It’s been a while, I know. Things have been busy, as for everyone around the holidays. It’s quiet around here right now though. The dogs are both sleeping on the couches nearby. The cat is sleeping in the guest room where she prefers to spend her time. Justin is upstairs working out. The only other things on the to-do list for today are watching the last regular season Eagles game and finishing a few loads of laundry.
Since the last entry: we hosted Thanksgiving, I paid off my student loans, we celebrated Justin’s birthday, we saw The Nutcracker with my family as our annual Christmas outing together, both of our cars needed some repairs, the Christmas Eve-eve plans with Justin’s family changed several times (and I ended up missing them entirely due to my work schedule and sudden deep freeze), Christmas Eve and Christmas day came and went fairly uneventfully, I spent half a week as the only doctor on site that actually works at the hospital and do not recommend the experience if you usually have several steady colleagues, I helped a good friend’s family and their very special dog say their “good-bye for nows,” the cat went to the dermatologist, it’s been 5 years since Flint died (and I don’t even know how that’s possible), we had a delicious NYE dinner at home and a quiet New Year’s Day. In all honesty, by the time the week before Christmas was here, I was just living for January to get here because I just felt like so much, too much, was going on in too short of a time span.
Now that January is here, I started the first session of my acupuncture training. It’s definitely a different perspective, and I’m looking forward to learning more about it in the coming months. All of my colleagues were back from their scheduled or, in one case, unexpected time off, so for me, work was less stressful because of that consistency. I know there are people that really hate this time of year for the short days and the cold and the snow (not that we’ve seen any of that so far), but right now, I’m glad for the quiet after the rush of late November to the end of December. Our Christmas tree came down last Sunday because it was a crouton by that point, and we packed up the rest of the Christmas decorations yesterday. As much as I feel a little bit sad to put that stuff back into boxes and bins, once it’s done, I experience a little relief with the sense that it’s just “normal” life for a while, nothing extra or crazy planned in the next several weeks.
During the next few weeks of (hopeful) peace in my life, I want to start decluttering some of the items I just don’t use or won’t use or are redundant in the house. I’ve felt for a while that there’s just too much around. What purpose is it all serving? It’s just in the way and making it harder to find places for things we actually do use or want to have around. The problem is that I can be sentimental and/or play the “what if I need that someday” game, and I get in my own way when I’ve tried to do this before. Maybe I’ll have better luck this time around. I also always feel like there is never enough time in a day to make it through my seemingly never-ending list of things I’d like to do. I’m not sure how to address that, but that’s another things I plan to work on sorting out. There are so many things I find I’d like to do that I don’t get around to once I am done with work, vacuuming, laundry, cooking then eating then dishes, trying to work out regularly, getting the dogs out, etc.
I also know that just saying I want to declutter and I want to have better time management are not the way the experts recommend setting goals. Unfortunately, I’m just not the kind of person that takes the time to set those “SMART” goals or whatever the acronym for it is. I never have been, and it’s highly unlikely I’m about to start now. I wrote them here. Maybe I’ll figure out how to get them done; maybe I won’t. Either way, I had those thoughts and shared them. We’ll see how they turn out from here.
Happy New Year! May it be full of wonderful experiences for everyone I care about and everyone they care about.
“He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; he who makes one is a fool.” ~ F. M. Knowles
