To approach this past week, I decided to write down everything I did, hour by hour, for the week.  After Saturday, I would total up the hours spent on my tasks and evaluate them to see whether they are in line with my values and goals.  Among other things, I found that I spend, on average, 2 hours per day watching tv but only three quarters of an hour exercising.  I would like to balance these out, decreasing my time watching tv to an hour and increasing my time exercising to 1.5 hours (I know the math doesn’t work there).

In addition, I found that I only sleep an average of 6 hours per night.  That is including “weekend” sleep and naps taken on the train during my commute.  Factoring those out, I probably sleep only 4.5 hours a weeknight.  This is definitely not enough and, though I’ve always been an early riser and have never been known for sleeping a lot, I would like to get to at least 5.5 hours per weeknight.

Thus, I’m going to need to develop a routine that allows me to adjust my habits according to my values.  Go to sleep earlier, decide in advance what I want to watch on tv and limit myself to it, make sure that I head to the gym, practice yoga at home, or go out for a run when I get home, which means I need to know what I will be doing so that I don’t fall into the trap of getting home and not leaving until the next morning.  This isn’t that difficult, and I’ve done it before, but I just need to make sure that I follow through so that it becomes natural to me.

I am pleased to say that, in evaluating my committments, I am well within my values.  Up until a few years ago, I had the tendency to take on more than I could handle.  I would do everything, but never have time to do NOTHING.  When I moved to the east coast, I made a promise to myself to do only those things that I really want to do so that I could do them well.  With the exception of my daily commute of 4 hours (total), I have stuck to that and it has proved to be a lifesaver.

This week was an enlightening one.  Looking at everything I spend my time doing in a week and evaluating my commitments has given me the knowledge I need to create my own routine and find the time to do what I really want to do.  If I can keep these past two weeks in mind whenever I approach a new project, I think I will be able to create a beautiful life for myself.

This week’s challenge: Simplify Work Tasks

In continuing to simplify my life, I’ve just completed a second step: decluttering my home.  I’ve gone through my whole house, separating everything into four different piles: Keep, Donate, Recycle, and Trash.

I was ruthless when going through my house, and made sure to keep only what I KNEW I would use/wear.  I am very pleased to say I have one 10 gallon tub of trash, one 20 gallon tub of recyclables, and four 20 gallon tubs of donatable items.

The point of this, of course, was not to see how much stuff I could get rid of, but rather to go through everything in my home and keep only the items I need.  While I am sure I thought I was very diligent in trying to remove the the extra clutter from my house, I’m sure that this will be an ongoing process.  At least this is a start.  I can definitely say my house is much more spacious and organized, which makes me feel much calmer.

For week 1 of the Simple Living process that I’ve undertaken, I am creating a simplicity statement. This involves making a list of what is most important to me, what I value most in life, and what I want to do in my life.  By putting these priorities in writing, I can focus on these aspects of my life and strive to make room for them. The following lists are in no particular order, but do reflect some of the things I consider most important to me right now.

What Do I Want to Do in Life?

• Travel
• Earn my Graduate degree
• Work for Nonprofit Sustainability
• Continue my yoga practice
• Never Stop Learning

What do I Value Most?

• Family
• Connectivity
• Peacefulness
• Integrity
• Service

Statement:

My life is full of continuous learning, sharing, and service, and my activities develop and support interconnectivity, a feeling of family, and peacefulness.

This statement, of course, will be modified with time to better reflect where I am in my life, but, right now, I know that I have a deep-seeded need to serve others and make connections, and at the same time to never stop my process of learning.  If I can focus on these main aspects of my life, I believe I will have fulfilled the purpose of my existence.

For a good long time, I have been annoyed and stressed over clutter.  I don’t like clutter- at work, at home, on my computer, in my head- at all.  Recently, I decided to take some action to reign in the clutter in my life.  After searching for simplifying tooks, I stumbled on this website: http://zenhabits.net/

On this blog, there are a variety of different tips and exercises to reduce the clutter and simplify life, internally and externally.  One page I found particularly helpful in jump-starting my process: The Simple Living Manifesto.  It is very lengthy (72 tips), but I separated them into categories and will tackle them strategically week by week.

The categories are as follows:

Values

Home

Time

Media

Hobbies

Work

Finances

This is definitely a process, and to even attempt all of these goals will take me through the end of October, possibly longer.  This blog will serve as my sounding board for the coming weeks.

