This is a blog from June 2014. There are many blogs and videos that are not part of this website because when I launched this new site I decided to start fresh and add videos and blogs from the past in time integrated with current ones… Here is one of those blogs from the past. I feel that this is in line with what I am doing now. Pivoting from how to get organized to Getting organized as a way to realize our full potential and living the life we dream of.
Here goes…
I recently went to see The Minimalists, founders of www.TheMinimalists.com, and it really had an impact on me.
I have been searching for happy since 1980. I was 1 week from my 19th birthday when I got married. I was pregnant and Catholic. Back then, if you got pregnant, you got married, there was no choice.
Still, I expected to be happy, just like everyone in my family, but that didn’t happen. We were very young, and simply should not have gotten married.
I am Christian, I didn’t read the Bible at the time, but I believed that God didn’t leave us here to figure things out. I thought that maybe the answers to my question “How can I live life happy?” were in The Bible. So I began searching.
Since then I have found happiness, filing for divorce had something to do with it 26 years later, but it was not the REASON that happiness came into my world. Al-Anon had a great deal to do with the happiness that I was able to find, but still, now I am not where I want to be.
I discovered minimalism in December of 2013. It intrigued me because people who were searching after a minimalist lifestyle were finding happiness. But they were not in a mess. Their STUFF was neatly stored away. They were not living with clutter, battling with being late for everything and losing everything, they could have company over without being embarrassed. And they found that living with less stuff made them happy.
So I decided to try it. Even though by all standards I am happy, but I have to admit I am still on my journey. I called my girlfriend who came with me to see The Minimalists speak and told her I was going to do my next dejunking as a minimalist.
I really found out something profound! I may not actually want the things I thought I did. When looking at the things in my home from a minimalist perspective, and not the North Jersey Italian mom, I identify with. I realized that my things were obscurely part of my identity.
Maybe it is because of who I have been told I was. An Italian Jersey girl who is a mother and has a family and I stay put. But maybe that isn’t who I am at all. While looking at things from a minimalist perspective I decided that there were lots of things I did not want.
So I am going on a new journey, which is just an extension of the one I have been on.
I am starting with my porch. In the video, I talked about what I wanted it to look like but told myself that I couldn’t have that because there were other things in there I wanted.
Well, now I realize, maybe I don’t want those things!
Taking this route, I believe is going to prove to be eye-opening. I predict that I will be astonished at what happens to me and my life.
In the video, I talk about the fact that chapters in my life were written because of my circumstances and not because it was what I wanted. So at age 53 (currently 63) I am going to begin to write my own book. I will remember who I was many years ago, what my passions were, what my talents were, and see where it brings me.
(2024 Note: This Facebook Page is still there but I never really go to it. Somehow it fell off soon after I started it… Should it be revised?) If you want to join me, please let me know. We can get hooked up together and see what happens. I have made a Facebook group for us I called it Feminilism (Feminin Minimalists)
Much Love to you
Kathy
The Tidy Tutor