Sunday

You were probably expecting this ... yesterday I made a start on simplifying an aspect of my life! I'm aiming to do something every day, not necessarily time consuming or strenuous, but one thing that will help me achieve my aim to simplify my life.

Yesterday's effort was a continuation of a task I started a couple of weeks ago, which is getting on top of social media and emails. I've been working my way through Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, etc, and rationalising my contacts and groups in each one. It's made a huge difference to the amount of time spent each day reading through unwanted posts and I'm reaching the point where I've eliminated the ones that can go. The up side is that I now only see the posts I want in my newsfeed so checking social media is a speedy and cheerful way of keeping up with what family and close friends are doing. Effectively, I have returned to my original reason for using social media and this has cheered me up.

It's been taking me about 30 minutes most days and has been a quick fix to give an immediate result, highlighting the clear benefits of simplifying things. Social media is just about done and today I will to start on the emails ... unsubscribing from all unwanted emails, removing contacts, deleting old emails etc., which will probably take ages but needs to be done. As I work though the backlog of clutter  I plan to deal with all new emails once a day, which is easily achievable now I don't have the band admin to deal with.

It's an easy start and I can feel I am doing something without expending too much effort. I still want to sleep all the time! I don't know if this is a healing thing or whether I need to push through it. At present, I'm sleeping whenever I want so my normal routine is shot to pieces and at some stage I will have to get back to normal, preferably before January 6th when choir practice resumes.

When I do attempt to re-establish my weekday routine I plan to use the habit stacking approach to organise some aspects of daily life - for example, I get washed and dressed, after dressing I check emails, after emails, I do my daily music practice, after music practice I do the daily chore/errand ... and so on. I don't know whether this will work for me or even whether I will like the approach but it's worth a try. My hope is that all the chores and errands are completed in a couple of hours in the mornings to leave the rest of the day for all the fun things to happen. That's the plan anyway!

If you've read this far I'll apologise for waffling on so much. It wasn't my intention when I started this post but I am finding it quite therapeutic so will continue. I'll be over it by tomorrow so I will understand if you prefer to abandon this post and come back then!

The decluttering will still continue but with a different approach. I'm not making any progress with the last lot of 'big stuff' so there's no point in continuing in the same way. Some of it will go to the auction company I used before, and other bits I will contact one of the local auction houses or send it to the charity shop. Once all of that is dealt with I'll continue working through the house to decide what else can go. There are important decisions to be made though ... which hobbies am I finished with, which ornaments do I want to keep, etc. and more importantly, relating to everything I keep, how much is 'enough'. I'm starting with my clothes but will write about that in another post.

My 2020 diary dates for my special solo treats are coming together nicely. I've decided to arrange (at least) one special event for each month so that I always have something in the diary to look forward to, things like theatre trips, short breaks, day trips, and exhibitions. I'd also like to add one live music event every month, either solo or with friends, but I don't know whether it's feasible. I definitely want attending live music events to play a bigger part in my life than it currently does so I just need to find a way to make this work.

I have notified the band that I won't be returning so all that's left to do, once they resume in January, is arrange for all the remaining folders etc to be collected. I'm still in two minds about it, but for now this is the best solution for me. I honestly can't settle on what would need to change to encourage me to go back so I think it's unlikely I'll reverse this decision. With that in mind I'll have to decide whether I want to continue playing and look for other opportunities if so, or maybe just being part of the choir will satisfy my need to be involved in a musical activity. Time will tell!

Okay, that's enough for this post. Well done if you reached the end and now go and get yourself a well deserved hot drink!