The Year of Living Minimally - Week Four

Aug 10

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Living minimally doesn't always mean donating/recycling/tossing out things. I'm still purging (bags of shredded paper mostly), but this week I've been focused on health issues, and thinking about other ways to clear out the clutter.I've pared down my email by unsubscribing to many newsletters and websites. It was all too much! I was receiving as many as 140 emails a day - recipes, health tips, political articles. I've deleted a lot of them. I still follow plenty of blogs, but I've changed the delivery of most of them to Saturday morning, when I don't mind taking the extra time to catch up.Late last year, I cut my Facebook friends list by about two-thirds. It was right after the election, and I had serious doubts about even continuing with Facebook. I decided to keep my author page active, but cut down on the number of connections on my personal page. There were some hurt feelings, which was never my intent, and I reclaimed as friends those who reached out to me. Social media has helped me find new readers. It's enabled me, the introvert, to be social in a way that's not anxiety-producing. But I try to limit myself to morning and evening - an hour or so at the beginning and the end of the day. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - it's enough.Think back to a time before social media. We kept in touch with friends by calling, writing, getting together. We certainly didn't call our friends several times a day to

Tell them what we ate for breakfast
Describe what we were wearing that day
Let them know we were tired
Tell them what we ate for lunch
Moan about traffic
Tell them which restaurant we were in for dinner (and what we ordered)

I'm guilty, too. But I'm trying to be more mindful, trying not to clutter your feed with meaningless posts. In the end, each of us chooses what will bring us joy, inspiration, laughter. Next week, back to filling the recycle bin!