Deliberate Living

When I was young, I believed I could do everything. People told me I could do "anything" and I assumed that meant "everything". Unfortunately, this has given me a "put more on my plate than I can eat" with respect to the things I want to do.

The truth is, I am not Wonder Woman. I am human. I have limited time and energy. And deciding to do everything right now takes a lot of energy and accomplishes little.

Now that I am reconsidering what I want my life will look like after COVID, I am looking at editing my projects.

When the pandemic hit with the stay-at-home orders, many people were knocked out of work. The world economy is now officially in recession, and most households are facing lean times. I'm one of the lucky ones in that I can work from home, and my client committed to keeping us consultants employed. But there is still the uncertainty of the future, both for my family, and many others.

One of the outcomes of this recession was that many people cut back on unnecessary spending. I'm including expenses as one of my areas of life to edit, because I have found that I shifted spending, and I'm not sure I want to go back to the way it was.

Editing expenses is not just about cutting back. It's about assessing whether the expense is really giving you a good return on your money, or whether it is the right service to use.

The thing I didn't realize is that I am often paying for things that I don't use or need. If I am aware of such services, and I'm not using them, I then feel like I should "do something about it", which becomes another open loop.

I love my hobbies. Creativity is second nature to me, and I would spend my days making music, braiding, knitting, scrapbooking, doing calligraphy, spinning and writing if I could. Unfortunately, I can't. I have financial and family obligations that preclude my full-time participation in hobbies. In this time of the global pandemic I have found that I have more time to engage my hobbies. But what I also found is that some hobbies were not available due to closures and shortages, and that when it came right down to it, I wasn't interested in some of the hobbies I have had on my lists for a long time.

Going forward, I want to make sure that the things I do in my spare time are meaningful to me. That means I need to edit my hobbies.

Spending patterns and consumption are areas that get out of control for a lot of us. The pandemic has changed our consumption patterns, if for no other reason than we couldn't get out to the stores. But as the restrictions ease, we have a chance to take a look at our consumption and make conscious choices going forward.

Why is consumption an area for editing? Why not just go back to the way we were?

First of all, we are in a global recession. Money may not be as plentiful as it was before, and it is a good time to continue the habits we formed during isolation.

Secondly, the more I own, the more space I need to store it, and I must devote my time and energy to either using it or taking care of it. Each bit of stuff can be looked at as a mini-open loop, pulling at my attention and energy. By editing this stuff, I have as much as I need, but no more, and thus minimize the drains.

In order to take a look at the consumption, we need to examine our habits.

We all have multiple demands on our time. Some of these we choose, and some are thrust upon us. Some of them we choose; some we are asked to do, and some creep up on us through insidious means.

This time of pandemic has been a good time for examining our commitments. With many of our after-hours activities canceled, we now have the free time to examine those activities that had been taking up our time.

I've had pretty much all of my evening activities stop. The choir is not working together right now, and the quartet I sing with is recording parts separately, to have them mixed by our music director. Girl Scouts have been canceled for the year. The committees I sit on, meetings I attend and things like church services are now done online.

So why edit the commitments? Because eventually we are going to get to a point where we can be face-to-face, and these things will try to restart. The question is, do you want to restart them?

As we come out of the isolation made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have an unprecedented opportunity to shift our lives into ones of our choosing. Rather than taking things as they were, we can look at what we desire our lives to be and shift in that direction.

To that end, I am going to run a series of articles about the areas to look at and how to edit your life. Today I'll give you an overview of what the series will cover.

The times, they are a'changin. Life now in the details bears little resemblence to life a year ago. And it hasn't been easy. But even though things are changing, that doesn't mean there isn't positive among the negative.

I really didn't expect my life to change much during the social distancing/isolation of COVID. Other than knocking some forced socialization off my schedule. But I've done some things that I couldn't foresee, and have surprised those who know me. Here are some unexpected things I have done during the isolation.

Jeffrey Marr, from Between The Lines Animation, has made a great video on how to break bad habits. It's a summary of the information provided in the book Atomic Habits. Take a look at this informative and entertaining video: