About a week ago, we ran out of data. I had to unplug for a while, waiting for the new month to start. Our new data month started up yesterday, and today, the tablet cracked. I can't use it at all and have to run in to see about it's replacement. It's obnoxious and frustrating.
During my week off-line, I distanced myself a little from my social media habit. And while I was excited to get a chance to go online again, I didn't crave time online as much as I had. It was nice to be forced away from the distraction. But complete unplugging isn't ideal for us right now. My husband has been reviving Paperwine and I've been reviving my blogging and enjoying Instagram. Those aspects have been especially healthy and good. I want them to continue.. I even want much of my facebook use to continue, in a limited sense. And in the winter, on these long, cold nights of stove tending - the connection is entertaining.
So I'll be heading into town some time this weekend to figure out what's to be done. The problem doesn't really go away, it just keeps getting patched up and moving forward. And tonight, while the stove crackles merrily and the air outside dips down below zero again, I'll be drinking coffee or tea..or maybe a manhattan..and thinking about how to make this latest issue less of a burden and more of an opportunity.
The company my husband worked for closed for good this fall. We had planned for a winter without regular work anyway, and now that it's here - with no certain starting date for a regular income in view, we're beginning a new aspect of our homesteading life. Ideally, I would love to avoid the regular work-life for our family in the future. To continue a simpler, more intimate domestic monastery..with my husband painting and drawing, selling his work, and occasionally doing side work building chimneys or painting houses for our neighbors and friends.
But that sort of life takes something I don't have a lot of yet: self-discipline and a love of simplicity. I struggle with those. I still have the suburban-ever-present desire for more, and training myself to want less, to reveal in true simplicity, and not merely the trappings of simplicity is hard.
I'm working hard to build that inner richness this Advent. My husband is working hard to create beautiful pieces of art and then find homes for them in ways that support our family finances as well. I love watching him work at this! I love seeing the lovely images in his mind take shape on wood and paper. I love having him home, giving him the chance to participate more in schooling Yarrow and shaping our days. And I'm learning to say no to myself. To purge out the unloved things without replacing them. To love discipline, consistency, and not run always toward the new and shiny things of the world.
It's hard, but the payoff is amazing! A husband who can be home more, creating more, living more. And a healthier soul for me as well. I'm still a novice regarding simplicity. But I do think I'm learning and growing stronger each day. And if you want to help my learning curve at all..my husband's Esty shop is Paperwine Industries.
Dying leaves and new beginnings.
I love Advent. I love new years, new months, new weeks, and new mornings all fresh and bright. But in Advent our mornings are dark - the sun rises late and sets early. Already the sky is streaked with purple.
This autumn has been a time of deep reflection for me, despite my lazy attempts to distract myself with social media and creamy lattes. The trends toward discordance in the world around me are draining and overwhelming..I can feel it influencing my mind and my heart. I see it creeping into my relationships with my children even - I'm less patient with them, my thoughts are elsewhere.
The day after voting for an acceptable candidate in a sea of hate-filled voices, I began again to reshape my life according to love. As Advent begins I am working to make this life more fully a thing of beauty. I've written our a rule of life for myself, one that pulls to prominence the people I love, the relationships I cherish, the order and ritual I need to thrive. A part of that rule is a sub-rule, a readjustment of my online presence: limiting social media time (my goal is to order my instagram and blogging time to be a peaceful and beautiful contribution to my way of life, while reducing my time on platforms like facebook to brief evening or weekend visits. I have friends there that I do want to keep up with, but the site itself tends to drain my time and interrupt the tangible interactions in life).
What do I want my time to be filled with?
I keep breaking this question down into tiny bites of thought. Partially because my children are always biting up my thoughts into tiny pieces with their contributions. Just now, Ilya brought me a painted parasol and my image of time being filled was altered to include the parasol, my sweet boy, and a coffee shop where neither he nor his sister could distract from my writing..possibly with a hazelnut latte beside me.
Generally though, my responses come in collected impressions: beauty, quiet times, order, simplicity - possibly touched with minimalism, play, conversations late into the night or on lazy mornings with coffee and grapefruits or danish, teaching gently, praying often, sewing, sweeping, reading..slow and simple and gentle.
What do you want your life to look like? To feel like?
How can we make these visions real?
I'm on my way into another retreat!! Advent is almost here, and it is going to be a good one - thanks to Haley at Carrots for Michaelmas, who is leading the way for Advent Unplugged.
Advent is one of those seasons that is too often abandoned - merged into a sort of extended 'Christmas-y' sort of season. And neglected as we hunt for that perfect gift or that long-lost recipe (the only way to make pierogi). So I'm going to 'unplug' a bit, and merge some of Haley's suggestions into my own life:
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- The phone will be off again for much of the day. Morning hours are 6-8, afternoon hours are 3-5..or whenever Seth is on the road. Leave a message if you need me!
- No internet for me while Yarrow is awake or Seth is out of work/not working on his art..when people are with me, I need to be with them! Fully present and engaged!
- Practice the art of 'making work into play' - enjoying all the little and challenging aspects of life - from 2am stove-feedings to early mornings in the dark.
- Spiritual Reading! This year it's Meditations on the Tarot (and no, that doesn't mean what you think it means! Totally Catholic, non-divinatory, so don't worry!) and the book of Jeremiah.
- Fasting: Advent is about fasting too! My plan is to do 24 days of 'Real Food' - inspired by Lisa at 100 days of Real Food. But skipping the meat (and suffering through the knowledge that I have two whole pigs in the freezer, waiting to be devoured!)
- Another aspect of fasting I want to add into this Advent is a easier version of our Lenten fast.. Setting aside Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as days of particular penance - maybe having set meals of a bland sort for those days.
- Playing more! With Yarrow, with Seth, with poor, long-sufffering Luba, and with God!
My goal is more silence - less chatter; more music - less noise; more prayer - less fretting. More love and more ritual and more joy. With Seth now spending more time at home and less on the road - Thanks to Paperwine Industries, his adventure on Etsy - we have more of an opportunity retreat together into the soul of Advent. And I am so ready for this! Who wants to join in??
