Alan Christiansen

Sometimes our best laid plans are … wrong. Maybe they are entirely wrong, or maybe they are not right for a particular time or place. This can be true for both big picture plans and smaller daily plans. In either case, it’s important to learn when it is better to push through with your plans because you had promised yourself or someone else that you would, or to scrub those plans and follow a new path present in front of you. Knowing the right course to take in this situation can be tricky. I know because I’m faced with this dilemma all the time, and this weekend in particular.

It had been my intention to get in a solid 8+ hours of work for the mill this weekend, and it felt really important that I get started on this soon. Sunday was the day I had planned for this, but obstacles kept getting in the way. I slept much later than I had planned, and wasn’t feeling well when I finally did get up. After finally leaving for my local coffee shop the radiator hose on my car burst on the way there. I had to stop and patch it up with some duct tape and then drive it to my auto-mechanic (who was luckily very close by). When I finally made it back home I was still not feeling well and was even more unmotivated to get going on this and was sad that I would have to miss quality time with my family in the afternoon.

What to do?

Family fun wins the day this time.

Family Baseball

Family Baseball

Family Board Games

Today I had the whole day to do as I pleased. I had the kids for part of the day, but still, I could do whatever I wanted with the day ¹. I have a list of things to do about a mile long, but instead I chose to work outside on my latest loom restoration project for a friend. I was in my bliss.

Previously I had given the loom a once over, and figured out all the problems and either fixed or figured out a fix for most of them. All I had left was to completely break it down, clean it, lubricate all the moving parts and put it back together. That’s what I worked on today and it felt so good. I was simply taking my time in working to transform something from a dilapidated state to something beautiful again. I’ve still got a little ways to go and look forward to finishing up the job soon.

I think the thing I liked most was how I felt as I was working on it. I lost all track of time and was completely absorbed in what I was doing. It didn’t feel like work. It felt like me just being me. I want more of that in my life.

1. Isn’t it true that we can always chose how we spend our day? Granted we will always have responsibilities, but we do have a choice in the big picture of what we do with our lives and the direction we decide to send it. I think this is the topic of an upcoming post… ↩

Sometimes life sneaks up on you and your carefully laid plans and the time and space you’ve set aside for yourself gets bumped or interrupted. What do you do in that case? Easy, you roll with it and make the best of the situation.

For the past 7 days (!) I’ve written and published something to this blog. I have started at least 5 or 6 blogs over the years with the intention of writing regularly, and I’ve never once had a running streak this long. One thing that has helped me stay on track this time around is dedicating my lunch hour solely to writing for the blog. Well, today my lunch time needed to be taken at an earlier time for something of far greater importance. But what to do about my writing time and this 7 day streak I have going? It would be easy to let this one day slip and just get back on track tomorrow. But unfortunately for me, building up momentum on any project can be so hard and breaking it, even for one day, could be disastrous. I’ve loved this time to write out my thoughts and share them here and I want this to continue. So, to stay on track I’m just going to take the 15 minutes I’ve got right now today to pound this little post out. It will be unedited and raw as I type it here. And i’m ok with that and I hope you are too. So the lesson to myself, and hopefully to you, is don’t let life’s inevitable hiccups interfere with a good thing going. When those bumps come, be ok with doing your best in the time you’ve been given to keep up that momentum. Your future self will thank you for the effort.

Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed with too much to do, in not enough time, with little to know motivation to do it? Yea, that’s what I thought. Me too.

Well, I have some good news. In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually managed to tick a few things off my list that had been hanging over my head for months. I’d spent countless hours fretting and worrying in my head about how I was going to get them done or when. I kept putting them off and putting them off, until they were at priority ‘hair on fire’ and I had to get them done. And I did it! In hindsight I think it was two key things that allowed me to get them done and with embarrassingly little effort compared to what I had anticipated it would take.

1. Just start. Just pick the smallest possible step that will bring you even just a fraction closer to being done – then do it. And I do mean tiny. It could be as simple as opening your email client or word processor with the intention of getting started. It could be looking up the phone number of the person you need to call. Or looking up an answer to a question you aren’t sure about. The key is to just get started. Then let the momentum of that first step carry you onward. Even if you can’t get it all done in one go, just having started can quickly give you a clear picture of the road to completion. Now with those next steps clearly in front of you it will be easier to pick those guys off and you will be done in no time.
2. The other was being ok with doing a good enough job, instead of waiting for things to come together so that I could achieve some unnecessary example of perfection that even my unborn grandchildren would be proud of. There is absolutely an acceptable and obtainable bar below perfection we can all strive for.

