New Year's Turn Around: Becoming a Minimalist

I have decided to become a minimalist.

It seems to be the result of a long journey really; a quiet yearning in my soul that was blessed with an "Aha!" moment as I watched a documentary on minimalism. "THIS is what I want!  THIS is what I have been longing for!" I said to myself.  And my "Aha" moment turning into an "Aaaaaaaaaah" moment with a big sigh of relief.

But of course I don't quite know how to do this with four adults currently living under one roof - a roof Drip Dry and I have lived under for over 32 years.  We and our children have acquired a lot of stuff in those 32 years and it all seems to be screaming to be released from overstuffed closets.  The same desire came over me around the same time last year and I quietly trimmed down my wardrobe to an acceptable non-working level.  I weeded out some of my humongous book collection which used to be the pride of my heart.   I threw out some old sheets and towesl and I boxed up some extra vases and endless sets of Waterford salt and pepper shakers.   I even started to rebox my grandmother's china which was sitting in our basement - untouched since we moved into the house all those years ago.  But then I stopped.  Half way through.   Lost my energy.   Got sick.   Really sick.   And never picked it up again.

Until. . .

Until the Christmas season snuck up on me once more and my family wouldn't allow me to leave town for the duration.   Nor would they allow me to stick my head under a pillow and sleep it away.  So I devoted my hate of Christmas over-decorating-over-eating-over-buying-and-over-stuffing to purging the junk from the drawers and closets.  "Aaaaaaaaaaaah!"

And now it's time to experience the cathartic relief from writing once more, but I'm not sure how to go about it.   I purchased a simple little black journal that I envision a minimalist using and I also pulled out this slim little laptop the Drip Dry bought for me last Christmas and has only been used once a month for paying bills.   Both my pen and my keyboard are poised and we shall see which one wins.

How Does One Blog These Days?

As many of you may realize, I've been out of the blogging business for a while now and feel just a bit like a fish out of water.  How does one blog these days?  And what happened to all of those other blogging voices I used to hear?  I carefully searched for the 109 blogs which I used to follow on a daily basis and, to my dismay, discovered that a mere 36 of them are still up and running.  Think about it.  The majority of these were humor blogs.  Has life become less humorous?  More serious?

Or did my fellow bloggers encounter obstacles like I did?  Did life rise up and hit them with an enormous whammy?  Do they find it now impossible to write about their experiences with illnesses?  Grief?  Loneliness?  How would the funny lady talk about an alcoholic husband?  Drug addicted teenager?  How would a dependable jokester admit to the world that his wife has left him?

Maybe we were always blogging to cover our different sadnesses in some way.  I know that I was writing to save my own sanity.  Perhaps the same is true now.

But part of our human-ness is that we change and grow with life's experiences.  There is no fixed or unchangeable self.  We cannot control what comes our way, but we can control our reaction to it.  Adversity makes us stronger, more compassionate, and allows us to rise above our circumstances.

No comparisons, no advertising, no comments.  This is what I hope my bloggy life will embrace now.  I hope to convince you that, although my disease has limited me somewhat, my disease and I are not one.  I intend to advocate at times, inform at times, and certainly complain at times.  But I hope to still be able to find the humor in life again.

Aaaaaah, humor. . . 

 

Bohemian Blogger

My good friend, Pepe, once said. . .  I am the disillusioned.

Pepe's prophetic words, my friends, describe perfectly how I am feeling tonight:   Disillusioned.  Displaced.  Disaffected.  And just a wee-bit . . . Dis-tempered.

So distempered, in fact, that I have declared myself landed in Blogger's Bohemia.  

That's right, I am  the quintessential Bohemian Blogger.
  
And let me just state for the record that I have recently googled the term Bohemian Blogger, and - before publication of this post - the term itself doesn't exactly exist.  So that, my friends, means that I get to be the first to define its meaning.   And  if you Wiki the term Bohemian you will find that the term refers to  a literary gypsy - an artist who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art.  So a Bohemian Blogger may be one, like me, who has lost her way.


 Let's face it.   Do you know another artiste who would happily spend an entire weekend immersing herself in the persona and malapropisms of a smelly, delusional, and lecherous skunk while trying (unsuccessfully) to climb the search engine of Pepe le Pew? 

No, but a Bohemian Blogger would.


Because a Bohemian Blogger, my friends, is a blogger looking for her identity.   A mommy blogger who never really bragged about her kids.  A humor blogger who lost her ready-made material when her three teenage daughters grew up and flew the coop.  A snarky blogger whose second act vanished  when her computer-illiterate boss retired and the mere thought of her new boss reading her blog left her itching to enter the confessional.  A Bohemian Blogger has been stranded in no-man's-land. . . looking for a new home. . . .a new target. . . a new raison d'etre if you will. . .

Let's face it.

I am the Hardy without the Laurel . . . the comic without the relief. .  the Looney without the Tunes. .  ..the Rhapsody without the Merrie Melody.

Because I'm easy come, easy go.

Little high, little low

Anyway the wind blows,

doesn't really matter to me. .  .

to me. . .

And let me just state for the record that I never killed a man.