Goodbye, My Planners

Today I bid goodbye to my planners. I have many of those for more than 10 yrs of writing my daily musing and adventures. I must say that they are very dear to me. The pages from these planners became my journals, which contained my hopes, dreams, and even heartaches. The transition from my teenage years to being an adult was inscribed in there too. Those are a lot of days, and yes, equivalent to many pages.

My father decided to bring old papers, newspapers, books, and other items to our friendly junk shop neighbor. We became pretty diligent in making sure that we collect those instead of throwing them away to recycle. However, they became an eyesore and are consuming too much space already.

I was holding on to these planners for a very long time. I thought that I might keep them as long as I am alive. Unfortunately, they were already consuming too much space since I have 1-2 planners per year, 1 for personal and 1 for work stuff. My friends knew that I like jotting down things to organize my thoughts, so they gave me the planners as gifts. So often, I ended up having 1-2 planners per year, sometimes more. Each page reminded me of each day. Some are blank (I’m just too lazy to write), and some were full of memories. Some planners are very colorful with charming illustrations and stickers, some as I grow older, were cleaner and more simple. Looking through the pages made me remember the past years, and though I like planners, I realized that I am not very diligent in writing. I started writing eagerly from January to March and sometimes until June or July but most often, not making it by August to December. I rarely have December entries. It is like a New Year’s Resolution cycle. Still, every year, I repeated the same sequence.

Through minimalism, I realized that I have to part ways with the physical object and take a picture of them to remember them. They contain my memories for so many years, and though parting with it became easy now, it is still a bittersweet moment. It is nice to look back, but my mind is at peace, knowing that I have let go of a significant chapter of my life and move on for a more intentional life.

More Than A Year of No TV

Many of the people I know don’t know that one fact, we don’t have TV at home. Not because we cant afford it but we don’t really need it. My sister and I grew up in a generation where TV is a pacifier for energetic kids with busy parents. It was an escape of teenagers when things are unsure and emotions are like roller-coaster rides. It then was an escape for adults to be adults and face reality.

We liked watching everything from sun up to sun down. We ate breakfast, get ready to school and work while watching morning TV shows. We enjoyed lunch with entertaining noontime shows and siesta with afternoon drama. Our dinner consists of evening news and prime time drama. And extending supper or having midnight snack with late night TV shows or movie marathons. Our lives revolved with the lives of other people in the television. We were so busy with what’s happening in that big box that we forgot to live outside the box.

When my father was going back and forth to the hospital and we needed to moved homes, our jouney of life without television began. We started focusing on each other and tried to understand how to cope with everything that is going on. Day and night, our worries were endless. We needed more quiet time to recharge and fight a new day. Old-fashioned radios helped a lot in the beginning, we can listen to it for early morning news or music when needed. Most of time however, we don’t. With today’s technology as well, almost every information we needed is available. We started learning how to filter what we need to consume. Slowly, day by day, we learned to let go and survived the day without that big box.

The silence without television is liberating. We began to appreciate other sounds around us more, the birds chirping, the laughter, the kids playing and shouting, the rustling leaves, the wind blowing, the drops of rain and sometimes, the quiet sobs at night. We had more time to do other things and focus on each other. We had more time to go to the park, workout, sleep, cook, study, read books, laugh at each others jokes, sing, play, go to other places, explore, write and listen to each other’s story.

For some, the quietness is deafening and lonely. But for us, life without television is tranquility.

Finding My Way Back to Minimalism

A lot happened this year, and I thought that closing a long chapter of my life would give me more time than I needed. However, life happens, and I aimlessly filled up my day with activities that suck my life. I thought I would have more time to enjoy sipping my morning coffee, listening to songs that make me happy, reading excellent books, traveling, writing, and enjoying seeing sunsets and sunrise. I expected a lot.

It is Q4 now, and realizing that the year is in its last quarter made me rethink what I did or what happened. First, 2017 is a year of goodbyes for me. It is saying goodbye to comfort, security, stability, seeing good friends regularly, my book collection, travel collection, sleep, good health, and peace of mind. My parents were constantly in the hospital, and having checkups and operations made our schedule full and our pockets empty which led us to debt. Comfort, stability, and financial freedom are now on vacation after leaving the corporate world. Second, graduate study is always a challenge for me and would require me a tremendous amount of time to keep up. Giving up a lot of sleep and made me constantly question my worthiness. I often wonder if this is the right road to take. I wanted it a lot before, and now I am asking myself WHY? I could only travel this semester’s break and went to 2 provinces with my sister and nephew. Those two trips are long overdue and very short. I seem to be doing lots of things, and I asked why I need to do all these things until recently.