Sadly, these weren’t new lessons for me. I’ve learned both of these first hand many times before. This time around I think because it happened in such quick succession and on multiple projects the pattern became clearer.

If there is something you need or want to get done and you just can’t manage to get any traction on it, give one or both of the above a try. I think you will find it is just the trick to get you on your way.

Lunch update

Well, I successfully packed my lunch in a little Tupperware box this morning, and brought along the chopsticks as well. LOVE – IT. I think I have the beginnings of a winner on my hands here. As it turns out I’m not as terrible with chopsticks as I thought, but it was still enough to slow me down and eat my meal one slow bite at a time. Also, not dropping each thing in its own individual bag actually made my lunch packing faster, as well as being nicer on the eyes when it was time to eat.

I had a quasi bento ¹ style lunch today. Considering what I often each for lunch, I’m pretty pleased with the food I had. Some sliced turkey and cheese, a few chips, and some grapes and tomatoes. I had intended to bring along some sliced cucumber and carrots too, and also the fixings for a quick miso soup but forgot to grab them on my mad dash out the door. I’ll plan a little better next time. The disappointing part of the meal though was two fold. When it was time to eat I dumped a pile of food in individual plastic bags from my lunch sack, and then proceeded to devour all of it in under 10 minutes. I can do better.

I have two thoughts on this.

1. I think presentation is important! I know its just ‘me’, but darn it … I deserve better! And so does the earth. It seems silly and wasteful to use up 4 or 5 plastic bags every day for a lunch and then throw them away. Its true that I could re-use them and that would be better on the environment, but that still leaves me snatching bites of food from a littering of plastic bags strewn onto the desk. What if instead I packed my food into a reusable container? Like a traditional bento box. (I know many of you are rolling your eyes with a “Duh!” expression on your face, but I can be slow sometimes and this is me being real. Go easy on me.)
2. I ate so fast I hardly even tasted the sweetness of the grapes or felt the texture of the turkey in my mouth. It was over and gone in a flash. What if I tried eating with chopsticks? Hmm. I think that would actually work really well for me, because I’m terrible at eating with chopsticks! I think that would slow me down enough to be both mindful of the food I’m choose to eat next and would also keep me from shoving 5 at a time of anything into my gaping piehole.

Looks like I’m on a quest. Stay tuned for the results.

1. If you are familiar with traditional Japanese Bento you’ll know I’m using the term extremely loosely here. What I really mean when I say ‘bento’ is an interesting variety of foods that could be eaten picnic style with the fingers. ↩︎

I’ve been fascinated for years by the concepts of voluntary simplicity and minimalism. I’ve read so many books and articles, and I’ve gone through multiple phases of reducing the amount of stuff that I own and use every day. It always feels good to pare down my possessions to only what I use and care about most.

On the flip side, I still love the rush of buying things! I’ve never been one to impulse buy, but I am prone to getting an idea in my head of something that I need and then spending hours researching the ‘best’ one and then getting that thing. Does this go against the principles of minimalism? The purchase is most always a conscious and methodical decision. If it replaces something I already own I will usually try to get rid of what it has replaced. But I always wonder, would it be better to make due without, or to buy a good enough version from the thrift store out of whatever happens to be on the shelf?

What is actually at the core of the minimalism movement? Is it based in an effort to reduce our impact on the earth’s limited resources? Is it to rid the individual mind of the worry and anxiety that comes along with owning so much useless crap? Both I suspect, but does the reason even matter? Maybe it is good enough to introduce consciousness into our consumption; to cause us to stop and take inventory and evaluate the real need before making a purchase. I suspect the need we are attempting to satisfy is not physical at all, but rather a desperate grasp at filling a void of control, or social standing amongst our peers.

How would our world change with a societal mindset focused instead on the intangible products of love, generosity and mutual respect?

Where does a change like that begin?

Right here. Right now. With you. And with me.