I’ve been doing some retirement planning. (Hint: I’m always doing retirement planning.) But I did the math. If a human being lives to 90 years old and there are 365 days in a year and 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour, a human will have just about 47 million minutes on this earth (47,304,000 to be exact.) Without giving too much away, I’m down to my last 18,000,000. Time to make minutes – and moments – count.
Lately, I’ve been caught up in the minutiae again: meetings, deliverables, responsibilities, tasks… . While we have been trying to take a half-hour to an hour every evening to ourselves before dinner, we are now regularly eating at 8 p.m. or after. The whole idea of slowing down, enjoying a little bit of life and keeping the old work/life balance into some sort of reasonable balance has well and truly been lost. Part of it is that we are both so busy at work. Days start early and end late around here professionally. The other part is that spring is hellaciously busy anyway with trying to start a garden, mowing at least every 5-6 days (when it should be 4-5 days) and doing some small projects before we embark on whatever summer project we intend to do. Both of these elements are true physical barriers to slowing life down. There are only so many hours in the day and most of them right now are just overcommitted.
Yet, and I’m being genuine here, we need to find a way to reclaim more of those 18 million minutes we have left. If we don’t? The measure of our lives will be what we did for a living and how well we kept our grass trimmed.
When I’m at my best, I do a better job of maintaining focus on what’s important and why I decided to do crazy things like start my own microbusiness or even get married at age 45. I genuinely applaud myself for that vision. But most of the time lately? Well, there just hasn’t been the time or space for us to even be humans, let alone humans who live well. And with all of the time demands we both face, I haven’t found a way to get back to good. Yet.
Still, I am conscious that even in the 10 minutes I’ve been mulling this post, I’ve lost more time. And how much, I ask myself critically, is this a head game vs. a physical game? Honestly, I’d prefer a head game as that would make it possible for me to get back to good without substantial changes in our lives and thankfully, at least half of it is. But I’d be a fool to not acknowledge that some of this is physical – there are true concrete barriers right now between us and our good life. Navigating them is the head game. I need to do a better job.
At my core, what I crave the most in my life is simple peace. (I know, I know… you know already.) Simple peace to me, though, is the true key-and-lock to my best life. When I have that peace, I truly bloom. I feel centered in my life and there is a deep-seated happiness and sustainability there. When I get overstimulated and we’ve been busy for too long? Ugh. Simple peace becomes this elusive ether that I can find myself literally searching the skies to find only to end up disappointed and feeling like a failure.
What makes it right then? How do I re-find my simple peace if I can’t slow life down enough to meaningfully look for it? Thankfully, after nine years of this mantra, I know how to find it even in chaos and even when I think I’ve truly lost it for good this time. The key: force myself to actually sit and think about what matters most to me. It’s like my personal homing pigeon. I think about what I want my life to be and it makes me realize how everything else is just noise. Yes, there are deadlines and commitments but will they matter a week from now? Nope. What matters most is what this life brings me. And right there? That’s where simple peace starts.
At my core, I am not really looking for any accolades or awards. I don’t need to achieve anything more in my life. Nope. What I want my life to be about? Hmm… that’s pretty easy. Great life partner, fabulous family member, awesome kitty momma, decent homemaker, smart colleague and maybe – just maybe – a mean grass cutter. But life for me is family, pets and home. In that order. When I can be the human that is most focused on those things, life becomes charmed for me. It is everything I want and my soul – finally – gets the peace it was searching for.
Today more than any day recently, I needed this reset. In the midst of all of the noisy chaos of our lives, I had lost my own true north. I was floundering and as I flounder, the rest of the family flounders with me. But now? I have a little piece of my peace back and a great runway to recapture the rest. With that, I can be what the heartbeats in this house need me to be and in nurturing my own soul, I can nurture theirs as well.
Eighteen million minutes, huh? I will try my best to make the most of them.
The Yuppie Homesteader 