I started Minimalism last year when my parents got sick, and I always thought I was forced into it and that I don’t enjoy what I am doing. I am not a minimalist but instead being frugal. This weekend was a recharging weekend for me and gave me a lot of time to think, and I realized that I badly need to find my way back to Minimalism. So today, during my daily commute, I listened to the podcasts of The Minimalists. I enjoyed it, and I wonder why I haven’t thought of it before to add value to my life while stuck in traffic. I already uninstalled several time-wasting apps while listening, so that’s a good thing.

Hopefully, I can keep this up, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this. Wish me luck 🙂

In Chaos

There is always chaos around us, sometimes it appears very simple, yet it slowly grows in your mind and explodes until you became this angry, irritable, unsociable person that everyone hated. It is frustrating. I encountered one last night, and it bothered me until this morning. I am furious.

I kept quiet, but deep inside my mind, I wanted to shout and fight back. I wanted to share this agony with the person who brought it. Then I remembered this:

“You have no right to hurt a person just because they hurt you.”

It is like a wake-up call. I could have fought and said terrible things that I might regret. I could have caused enormous pain, but I chose not to. I kept quiet. I started to discard negative thoughts and simplify what’s inside my mind, removing the clutter. I kept quiet and listened to calming music. I read motivation quotes until I felt better. I felt better

I felt better, and hopefully, I can do this every time chaos decided to show up again.

What I Can Do NOW

I’d been thinking about a meaningful and healthier lifestyle lately and come up with a list below of what I should be doing, my baby steps:

1. Less to no coffee
Since I’m acidic, I should avoid it but old habits die hard. I settled to LA coffee for months and now it is Day 2 of no coffee at all. Good luck to me. I settled to more water instead.

2. More fiber

So this means more greens and to watch the calories. I am not a big veggies fan but I like fruits. I can’t eat salad but a smoothie is ok. Thankfully there’s a Go! Salad booth in the office pantry, so I tried the Breakfast Smoothie (Apple, banana, cinnamon, oats, coco sugar, chia seeds, greens, and soy milk P120.00 or $ 2.4). I got an Oster MyBlend Personal Blender from my boss as a Christmas gift two years ago, which helps me a lot with my smoothie craving.

3. Have enough sleep

I’m a night owl, and my brain functions well at night. Needless to say that I can stay all night, especially during days when I have to meet a deadline or just binge-watching stuff. But that’s not healthy, and I try to sleep at least 6-7 hours a day. I know it should be more that is why I am keeping track of it.

4. Exercise

This is my weakness. I am probably too lazy and think of many things to do instead as an excuse to exercise. However, as we age, I realized that I should focus more on this. I could start on adding more minutes of walking, then later on, probably jogging then running. I wish! We live near a newly developed concert ground, and people run/jog there every morning, so that should be a great start. Baby steps.

5. Read more books

I love books, and reading more books is part of “My What I Wanted to Do List”—specifically reading books from different parts of the world, or at least the English translation of it. So I checked my Goodread’s list, and as of today, I have 138 books in my Read Bookshelf: 1 (JP), 1(US – probably more, but I haven’t updated it yet), 1 (BR), 7(UK), 1 (SG), 1 (IN), 1 (FR), 1 (PH – most likely more).

6. Learn/Relearn something each day

I try to check Pinterest and Quora to learn or relearn something each day, mostly about minimalism, technology, literature, and everyday living.

7. Be positive

This is hard, I know. But we all need to try 🙂

I realized while writing this post that these to-do things are part of “My What I Wanted to Do List.” So back to baby steps to achieve what I wanted to do in the future that I can do now.

Choosing Simply

There are moments in our lives that we realized that we have to let go and move on to simpler choices because it will make us happy.

That is why after 14 years of using Blogger as my primary blogging tool, I am now moving on to WordPress. I have tried this for a while using a different link, but I then forgot about it, and when I do remember, I felt that I would just post it to Blogger instead. My “Daring to Live Life to the Fullest” blog is still up and I might post ramblings there still but I am hoping to continue my journey here for a more simple but rewarding life.

May you find value in reading my posts.