“Happiness is to be contented with what you have.”
I really believe that to be contented, is to be comfortable in where you are and what you have and what you are doing. I think I’m finally there.
It’s a really odd feeling though. After 40 + years of trying and doing and achieving and failing, it’s really odd to finally come to a point in my life that I’m really quite content. I’ve accomplished a lot, don’t particularly feel I need to prove myself to the world of my worth, nor do I feel driven to accomplish anything in particular… (except a REAL CD for our band… hahha… my reason for living!)
This is not to say that I don’t intend to keep moving foward, nor that I have no goals, because I do, but I’m also content to take a Sunday and do just what I want. To garden, have lunch with my girls, knit a little, take a nap and watch a movie. It’s really quite nice.
And a little weird. I’m not sure how to explain it. Usually, I would be all keyed up about the coming Monday. Mondays were always dreadful days, that back to the drudgery of nine to five workweeks. But it was a few months ago that I finally realized I don’t have Mondays any more like that. In fact, if I REALLY wanted to, I could take the WHOLE Monday off! Why not?
I can work at my leisure, I finally have achieved a nice rhyme and rhythm to my life and my career. We have about 5 orders in house, and a few more from this weekend to print out. Jessy is doing that now as she watches a movie. We’ll go over them and get them out the door by Tuesday at the latest. I have a meeting Monday evening with my business mentor and my partners in crime, but that’s not until 7 PM. I’m working on a email newsletter for our music system fans, but it’s not on any set schedule, so when I get it done, I get it done and email it out. I’m down to a nice stack of 15 cards and none of them are pressing. It’s really quite nice.
Had a nice big sale that took care of a lot of bills, our car repairs, and helped to order stock for the coming holiday rushes. So we’re doing much better financially, and are coming into a more flush period. The last quarter is always much better for us. This year I plan to use the majority of those profits to pay off any left over debt we may have. Which is not much. Catch all the utilities up and over, maybe even prepay some of them. That way when it gets a little leaner, we’ll be ready.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can do it. You can cut back and save and budget. You can adjust your expectations and get rid of that big house and two car payments and scale back and find that contentment is something you CAN reach. We did. And we’re just people, just trying to live a little more simpler, yet richer. Taking time to smell the roses and all that.
I just watched a movie on Netflix called Babies. It was a neat film, following 4 babies around the world for their first year and a half or so. And I was sort of startled to see how the western babies and their families were very complicated and stuffed with a lot of the trappings of so called civilized life. Yet the Mongolian and African bush babies, they had very very simple lives. And yet, amazingly so, all the babies ended up doing a lot of the same things, leading up to walking confidently. It really showed me that we humans can live very simply and contented, and that all humans have the same basic needs. Shelter, warmth, good basic food and people that love and protect us. Everything else is just the extras. The one thing that was universal was the love of the mommas and babies. It was beautiful to see, shining in their eyes and hearts. I think as long as we have our loved ones with us, we can weather anything and find contentment in just the littlest things. A smile, a hug and a kiss.
Be careful not to confuse STUFF with contentment. Stuff is just stuff. It’s the moments of just living and breathing in the nice fall sunshine in an old hammock swing that really bring a sense of contentment when all is said and done to me. How about you?
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Did I mention how much I love my yard? It’s just SO perfect. It’s only missing one thing and that is a cute little chicken coop. Maybe some day…
But, no, I adore my yard. And one the things I like the best? Is that an hour in the yard is a lot of time working, and accomplishing things. It’s just the right size that if you go out with your daughthers and you work for a good solid hour you can get SO much done, it’s not funny. And you can then ENJOY the yard!
When we lived in the HUGE house… with the nearly 1/2 acre yard (a bit more than 1/3 and not quite 1/2) it was really a chore just to keep up with it. Mowing and weeding and shoveling in the winter and all that goes into a HUGE manicured lawn. I had several planting/garden areas but still, it took a while.
Here at the Moby, it takes about an hour to mow all the yard and that’s mostly because you have to weave around stuff. (I’m going to fix that next spring… put in more planted and mulched areas and more streamlined grass…) ((If you can call what I have grass, it’s really more a trimmed weed patch!)) It takes an hour to rake all the leaves. It takes about an hour to shovel all the walks and out to the cars if you get a good snowfall. And an hour or two a week keeps the yard looking tidy and cared for. Even with all the garden beds, they get a good mulching in the spring and then just an hour or so here and there to keep the weeds at bay through the summer. And an hour here and there to trim out the dead stuff in the fall for the compost pile.
Then you have plenty of time to sit outside in the hammock and enjoy the outside instead of working hard just to keep up with it.
And what is super nice, is that it’s just perfect for letting it go for a week or more when you are super busy. I like that.
We spent an hour today taking out the last of the tomato and sunflower plants that got brown and frost burned a few nights ago. And Maggie raked up a bit of leaves to lay in the beds. Just a good tidy up. And then we laid in the hammock or on the ground and just visited and talked with the puppy played with the rake. She hates garden tools for some reason. Growls and snarls and wants to kill them. She’s weird.
Now we’re all done for the day and I think I’m going to take a nap. 
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