The Simple Life at Home

Lately, I've come to realize that I am not really happy with my life. I mean, I love God, my husband, and my children. I'm happy in that sense. But I'm not happy with my quality of life. There's very little fun, very little inspiration. Just a whole lot of chores, driving people here and there, and sitting around with everyone in the family on their separate laptops.

Not my idea of a great life.

So what can I do about it?  I want to enjoy this amazing life God has given me.  Instead of just sitting on the sidelines, I want to savor every second, falling into bed at night with a smile on my face knowing the day has not been wasted.

Here are a few steps I hope to take in that direction:

1) Start blogging again.  As I was considering this change in attitude I realized I have no creative outlets.  Nothing.  Like the Dead Sea who only takes in and doesn't give anything out, I've become dead inside.  We are meant to be creative like our Heavenly Father.  Now, I have no actual artistic talent per se.  But back when I was blogging regularly, I felt invigorated by it.  Once I started working I felt too pressured to keep it up, but now I realize that for me it is a necessary outlet that will bring some small measure of life and joy back to my spirit.

2) Embrace simplicity.  I've been reading a lot lately about minimalism and it's really drawing me.  The thought of just streamlining and simplifying, not just our home but our lives really speaks to me.  We have so much stuff.  Needless, pointless stuff that weighs on me day and night.  Recently a dear friend here in Doha repatriated back to the US.  As I helped her pack up I was overwhelmed with the sheer amount of things she had in her house.  Now it was, for the most part, all very beautiful stuff, but it made me very aware of how the over-abundance of belongings doesn't really bless us.  As she struggled to decide what to keep, what to give away, what to throw away, it struck me that probably most of that stuff she hadn't used in years and that I have a similar situation in our own home.

In a couple of years, we plan on moving back home to the US and I don't want to find myself in that situation.  While we plan on only returning home with things that are truly meaningful to us, selling off everything else and starting fresh back home, I want it to be as smooth a process as possible.  To that end, I've started a pile of things in my room - things I don't use, don't love, don't need.  There's a large "garage sale" in May at our school and I'm planning on clearing out big time in preparation for it.

3) Have fun.  We very rarely socialize.  I don't know how it's happened, but we've become virtual hermits. Between the flat-out exhaustion of Hubby's work schedule (6 days a week, starting at 6:30 am) and the kids' demanding homework load, we spend most of our evenings helping them out, doing dinner dishes and then heading to bed.  But we've decided that we are going to invite others over at least every other month.  We're hosting a game night for 3-4 other couples this weekend, in fact.

For our marriage life, I've decided to quit whining about how we never do anything fun and make it happen instead.  I've discovered an awesome site "The Dating Divas" that's got a bazillion ideas of ways to break out of the same old dinner and a movie date night.  One idea I have used is a series of dates in which each date is set in a different country.  I printed up phony plane tickets, an official itinerary, and even a fake passport for Hubby.  We had our first date a week or so ago and "travelled" to France - I made homemade quiche, salad, and threw in a bottle of non-alcoholic bubbly and we had a lovely picnic on the living room floor with a video of scenes of France with cafe-type music playing on the tv screen.  Then we cuddled up and watched The Artist before heading out for dinner crepes to cap off the evening.

I'm excited about these changes.  Small tweaks that hopefully will make a difference in my outlook on life.  I hope you follow along.  I know I've been AWOL from the blogosphere for quite a while, but I'm looking forward to getting back on board.