I read a title of a NY Times column today about “not wanting an extraordinary life”. I was scrolling, so I can confess to not reading the column, but the title resonated with me. I, too, don’t want an extraordinary life. Instead, I want an uncommon one. Let me explain the difference.
An extraordinary life, to me, is about facing and succeeding against seemingly insurmountable challenges, about consistent sacrifice to achieve great things and a life somewhat devoid of the ordinary.
An uncommon life? Well, at its heart it doesn’t necessarily have to be full of challenges or sacrifice. Instead, it can be whatever it is that satisfies you that’s just slightly different – uncommon, if you will – from others. My uncommon life? Well, it’s to be a homemaking homebody.
The core of my uncommon life is about peace. I love me some peace. And for me, peace comes out of simplicity (simple peace, remember?). Simple peace is pretty simple. It means that days can be taken more slowly, achievements can be measured in weeks not days and that life can center around the things that bring us joy. In my case, that’s home. For me, simple peace also means adopting simple habits from my mother and grandmother. A made bed, clothes dried on a clothes line, garden produce preserved, making meals and even laundry soap from scratch, and doing as much of our renovations as possible. The key thing about all of these tasks? They take time. From a few minutes to a few hours to a few months. They all take time. And in taking time, they squeeze out more of the rush-to-finish, high-turnover, high-utilization, instantly disposable society we live in. So, simple peace? It means being able to opt out of today’s common lifestyle.
Today is another day in the uncommon life I have finally once again secured for myself. My docket today? My sister and I are making ketchup from her tomatoes. With the help of my trusty canning cookbook, my KitchenAid mixer, and my six-pint canner, we are going to take her tomatoes and nine other spices and blend them together to make ketchup. In the meantime, we will laugh, share memories of canning with our mom, and my niece and nephew will likely pop in. When it’s all said and done? She will have 8-10 jars of ketchup to show for our efforts and we will both have another day full of memories.
Ketchup is actually one of the newest additions to my canning repertoire. Last year’s bumper crop meant more tomatoes than we knew what to do with. At a certain point, we had to stop “squeezing and freezing” and just use the produce. One way to use it? Make ketchup. So, I did. And you know what? It turned out fabulous. Making ketchup – just like Harvard beets and dill pickles – are now a mainstay of my canning operation.
So, living an uncommon life for me is really about managing my pace in life. I have a running shirt from when I was distance running that says, “This IS my race pace.” In a way, that shirt fits my life. It’s deliberately slow. As an excitable person, I try to keep my pulse and blood pressure low, my breathing slow and even and my emotions somewhat buffeted from the emotional ups and downs a life in our fast-paced, commercially driven world can create. That’s why home is so special in this equation. There is truly no place like it. It’s got all of my not-so-worldly possessions and everyone inside here loves me. It’s safe, warm and comfy. When the whole world hates me, the people inside home still love me.
I am again struck today that making my life more of what I always wanted it to be was not as much about my physical place within the world, but more about my mental place. To that end, what got me here was taking time every day to visualize how I wanted my new life to be. At first, it was mostly wishful thinking. Then, it was wishful thinking with a twinge of frustration. But slowly – ever so slowly – realization dawned. It was me, not them (and them being life in general). My brain was allowing me to stress – over things that had happened, things that could happen and things that I feared happening. As a result, I couldn’t shut off work. But now that I’ve finally pivoted, I’m back to that good spot. Work begins again on Monday. Until then? Well, I’ve got ketchup to make.
The Yuppie Homesteader 