Category Archives: Lifestyle

Guest Post: Making Room for What Matters Most

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Today’s Guest Post is from Josh Martin. Josh is a humourist and blogger about simple living and making the most out of life. You can find more of his work at www.joshmartinink.com.

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It was January 2008 and I was 27 years old. An annoying blurriness in my left eye finally convinced me to see an optometrist. It turned out that the insides of my eyeballs were bleeding. That can’t be good, I thought to myself.

Turns out I was right.

A blood test at my family doctor the following week revealed some startling information. The normal amount of white blood cells in a healthy adult male ranges between 4 and 11. Mine? 584. Nope. Not good at all.

“It looks like leukemia,” Dr. Merker told me.

POOF. Complete evaporation. Suddenly, that budget meeting I had that afternoon didn’t seem to matter all that much.

I had cancer. Chronic mylogenous leukemia to be exact. The doctors gave me a 40 to 50 percent chance of surviving. Later I found out the odds were more like 20 percent. Damn.

What followed was a gruelling journey that included seven months of intense chemotherapy, radiation treatment and ultimately a bone marrow transplant. My immune system was reduced to nothing and I spent another precarious year recovering.

Throughout this journey I’ve experienced tremendous fear, anxiety, pain and a host of side-effects ranging from red urine to hallucinations of talking lobsters in my bed. But through it all emerged some profound lessons about life, its awesomeness, and how I want to live it.

I’m thrilled to say that I’ve beaten my cancer and now have a clean bill of health. My blood type before my transplant was A-Negative. It’s now O-Positive; a fact that still blows my mind. In addition to my new Positive blood type, I also have a new positive outlook on life.

Through it all there emerged some profound lessons. Lessons about what really matters in life and the importance of making room for those priorities. Balancing like a tightrope walker between life and death for as long as I did brought into sharp focus a clichéd, yet important, truth: we don’t have a lot of time, so spend it well.

I thought about the things I’d miss most should I slip off that tightrope. Family, friends and the hundred simple things we take for granted every day. Things that didn’t make my list? Money, my job, fancy clothes, a big house, fast car or big-screen TV. Experiential riches, not material wealth filled my list and opened my eyes to what matters most in life.

Lying in my hospital bed, I wasn’t kicking myself for not spending more time watching TV. Or buying more clothes. Or living in a bigger house. And I’m not psychic but I’m guessing you won’t be either when your time comes.

Our culture places a lot of emphasis on these material benchmarks of success. In pursuit of these acquisitions however, we often sacrifice time and relationships with the people and experiences that make life so enjoyable. As Henry David Thoreau said: “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

My journey with cancer helped me identify what really matters to me in life. But identifying these priorities isn’t enough. We also need to make room for them which often requires shifts in attitude and behaviour. For me, simple living is an approach to life that allows you to make space for the things that truly matter. My latest ebook, Balancing Priorities and Prioritizing Balance, explores this idea and offers advice and practical suggestions for how to not only identify your priorities but also make room for them.

Life rarely goes as planned. And as devastating a blow as my diagnosis with cancer was, I am nonetheless grateful for the way it shaped my outlook and how I want to live my life.

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Gift Giving & the Minimalist Lifestyle

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Last week was Sasha’s birthday.

As you might imagine, not too many physical presents get exchanged in the Rauch-Starr household. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t give each other gifts. Over the last several holidays, we’ve not exchanged gifts, but instead chosen something we’d like for our home, and bought ourselves that. This year, we didn’t even bother with that. We have everything we need, and we have some travel plans for this spring, and that’s enough.

On birthdays, we generally have a party, and on the actual birthday, go out to dinner. This is our way of giving each other “experience” (i.e., time with friends; good food) instead of physical gifts that clutter the house. On my last birthday, Sasha left me a series of very thoughtful notes around the house, and that was far better than any gift I could have unwrapped.

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It occurred to me, the morning of her birthday, while I was making the bed for a special treat, that I’d hit upon the perfect gift: I’d make the bed for her for an entire year.

If you’re an inveterate bed-maker, you might be thinking to yourself: How in the world is that a birthday gift? So, a little backstory. For the record, it doesn’t bother me in the least to have an unmade bed, and most of my adult life has been spent undoing the habit my mother so firmly tried to impress upon me. But Sasha really likes a made bed—it makes her feel happy and relaxed. Since she’s often out of the house well before I leave bed in the morning, she can’t make the bed as she usually would. For 3+ years we’ve lived together, and aside from the occasional mention of how much she likes the bed to be made,  she’s put up with the unmade bed.

As it turns out, when she discovered the note I’d pinned to her pillow, she was more excited than I’ve seen her about any other gift I’ve given her.

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This got me thinking, about gifts and the pressure to give, and what we really want from our spouses and friends and family.

Do we really want more stuff? Do we really want to be given things we don’t need or want? Is it really an obligation to give a (physical) gift?

Those questions being asked: It is fun and pleasureful to give. Life is about giving and receiving, just not on the commercial scale to which we are accustomed.

I hopped over to Miss Minimalist’s blog, because I know she agrees with me on this point, and found this: One Less Gift Holiday Gift Card Exemption.

There are a lot of great examples there of how to give without actually running out to the mall and buying something.

