some, but I’ve never really tried stripping the refrigerator of extras. Maybe because I don’t want to waste food. But still, how many different salad dressings do we really need?
When I look into my overpacked closet, I feel like I have work to do. There’s the shirt with the missing top button, the coat that needs airing out, the multitude of items that don’t fit or look good anymore. When they’re hanging there looking back at me, it’s as if they’re saying, “When are you going to get around to us?” If I removed all those extra garments that feeling should go away with them.
No More Food Fighting
Similarly if the fridge has only fresh and palatable food in it, there’s no possibility I’ll feel daunted by the knowledge that I need to set aside an hour or so to clean it out. If there is never too much stuff in it, I can easily wipe down the shelves whenever they need it. I won’t have to clear a weekend to take care of it.
And binge-inducing foods will be purged. Such things just add another layer of despair to opening that door. It’s bad enough that I might have to clean something or realize I never cooked those green beans, but add the siren song of that cherry cheesecake at the end of a long day and my healthful eating plans are out the window.
So starting today, August 22, I’m thinning my closet, my fridge, and the pantry shelves. It’s time to freshen up and clean everything out. Perhaps for the last time.
Recipe for Simpler Evenings
Nothing feels better, to me, than getting to bed early enough to sleep at least seven hours. Since I have to get up by five AM on weekdays, that means a bedtime of ten PM or earlier.
On the flip side, nothing feels worse than knowing I have so much to do that I’ll never make that bedtime. Maybe the laundry is waiting for me. Or my lunch for the next day is not planned or packed. Sometimes I’ve brought work home and haven’t touched it until way too late. I have six pets. I have to clean their plates and bowls and do their food prep the night before. If I don’t, I’ll never make it out the door in the morning.
Relief for Right Now
So what can I do right now to make things better right away? Actually two obvious things come to mind: no more laundry on weeknights and no more bringing work home.
I usually only bring work home because I’ve been disorganized during the day. And who am I kidding? Weeknight laundry binges are usually just a fantasy. If I get it done on Wednesday and Thursday, I’ll have the whole weekend to myself. But something else always comes up anyway so I might as well wash the clothes when I don’t have to rush.
So for now, that’s the plan. Bye bye, weeknight chore hoarding; hello, simplicity. I feel better already.
Wearing Only What Feels Good
Since I teach school, I sometimes shop in the late summer for new clothes. Like the kids, I enjoy having something new to wear for a new year. Unlike them, however, I don’t really need any clothes. With a few exceptions for pounds lost or gained, I haven’t grown out of anything. I shop more out of habit than need. And that’s really not what I want to do.
And the reason I don’t want to do that is because I have plenty of items I enjoy wearing. To keep buying more is to spend money thoughtlessly. If I expect my money to work for me and serve me in my old (and not so old) age, I need to train myself to pay attention to it now.
Too Many Clothes = Too Many Chores
Besides, who would want that many? You’d need three or four closets and dressers. You’d never be able to find anything. And by the time you got back around to wearing something it would be either wrinkled from being left in a drawer too long or stale from the closet. Too much maintenance for me.
My plan for this year is to replace staple items (like black flats and comfortable but sturdy under garments) and then commit to dressing only in those clothes I really like. I tend to spread out the wearing of my favorite things so people don’t see me in the same clothes too often. But why? The expectation that every day has a different outfit is childish. No one has that many clothes.
So I promise myself to care more about my money by caring more about the clothes I have. That means donating, ruthlessly, those items that no longer fit (or never did) or that I no longer like (or never did). And maintaining the ones I do like. I’ve done a lot of that lately. My clothes already hang straighter and they don’t touch anymore. It’s like they’re breathing so much easier.
And so am I.
The Eight Pillars to Your Prosperity
I know it’s the result of an algorithm that is spying on me, but I sometimes enjoy reading samples from the books Amazon suggests. Many times it whets my appetite and I then find the book in my library’s digital holdings. Other times a quick read of the posted sample is enough (and yeah, sure, I buy some of them.)
Today my meanderings led to a simple little work entitled The Eight Pillars of Prosperity by James Allen. Written in 1911, it details the author’s assertion that lasting success is built on commitment to eight moral principles. It’s not religious but it is emphatic. Allen also wrote numerous other books including the more famous, As A Man Thinketh. But Eight Pillars really resonated with me today. Here’s why.
What Allen basically says is that success is like a roof over one’s head. That roof rests on solid pillars that themselves are sunk into a sturdy and durable foundation. Essentially this means that success is built from the bottom up. Allen argues that using the “pillars” of energy, economy, integrity, system, sympathy, sincerity, impartiality, and self-reliance are what guarantee genuine and lasting affluence both financially and spiritually.
Nice Guys Don’t Finish Last
Who doesn’t like that? It basically says the opposite of that old saying “nice guys finish last.” His assertions that one must align “one’s deeds in accordance with fixed principles” makes perfect sense. Yes, we are all individuals and we have unique talents and ideas, but we live among others. This means the schematic for prosperity is at least partially drawn by society. To succeed, we have to pay attention to others and the culture in which we live. We have to tune our aspirations to our culture and communities.
Okay, but does his approach really work? The fact that some really bad people are rich, famous, or both does not invalidate Allen’s ideas. In fact, maybe there’s no real way to know since success, to Allen, meant more than just net worth. Is the tycoon or movie star genuinely happy? Have they contributed positively to the lives of others? Does he or she love someone selflessly? We can’t always know the answers to those questions.
Just Say Yes to the Pillars
The question I can answer, however, is the one that asks: are Allen’s pillars a worthy method to seek my best life and self? My unequivocal answer is yes. In fact, his ideas rather neatly explain why some of my journeys have faltered or are still scaling cliffs.
There’s no doubt that certain of my efforts fizzled because I sought results merely for status versus genuine growth. But it doesn’t stop there. How about failing because I didn’t see my own mistakes (lack of impartiality) or because I wasted my time or my resources (lack of economy)? The pillars provide a lens through which to reexamine those failures.
And perhaps, most importantly, to right them.
It’s Not the Weight, It’s the Disrespect
About a month ago I decided that I needed to pay better attention to what I ate. Yeah, the scale was creeping up a bit. But the numbers on it didn’t bother me. Too much (but sure, a little.) What was truly annoying me was my own disregard for what I was feeding myself and my utter disrespect for my own health. Why was I filling myself with so much garbage?
I tend to think it’s because “treating myself” has almost always meant eating something sweet. After a long day; after a bad day; even after a good one. Celebration, consolation, boredom: they all elicited the same desire to eat something that would make me feel better. When I was in my twenties and running sixty miles a week and just, well, being young, it wasn’t such a big deal. Now I’m not as young. And it is becoming a big deal.
Just doing what what you’ve always done
So many times, I’ve read, we behave in ways we are accustomed to. Ways that might have served us in previous periods of our lives (like a difficult childhood or a rebellious adolescence) but that fail to accommodate us where we are now. I wonder if that’s part of my almost mindless decisions to eat peanut butter continuously or consume half a pizza before I come up for air. I don’t do that all the time, of course, and I do know quite a bit about nutrition. But something tells me I need to quit this stuff now.
Maybe that little voice telling me to stop is all I need to know. Perhaps I don’t need to analyze the why of my sometimes destructive eating decisions and instead just accept that my subconscious sent me a message. Besides, it doesn’t matter why. It just matters that it stops.
Because I’ve been blessed with good health, it seems ungrateful of me to eat recreationally too often. I don’t want to be that way. Besides, vanilla chamomile tea is pretty damn good right before bed or after a stressful day. Who needs half a pizza?