Last month I wrote about having too many fingers in too many pies.
My life has changed dramatically over the last couple of months, the role reversal between Rhona and I is now complete.
I have become the stay-at-home parent, the house husband if you will. My days are mostly made up of school runs, grocery shopping, washing, cooking and cleaning. I run the family finances, and I take a little (unpaid) time each day to maintain the social media channels for the company that my wife now works for.
I have ideas and I make plans, a lot. These daydreams usually revolve around fantastic ideas about photography, writing, travel, art, fitness and diet. I get lost in these thoughts and convince myself that I have the potential to achieve greatness in any of the endeavours I embark on (except nutrition, fitness, photography and writing). I feel that there are glimmers of brilliance hidden deep within me, but that seam is beyond my reach.
I’ve been trying to motivate myself to crack on with my fitness goals. This hasn’t been going too well! My problem is that I eat late and usually keep eating until I’m too tired to stay awake. I can’t seem to break the cycle. I can’t “flick the switch” and make a concerted effort to begin. Don’t get me wrong, I usually walk four to five miles per day and at quite a brisk pace when I can; but the calories in are exceeding the calories out, and that my friends are making me fatter. I had a long conversation with a friend of mine about this the other day, and she’s going through a similar thing. No matter how committed to the new fitness regime we think we are, the black dog grabs hold of your trouser leg and pulls you backwards. I fucking hate it.
On top of this, I have decided that I have still got too much stuff. We as a family have too much stuff. Boxes and boxes of stuff and even some of those boxes are full of empty boxes! I think I need a massive clear out, I mean a big clear out, both the physical stuff and the mental stuff. Just sitting here in my shed, I’m surrounded by stuff. Most of it probably hasn’t been looked at and or touched for years. It just sits there on the shelf or in the drawer being stuff. Now I know what you’re thinking “he’s a hoarder, he needs to knuckle down and do something about it”. For the record I’m not a hoarder, I’m undecided is all. I can’t make up my mind if something will, in fact, be of some value at some time in the future. Deep down I know that it is just stuff and stuff can be replaced. If the house burned to the ground tomorrow, it would all be gone, and I should think I’d be relieved.
So here I am, a thin, healthy person trapped in a fat suit with a big red beard, a balding pate and clothes that don’t seem to fit me so well anymore. I live in a beautiful little house, with a loving wife and an awesome kid. We don’t have a mortgage but we do have a small amount of debt, and I mean small. We have a reasonably new car and an old banger, the latter we have just returned to the road after 16 months. The trouble is that our small house is running out of room for all of the stuff that we keep putting into it. Karta’s room is in dire need of a sort out, my shed needs a sort out, and our double garage also needs a considerable sort out. I can feel myself withdrawing. All of this stuff; the life stuff and the stuff stuff is clouding my view. I need a holiday. I need a vacation from all the stuff. I would like to go somewhere warm, with a pool and just press pause for a week. I’m not fussy, as long as I had my privacy and a swimming pool for my family to play in while I recline and read a few books. I think then, and only then I would be able to clear my mind enough to see the answers to my stuff problems.
I need some space, some room to manoeuvre. Could becoming a minimalist be the answer? I quite like the idea of reducing my dependency on stuff. I’d like to own just a few good quality things, plus one or two heirlooms that can be passed down to future generations of my progeny. My computer is important, I’ll need to keep that. My TV is a burden, as I pointed out in my last post, I watch too much TV and read too few books. So the telly could go, maybe just keep the small one so that Karta can plug in his XBox and play FIFA or PvZ or whatever his thing is at that moment in time. My smart-phone has been a bone of contention. I’ve addressed that by removing almost all of the social media apps that were loaded onto it. The biggest vampire sucking on my jugular has been Facebook. Again I’ve made changes to how I use that particular social media outlet, limiting myself to just 15 minutes “FB Time” per day.
The list is very long and is the reason why I need a holiday. Just me and my family, in a villa in the sun, drinking cold beer, eating good food and reading some great books.
Glad I got that off my chest, until next time, adieu.
Z