Simply Sunday #3

Happy Sunday!  Hope you've been having a great one.

Here are a couple of random things I did (or did not do) this week in my on-going effort to simplify:

First, I decided to limit myself to checking e-mail and social media to just once a day.  This was huge!  When I was in the rat race, the nature of my job required me to be in fairly constant communication in case someone needed me or there was an emergency.  It became such a constant focus, I never felt off-duty.  No matter where I was or what I did, I felt compelled to check e-mail every few hours.  When I began this new phase of my life, however, I realized that I was still obsessively checking my personal e-mail and social media throughout the day.  But it was highly unlikely that anyone would contact me with an urgent item via my personal e-mail account.  So this obsessiveness was silly.  And I realized it was becoming a real time suck.  While I was checking e-mail, I often figured I should check social media too.  Instead of being present with my family or doing all the things I needed to get done around the house, I was wasting too much time on e-mail and social media.  This week I decided I would check those things once every day and only for a limited time.  It is liberating!

Second, I am reading a novel.  I'm actually on my second one since stepping down from my paid gig.  This is really unusual for me.  I always read a lot, but typically I read non-fiction.  A lot of that has to do with my job, which required me to keep abreast of certain legal and policy issues.  I enjoyed that kind of reading, but I came to view fiction as almost decadent.  And for years I just didn't have enough time in my busy day for it.  I'm still reading non-fiction, but I've deliberately opted to read fiction recently.  This week I began Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. I had always wanted to read it.  The novel has a lot more detail than the Broadway musical!

Finally, our family took a short road trip.  This was really a big deal too.  Our family hasn't had a vacation in a year and a half.  We've been trying to hit certain financial goals associated with eliminating debt, so we've really tightened our financial belts and travel was out of the question.  We have now come within striking distance of our financial goals.  And we're exhausted because we've been keeping up a frenetic pace for about a year.  This was the first break we've had in all that time.  We went out of town.  Nothing fancy.  Nothing that most would find exciting.  We just had downtime for a couple days.   We swam, slept late, watched TV in bed, walked around to see sights and ate lots of yummy food.  We had a blast!

Hope you're enjoying your Sunday.