declared 2017 my ‘midlife gap year’—a year off to focus on living life rather than earning a living. A year to pause and ponder before moving onto the second half of my life. I embraced all the ‘r’ words: retreat, reflection, reevaluation, rejuvenation, and restoration. I found the whole experience so worthwhile, my midlife gap year extended to two years. It took that long for my pause to pay off, for me to reemerge—restored, renewed and ready.
Almost a year ago I wrote here that I was going to step away from this space for a month – to focus on home and start the new year with a calm mind and a clear vision.
It seems one month wasn’t enough. This space became one of the many casualties of me ruthlessly clearing the clutter from my schedule. A move that was necessary for me to move even closer to living the life that I aspire to.
We can’t have and do everything – we have to choose. And I chose to focus on home for a while.
The countdown to Christmas has become a festival of chaos and consumption. If you prefer to roll into the festive season feeling calm and connected – rather than overwhelmed and broke – now is a good time to prepare your plan of attack. Here are my three favourite tips for avoiding the chaos and consumerism of Christmas.
White space is a wonderful thing to have in your life. But it isn’t easy to find. You have to create it. And work hard to keep it. Here are some of the tools I use to craft white space into my days.
Butterflies are worth encouraging into your garden. There’s a range of plants you can grow to attract beneficial butterflies.
One of the benefits of simplifying is that my life now has white space. Pockets of time where nothing is scheduled. In graphic design, fail to leave sufficient white space and a worthwhile message can be lost among the clutter. Empty space is equally important in our day-to-day lives.
I often feel that too much emphasis is placed on decreasing our ecological footprint. Even if by some incredible miracle, the entire global population began living within the means of our planet overnight, nature would still be stuffed.
Soils would still be contaminated, rivers would remain polluted, native animals would continue to be preyed on by exotic pests and disease, native plants would continue to be displaced by environmental weeds, threatened species would continue to be driven to extinction by the impacts of habitat fragmentation, CO2 would still be elevated, and climate change would still be happening. The earth we leave our children would still be poorer than the one we inherited.
3_planting native seedlings from hyco pots
Restoring and conserving nature requires us to do more than decrease our ecological footprint. That’s why I love the concept of an ecological hand print.