I’m not the most popular person on Facebook.  With a more than a couple hundred friends, however, I feel like I’m popular enough.  I get updates on the activities of my gradeschool, high school, college, and beyond buddies with whom I’ve lost touch.  I’ve reconnected with people I hadn’t spoken to in years, some of whom were best friends.  And, of course, there are those friends with whom I’ve maintained contact.  Facebook is just another way to share my life with them and vice versa.

Obviously, I value having this tool, especially where I live right now.  I just asked for a recipe for fennel and received a variety of awesome responses from some very random of contacts.  It’s a great addition to our lives.

Being as far away from my friends as I am, I have lost contact with some really genuine friends.  This, of course, is a normal byproduct of moving.  In some ways, Facebook is great in that it enables me to stay in touch with these wonderful people.  On the other hand, what about those people with whom I’d been making an effort to maintain a relationship, via phone or otherwise?  Do we start drifting into the category of “Facebook Friend”, only sending quick messages on birthdays and holidays?  Do we no longer maintain our phone calls and instead become just one of the many acquaintances in our network?

I have a few friends that I’ve spoken to over the years, and with whom I truly want to maintain a relationship.  Some I don’t worry about losing- Facebook just enhances our relationship.  For others, where the friendship is stronger than many but not so strong as to withstand the slow drift into Facebook Friend status, I’m conflicted.  I want to maintain my relationships with these people.  I want to be able to utilize Facebook to help keep these relationships strong.  Unfortunately, social networking is a bit more lazy and exponentially less personal than a phone call.  I wonder if, by contacting these people on Facebook, I’m taking the more personal communication out of the equation, and thus dooming the friendship altogether.

Woo Woo!  I finished this bad boy on my birthday (yesterday).  I was super happy to finish it for 2 reasons- 1. I want to take it with me as soon as possible to the farmer’s market, and 2. I want the people on the train to stop giving me the look that says, “She may have leprosy.  I’ll make sure to steer clear of her.”  The joke’s on them, however, because I’m now going to start another project!  Ha!

Here’s a photo of the bag (note that this was my first bag and I wasn’t discerning about the colors of the bags):

In every aspect of my life, I’ve set goals.  Own my car outright.  Get certified to teach yoga.  See all the US National Parks.  Work for nonprofit sustainability.  The list goes on and on at least 60 more goals.  Some of the physical fitness goals are aimed at vanity (I want to see my abs for the first time by my birthday this year.)  Others are more about accomplishing something that I find particularly difficult.  Like running.

I used to run.  I’m proud to say that my freshman 15 was actually a loss rather than a gain.  After about my junior year in college, though, I stopped running regularly.  Regardless of the distance (admittedly, it was never more than 8 miles,) I never got that runner’s high people rave about.  It always just felt like work.

Recently, in reviewing my goals, I’ve noticed that I indicated the desire to race in a 10K and a half marathon.  Thus, I’m jogging again (notice that I didn’t say running- I’m a bit of a penguin).  I’m only going about 4-5 miles right now and I’m pretty pokey, but at least I’m out there.

Surprisingly, this time around it’s kinda fun.  Starting June 1^st, my goal is to log 50 miles for 30 days (I was just trying to get out there for May).  Not a big deal, I realize, but I don’t want to set myself up for failure.  In any case, it’s been a completely different experience getting outside and noting my progress than it was a couple years ago.  Who knows- maybe I’ll be aiming for 75 miles in July, then 100 miles (let’s not get carried away). Before you know it, I’ll be racing (on a vain note, my abs aren’t looking too shabby .]

I just finished reading the Bhagavad Gita.  Unfortunately, I was left a little disappointed.  What I found in the book was a story that emphasized one lord above all others and a variety of male-centric statements.

I’ve never considered myself feminist, and I’m fully willing to admit that the time period in which the book was written (and still in many cultures today), it is totally appropriate to be misogynistic.  Somehow, though, I still found the statements frustrating.

Even letting that slide, what’s the deal with Krishna?  Why him?  Are there other books where Vishnu is speaking and the Gita is disregarded as one of the pillars of religion? 

Ghandi considered this book his personal guide in life, and I know I have a lot to learn.  The book does say that the study of this book shouldn’t be done alone, that an educated person needs to guide the student.  Perhaps I should read it again in a different context, because I currently have a lot of questions.

I’ve recently re-become vegetarian.  Let me explain.