We can give experience (travels, adventures); we can give time (commit to a long walk together once a week for a year, set a night to cook dinner together); we can give community (volunteer, host a potluck); we can give earthly pleasures (good wine, good coffee).

Being a minimalist has meant, and continues to mean, the unlearning of the obligation to “buy” presents. Happiness, time together, a life more lived, cannot be bought. Giving transcends purchases, and always has.

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By the way, I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I far prefer making the bed over shopping :)

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Making Time and Place and Space to Create

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The theme this week is maintenance. However you put it—upkeep, chores—we all have stuff that needs to get done, pretty much all the time. Dishes, laundry, bed-making, grocery shopping, working. Not all chores are necessities, but some are. Not all chores are boring or inconvenient, but some are. Chore lists are like minimalists: no two are alike.

What’s on my chore list? Those five above rank pretty high on my daily & weekly lists. I’ve also got feeding the cats, watering the plants, vacuuming, balancing the checkbooks, paying the bills. And writing.

Yes, you read that right. I put writing on my to-do list. Every single day.

I wanted to be a writer because I love words, I love language, I love writing. I became a writer by making a daily practice of it. Equal parts passion and persistence. Both are important. Persistence maybe more so.

So, yeah, sometimes writing feels like a chore. Some days I’d much rather park myself in bed with my clowder of cats and a good book. Some days I’d actually rather do laundry and dishes and grocery shopping. Putting writing on the daily to-do list accomplishes two things: it brings writing out of the imaginative, perfect ether into the real world and it creates the space I need in my day to actually do it (I hate an unfinished to-do list).

In the opening chapter of The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield details his day. The most important sentence on that first page—“I sit down and plunge in”—pretty much says it all. Those six words embody the most straightforward way to creativity. Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird says, “Writing is like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.” In other words, writing is a chore the writer must do—and chore it may be, but the result is filling and nutritious, and the relief is incredible.

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Making Place

Depending on your personality, this might be the easiest of all the steps. If you’re already a committed minimalist or simplicity-seeker, you might know what I’m about to say. You must dedicate/designate/devise some sort of space in which your creativity is going to happen. It could be your desk. It could be your bed (preferably when your loved one is not sleeping in it). It could be in the bathroom (not as uncommon as you might think). It could be on the floor next to your desk (that’s where I do it). It could be on the couch, at the kitchen table, or in your walk-in closet (but, wait, you’re a writer, so you can’t afford a walk-in closet). Honestly, it doesn’t really matter where you choose, so long as it’s a comfortable spot where you don’t mind spending a lot of time, and if possible, a spot where the people in your house will leave you alone while you’re in it. Think of it as a sacred meditation spot.

You want the space to be clear of clutter. It should be a reasonably open and empty space. If you’re a mess-making creative, pick up after yourself when you’re finished with each session so that every time your return to the space it is clean and ready to nourish your creative desire.

Making Space

This one could take a little bit more work, and might require some collaboration. Space is different from place, in that place is tangible, and space is not. Space is where the writing lives, but place is where you go to open up the space and let it come out. Space is a mental thing.

Do you want to write? Paint? Draw? Take photos? Learn the art of flower arranging? Play music?

Good. The first step is figuring that out.

The second step is admitting it (it helps to admit out loud, to others, preferably at a large social gathering where most everyone you know will hear you and ask follow-up questions the next time they see you). The third step is thinking about how you’re going to make it happen—maybe you need to make a place, maybe you need to make time, maybe you need both. Perhaps you need supplies or a creativity partner.

Lastly, you’ll want inspiration, and that’s a daily process. Seek inspiration everywhere. In uncooked vegetables and radio broadcasts and poems and the feel of your pet’s fur. In the opening chords of a song you love and the smell of baking bread and the contrast of colors available all around you, if you’d just look. There is a lot of space in inspiration, and a lot of inspiration in space.

Making Time

Busy is a busy does. A lot of us live our lives as though we are in chronic deficit of time. Which isn’t exactly true. I understand that life is a big, complicated, crazy thing. I understand work and commuting and kids and pets and families and chores. With the exception of kids, I’ve got all of those too. I understand the concept of busy. I used to be busy myself. I’m still often busy—though now I’m usually busy writing something or other.

Here’s the thing about time. If you let it get away from you, it gets away. If you pretend like it doesn’t exist, you’ll never accomplish what you want to accomplish. There are 24 hours in the day, and you need to find a way to devote at least one of them to your creative pursuits.

I find the to-do list very helpful: I put writing on there as #1, and 9 out of 10 days, I make it happen. On the tenth day I don’t kick myself. I rest. And then I get back to it.

Put creativity on your to-do list, or on your calendar, or on a sticky note attached to your computer/bathroom mirror/refrigerator. Write in big letters. In pen. Even better, in permanent marker.

And then do it. Over and over and over again, until it becomes habit—because habits are really just behaviors that you’ve given a lot of time.

(PS. Things to eliminate in order to make time for creativity include: television, drinking, cleaning (believe me, the dirty dishes will still be there in an hour), shopping, Facebook, email, any and all work you might bring home from your job. Make sure you continue to make time for talking with your partner, playing with your kids, petting your animals, brushing your teeth, eating healthy meals, getting exercise, and relaxation (because usually making space happens when you relax).

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Space, place, time: plunge in!

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