On My MInd for Awhile.

I read a lot of blogs, every day, throughout the day. Some of my favorites are listed on the right side of my blog, but some I haven't added yet and just google them each day. Others I find when I do a search while eating lunch or waiting for a client. It's something I love to do and really keeps me grounded in so many ways. 

But ....

I bet you knew there would be a BUT!

Yes, but .... I have to confess, I feel a bit out of place in the vast Blogland that I so cherish and participate in daily and this has been on my mind a lot lately. Like, really, quite a bit. Enough to have me ponder it at night and think about it during the day.

If you've read this far, you may now be wondering what my quandary is. So now I'll spill my thoughts and try to make sense of how I feel. Feel free to continue on if you'd like. It could get a bit messy .... and please know, this is not a complaint about how others live, just a observation of my own life and why I may not fit in to the trends that others have embraced.

I grew up with parents who were teens when I was born. They committed to making their little family work and a few years after I was born, my brother arrived. Perfect little family, one of each and lovely parents. It was hard and I truly remember both the good and the bad. I know we had very little money to start and we lived in a series of small basement apartments at first. Then one day, my dad was able to scrape enough money together to put a down payment on a property to buy a real house and that was the turning point. We moved constantly so that they could gain equity and in time, my dad loved the process so much, he became a realtor, then in later an owner/broker. They carved an amazing life  as they continued to move up the status ladder but kept their roots close. Through all this, my mom was very conscious of what we had and what we didn't have, our needs and our wants. We lived sparsely, really an early version of being minimalists. But I will confess, I always felt that our homes, as lovely as they were, really were not "homey" or warm. Walls were always painted white, (one house even had white carpet ~ oh, the horror!!) we weren't allowed to hang up anything, except a few key pieces of abstract art my parents acquired over time. No color, no personality. I suppose it was easy to keep tidy and clean but from a young age, I would gaze out the window at everyone else's homes and wonder why I always wanted to go visiting. Even now, as an adult, I love driving down streets at night, when inside lights are on and you can peek into the lives of the homeowners. I suppose that's one thing that I love about blogging ~ a chance to see what it is like for others in their own homes, far away but close enough to feel connected. Fun on cold winter nights.

This is where I feel like I don't quite fit in. My true confession .... I'm not a minimalist and I personally don't have any desire to be. I admire those that can really embrace the lifestyle. I'm not a hoarder by any means and I regularly donate to our local charity shop. But truth be told, I love to have a home that is warm, comfy and gives us the freedom to enjoy the activities we love. This means we do have stuff, or as some say "collections" that they possess. I like that, along with "treasures" ~ a term we use when we take some time to visit our local Antique Mall or the charity shop. I guess at this time in my life, I feel like I'm not measuring up because I'm not into giving away all my worldly possessions and moving in to tiny house. We started with a very tiny house for the first 4 years of our marriage (before children), then a bit bigger house with a garage, then the same size but different community, then the house we lived in for 24 years and then finally this house that we personally designed and built from the ground up. We could actually fit our first house into this current house 2.5 times. Does this make me a bad person? Am I so far out in left field that my blog will never be interesting to others because I'm not focusing on some of the topics that do fit the current trends? Is it wrong to love our space and our treasures, in addition to our healthy, our family, our careers and our passions? I'd so love to know as it's a wonder in my brain. To be fair, our home doesn't just house the 2 of us but also our daughters and our grandson and guests who sometimes stay with us. It provides us space for our creativity in our various art mediums that we have been gifted with. It gives us space for meetings, space for writing, space for family dinners and gatherings. We've always lived in tight quarters until now. For this last half of our lives, treating ourselves to more space didn't require a debt load, although for now, we do have a bit of a mortgage, something we were done with previously. We'll pay it off before we move again and maybe by then, we'll be ready to downsize. I'm loving the space to breathe, to spread out, to create and to have privacy.

Because of the nature of my job, my passion, I give, give, give, give all day long. Coming home to this amazing sanctuary is almost like a reward for the compassionate care I, along with my team, provide on a daily basis. Maybe that's not the right term but that's the only way I can describe it.

Our space is not crowded and I often rotate items so that it's not all squished together. I store items for seasons and bring them in for that time and then they go back to storage. Maybe I have a bit of minimalism in me ~ I love clearing out cupboards and drawers and recycling! Maybe I'm in the middle between the two ideals. But the truth is, I love my house that is not a tiny house and I love the sweet items we've gathered over the years. And although I feel like I'm supposed to apologize for being in this space and place, maybe it's not an issue. I hope this doesn't make me a terrible person in any way, 'cause really, I'm quite lovely!

So that's the quandary in my head and my heart. I'm not sure if I need to re~examine how we live or if we need to even go there. I'm not sure if I'm out to lunch because I haven't embraced the minimalist life or if some of us are just not needing to go there. Whatever the right answer is, I hope in time it comes to me so I can make peace with what the heck I'm supposed to to do with all these conflicting thoughts circulating in my already full brain! That's all, on a rainy Friday night.

Do you ever feel like you don't quite fit in to the trends?

How do you live your life, your way, without worry?