EDITORIAL:
How often do you think: “I wish my life was simpler”. At various times in my life I have had this feeling and feel a few people around me think the same way.
The motivation for wanting to simplify your life can be driven by so many aspects of your life: health, experience, conscience, financial, work life balance and many more. The first thing I realise is how important my time is. Choosing what to do with my time is important and I think it should be for everyone. I decided to do a bit of research on “simplifying your life”. I will talk about this in a subsequent blog post – for those that are interested.
My motivation for thinking about this is related to my time and wanting to use it in a way that is beneficial to me and my family. We are going travelling as a family for about ten weeks – a great use of our time in my opinion. One of the things I have noticed as a family is our daily routines are getting more complicated. We get busier and seem to be doing more things on a day to day basis. We end up having to remember more things to take, confirm, pay or juggle. It is sometimes stressful. And not always enjoyable. So we are going away and have an opportunity to break some of these habits and rethink some of our approaches to the traps we fall into on a regular basis that stop us doing interesting things that we will remember for all the right reasons.
I went kayaking with my 5 year old son on Wednesday – I look after him for the day as he is not in kindergarten on this day. I have a list of chores to do that will take me weeks. But I didn’t care – it was a perfectly still warm morning. I didn’t take a phone so I have no photos to embellish this blog but I really don’t care. We saw a large smooth stingray and followed it around for 15 minutes while it was feeding in the sand below us in clear water. We have awesome memories of a day we shared an adventure.
My son will go to school next year and I will lose the Wednesdays I get to spend with him and do whatever we want. He will move on and develop new interests and that is great but I don’t want to waste the remaining few Wednesdays that I have with him. We also want our trip to be about us doing things together as much as possible and coming home with a great collection of memories. So simplifying life is a way I can keep some of that time with him next year onwards and keep sharing adventures with hime for a little longer.
Send me your ideas on simplifying your life…and await Part 2.
By David Parkington, Geographer and Technologist
