When I first approached deliberate living, I knew that I was going to have to make changes. My life wasn’t anywhere close to what I wanted it to be. But I also realized that to a certain extent, I could design my life.
Obviously, since I work outside the home for someone else, I don’t have much choice in how that goes. But at home? That’s a different story.
And I started with the biggest chunk of time that I have: my weekends.
What I Don’t Want To Do On Weekends
When I started thinking about this, I could only come up with things I didn’t want to do. But it was a good starting place.
- No housework. I don’t want to spend my weekends doing routine housework.
- No shopping. I don’t enjoy shopping, and I don’t want to give up my Saturdays fighting the lines at the grocery or discount stores.
- No blog article writing. I don’t want to give up my chunks of creative time to doing things I could have gotten done during the week.
- No big meals. I am fine with cooking one meal that takes a bit longer on a weekend. However, I don’t want to spend my days in the kitchen.
- No work. I don’t want to be doing work on my weekends. I am on call every other weekend, so some of this is beyond my control. However, this excludes technical learning or growing my own businesses.
What I Do Want To Do
Once I decided what had to go, it left me open to dream. I figured out what I would like to do more of, and constructed my ideal days:
Saturday
Saturday would start out with a creative writing session, followed by a weekly women’s group I attend. The afternoon would be given over to family time, an outing, or perhaps just puttering around the house. Saturday night would be our household game night, either a board game, or Wii games we can all play together.
Sunday
Sunday would be a day of rest. I would spend time doing spiritual work, joyfully and gladly. I would be able to relax, read, spend time with my family, and recharge my batteries. Ideally it would be away from the computer, phone and television as well.
Now the question becomes “how do I get there from here?”
