I love a good clean slate. New years, new surroundings, or even a new notebook tends to really drive me to a more intentional frame of mind. I suppose it makes sense: take away the ability to go into auto-pilot mode, and all of the sudden you are forced to question your previously ingrained habits.
What was working? What wasn’t?
Examples:
1) What am I doing with my bag/mail/keys when I get home?
2) Is my morning routine serving me in the best way possible?
3) Are my eating habits providing the right balance of energy/nutrition/pleasure?
4) Are there previous time-wasting behaviors that now seem superfluous?
I am delving into all this, of course, because we are in major Clean Slate mode right now, and I am recognizing that 2019 is going to be an incredibly transitional year for us.
New home x 2 (our current setup at Josh’s parents, and hopefully our eventual new home!)
New job for Josh (with new routines/time frame/etc)
New schools, and 2 kids in elementary school
New camps & activities for the kids
New community to learn to navigate (OMG thank god for google maps)
(probably) New additional job responsibilities for me / some schedule restructuring
Newly verbal/walking child (b/c kids change so much in that 12-24 month time period!)
JUST WOAH.
It’s really a lot. But instead of succumbing to the overwhelm of it all (admittedly, this seems to be happening, intermittently) I am trying to embrace the opportunity embedded in all of this (generally positive!) change. I can question things that weren’t working before and create a new version of the things that were. For example, I am writing this in my new morning ‘studio’ (room between our room and the kids’ rooms, which is also conveniently the new home to my weights/mat for AM workouts!) — and it works.
Oh! And speaking of clean slate – the blog makeover is fully underway and this will be another new thing (for me), hopefully by early December!
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Grateful for:
my in-laws generously offering up their space for us, and the kids thus far adjusting exceptionally well to the abrupt transition (however, I do wonder if this will change as the novelty wears off and they realize this is real . . .)
Reading:
How to Break Up with your Phone
Highlights:
4 Comments
There’s nothing like a good clean slate! I really feel like I need to move every 3-4 years just to give myself a clear-cut reason to purge and reassess.
I also love the idea of a clean slate! I am moving to a new city in December AND starting a new job in January, so it feels like a lot of things are changing. I also hope to use this opportunity to re-examine all the routines in my life that weren’t working for me before, and hopefully create better ones.
Gosh, 2019 is going to be a big year. But it feels like you’ve got systems in place to handle it. And it will probably help to have the kiddos all in one school.
I have to admit, I am terribly jealous of your clean slate. My husband purchased our flat about 6 months before we started dating and I moved from student dorms (not as scandalous as it sounds, I was a PhD student) to an established home. We’ve made lots of changes together but it’s never really felt like mine. We’ll probably be here for another 3 to 4 years, depending on my post-postdoc move, I definitely daydream about doing a full pre-move konmari purge, waving goodbye to our ugly couch that I can’t justify replacing as we’ve got a cat who likes to scratch furniture, and establish new routines.
Thank You for this sharing!!!