I’m a happier man these days. Hang on, I need to rewind slightly.
The last month or two has been shit, really shit.
We were told some time ago that we would need to leave our home of almost ten years and find some other place to live. That was shit. Then my car blew up, that was also shit. So what followed was weeks of hunting for alternative digs for my family and I, locating a new car and to try and maintain some sort ofย normality for Karta.
The deck seemed to be stacked and I’d have to play some sort of killer hand if I was to get us through all of this crap unscathed. So I started to get a handle on stuff, and for a while things began to move in the right direction.
Then my mother was taken ill and I was told to get my arse to the hospital to say my goodbyes! Happily this turned out to be a false alarm, but it was not what I needed amongst everything else that I was trying to do.
For a long time I resisted the changes that I could see that we would have to make. I didn’t want to move out of a two bed bungalow with a double garage and a big garden. I didn’t want to spend money on buying another car and I didn’t want to have to decorate an entire new home either.
Money began pouring out of our bank accounts, it was like trying to hold a handful of ice cubes on a hot day without getting wet hands. My stress levels began to creep up, and the more I held on to what I thought was important, the harder it seemed to be to see solutions.
At this stage our family and a good friend stepped in with an offer of help, this took a lot of the sting out of situation we now found ourselves in.
So we eventually moved into a small apartment, decorated it and then stopped. As I sat, exhausted from carrying hundreds of boxes up three flights of stairs, I realised that we really did need to reduce this pile of stuff further. I thought that I’d made some progress towards reducing the amount of belongings we had. How wrong I was. I sat down with Rhona and talked at length with her about what we needed to do. We decided that we needed to give up keeping a hold of things that might be useful in the future, things that hold only a small amount of sentimental value along with a ton of Karta’s old toys. We decided that resistance really is futile.
Trying to fit the contents of a two bed bungalow, with a big garage and a large garden into a two bed flat is akin to squeezing a round peg into a square hole. It’s tiring, stressful and extremely frustrating. So we did what any rational person would have done, we came away on vacation! As I write this, I’m sitting next to a wood fire in a cottage high in the Welsh mountains.
We’ve made time for a much needed break from the madness and expense of having to move home. The longer we spend away from the chaos in Broadstairs that is our new home, the easier it gets to let things go. We’ll be making plenty of goodwill visits to our local charity shops, as well as trips down to the refuse and recycling centre upon our return. Our goal is to become lightweight, minimalist and able to relax. The thought of this makes me happy. A life without too much stuff is a life of freedom.
Live long and prosper!
Z