When I was about 13, I decided to give up meat for Lent one year.  It could have been seen as a cop out- I mean, Catholics give up meat on Fridays during Lent anyway, but I thought it would be much more difficult than giving up chocolate or soda.  I was wrong.

See, I never really loved the taste of meat.  I can’t stand pork unless it’s hidden in schnitzel form and only then covered with some kind of sauce.  I find chicken tasteless and am extremely particular about how well done beef should be before I ingest it (if there is a sign of pink, I’m not touching it).  As you can see, meat was just another thing I ate because I ate everything.  Thus, after Lent ended and the easter bunny came, I decided to stick with the no-meat lifestyle.

My mom hated this.  Although she was a vegetarian for some time, including all throughout her pregnancy with me, she now ate meat, as did the rest of the family, making meal planning a pain.  I regularly ate just the side dishes, which isn’t bad, because I LOVE vegetables.

In any case, time went on and I got lazy.  I started to crave meat about once a month, probably due to some iron deficiencies, and thus started eating it more.  I didn’t really care, since I wasn’t a herbivore for moral or ethical reasons.  I just didn’t care for it much.  I had many friends who tried to persuade me to cut it out altogether, including fish (I never stopped eating fish- one of the weirdest things in Catholicism is the idea that fish is not meat.  What the deuce is it supposed to be, then?  Yet I bought into that thought and still separate fish from other meat when categorizing them). It never sank in, though, and I would have my monthly steak fajitas or cheese steak or whatever.

A few months ago, my mom gave me a series of lectures on the problems with a vegetarian diet and persuaded me to eat meat three times a week.  According to her, the reason I was so tired was the lack of protein and/or amino acids in my diet.  So, turkey sandwiches joined the menu.

Well, I finished reading Jane Goodall’s “Harvest for Hope” last month (she’s my hero), and though I already knew a lot of what she was saying, her words sank in better than any PETA protester’s ever did.  The environmental damage caused by the amount of meat we eat is astonishing.  The antibiotics we ingest through our food is atrocious (I don’t even take antibiotics!)  The fact that some 70% or so of the corn we (and the livestock we eat) consume is genetically modified freaks me out.  The lack of connection to our food is horrifying and, while I still may not start crying when I see a huge cattle ranch (I probably will), the disregard for the souls and the dignity of the animals we eat is unacceptable.

Thus, I am back to being a vegetarian.  I admit to having eaten fish this month, but have kept it to the “good” list of fish to consume.  I acknowledge that I’ve eaten cheese, (only organic), but I can’t even think of eating a turkey sandwich.

I know I’ll get lazy again.  Thanksgiving will come around and I’ll say, “let’s get some bison steaks” (I’ve never liked the turkey at Thanksgiving- I’ll take the potatoes and green bean casserole.)  I know I won’t try to convince others to give up meat.  It didn’t work on me when my protesting friends did it, and I have less credibility.  I will offer information when asked, but not if we’ve got meals in front of us.  I think that, with time, everyone will see that humans were not meant to consume the amount of meat that Americans eat.  Until then, I’ll be ordering a lot more salads.  Sorry Mom.

I crochet.  I know that, by admitting this one hobby to the world, I have made myself seem like a little old lady, but, I assure you, I’m still in the middle of my quarter-life crisis.

ANYWAY, back to crochet.  I taught myself to crochet in college since I wanted to have a crafty skill.  Sewing is generally regarded as “the S word” in my mother’s world, and it didn’t seem as portable.  Thus, crochet.

Being someone who crochets in Phoenix has it’s disadvantages.  I still consider myself a beginner, so the majority of what I can accomplish are scarves and afghans, which are really only used three months out of the year there (if that).  Well, enter plarn, or plastic yarn.  I just found this website (myrecycledbags.com) that shows some amazing creations from grocery bags, VHS tape, cassette tape, etc.

Inspiration!!! My living room is now filled with grocery bags cut into strips and linked together to form plarn.  I’m really excited about making this new grocery bag (and, yes, I see the irony in making 1 plastic bag out of 50 plastic bags).  Right now, I have the bags separated into groups of about 10-15, which I take back to the grocery store and reuse for every shopping trip.  Unfortunately, the material begins to stretch, and the bags are not as strong as they used to be.  Crocheting the plastic will make the new bag much stronger, I think.  Plus, it’ll just look cool- and I have a reason to crochet when it’s warm outside.