Month: September 2015

It’s easy to be a minimalist when you are flattened with the plague, or a cold, I haven’t decided which one I have.

I’ve been a hacking, sweating bundle of misery for a few days and today I finally allowed myself to do nothing but sleep in that weird sick stupor kind of way, have an Epsom salt bath and drink fizzy vitamin c drinks.

It felt really good.

I am not a sick martyr type. I am not stoic. I will be the first to whine and boo-hoo to anyone who will listen. Somehow though, the past few days were too full to cancel and I had to sleepwalk my way through them and put my whining on hold. I should have known I was on my way to getting flattened when I started having dreams in which I was complaining about how tired I was, while I was sleeping!

After my day of doing nothing guilt free, I feel like maybe I will in fact see another day. It would be nice to have more of those days without the sick part: just check out and revel in doing nothing, gloriously stretching into it. There is always time for being busy, there should be more time for being deliciously lazy without needing to be sick to do it.

 

This past weekend I spent heavenly time at a cottage. Just The Sweetie, me and the dog. It was pure heaven to lounge and be, having no itinerary other than when we would enjoy happy hour on the dock. The dog played frisbee non stop, we ate like kings and forced ourselves to plunge into the lake every day, even though we started losing feeling in our toes within thirty seconds.

All it takes is a little time in nature to get some perspective again. All the material things that bog us down and entrap us mean nothing when you get a chance to stop and breathe some fresh air, admire silver dew on the grass in the morning and watch your dog roll around on the dock, soaking wet and ecstatic. I know it’s corny and there may be collective barf sounds resonating throughout the land right now, but come on, it’s true. Who cares what you wear or what throw pillows are on your floor or what products are in your hair when you are lucky enough to have love, food and a dog?

After thirty one days of unloading piddly items from my apartment I started to have a niggling memory of a book I saw years ago: Nobody Cares What You Had for Lunch, by Margaret Mason. It’s an instructional book for writing interesting blog posts that won’t make a reader fall asleep, poke out their eyeballs and click in a frenzy to leave the page. It started to dawn on me that nobody cares what I unloaded day by day, and why should they? Then again, why should I care if anyone cares? It’s my minimalist journey, or non minimal journey from the looks of things. Above all it should be a chronicle of my own struggles and if posting makes me feel more accountable or shamed, great, but if anyone else is interested shouldn’t be a concern.

I like reading about other minimalists, but they are actually living the life. Looking at other minimalist blogs is like aspirational reading. It is inspiring to hear about people shedding their items and living more meaningful lives. It’s fun to look at cute girls sporting minimalist outfits and a topknot. I, on the other hand, am a middle aged woman without a lot of style who seems to be losing her hair, so my hair in a topknot is not a cute sight. I went to my doctor who said it could be perimenopause, which isn’t at all comforting, as I imagine that soon I will have a receding hairline and a full beard. Thanks hormones. Looks like if all else fails I will be a hair follicle minimalist. In the meantime, I will continue posting what I unload if it makes me slowly get through my piles of useless stuff.

( And I read one of the Amazon reviews of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch that said one of her suggestions for an interesting blog post was about your lunch, so what’s that about?)