In the last week I read a wonderful short and easy book called How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis LPC. It made what I thought was a very good point that needs to be made more often.
A messy house is not a moral failing.
In other words, if you can’t get on top of your laundry or keep the house dusted or wash the dishes at the end of each day, that doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means that you’re struggling to keep your house right now.
At this end of the year, we tend to have more parties, more dinners, more people in our house, and for some of us this can be really overwhelming. We think that we need to have a clean and tidy house because if we don’t we will be judged or will judge ourselves to be ‘bad’ people. After all, cleanliness is next to godliness, right?
Well … the thing is, when it talks in the Bible about the kind of person God wants me to be, the kind of people he wants his children to be, it doesn’t say much about a clean house. Instead it mentions traits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. I’m thinking that this Christmas it might be a good aim to decorate our houses with those things.
I know that when I walk into someone’s house, the dishes on their sink don’t bother me at all. The dishes on my own sink bother me, because I know that at some stage I need to clean them, but your dishes? I have no responsibility to clean them. They don’t worry me at all. In fact, they make your house look just that little bit cosier to me. The same with the toys on the floor.
It’s not that I don’t love a beautiful house as much as the next person. It’s just that I’d prefer you to be at peace and filled with joy when you think of having me over. Not stressed and worried that you haven’t managed to clean to perfection or that you don’t have Christmas decorations up yet.
As Davis says, our houses are meant to support us, not the other way around. We are aiming for a functional house that lets us live our lives and she has many excellent tips to make your house work for you no matter your energy levels.
So maybe your house is the picture of perfection with beautiful colour coordinated Christmas decorations inside and out, or maybe you are still struggling to deal with last week’s dishes and the Christmas tree has a slim chance of getting put up on Christmas Eve and covered with the mismatched cardboard decorations your kids brought home from school, or perhaps you are not having a tree this year because the new puppy will just pull it down and destroy it. No matter where you stand in the cleanliness stakes, I pray that you will be able to feel the peace and joy, patience and kindness, gentleness and self-control that will allow you to enjoy the celebration and the people you celebrate with.
Merry Christmas! I’m taking a break now, so if you don’t want to miss me when I come back please go to ruthamos.com.au and sign up to my newsletter. You can find the podcast version of this post here. See you next year!
OK, so they’re not the best photos (and the one of me is just as bad as any of anyone else, so I don’t feel too guilty sharing) but this was us having fun at another community event organised by our church.
This week has been marked for us by two community events. On Sunday, we joined with our church community to welcome two children by baptism. Afterwards, as we were godparents, we joined with the family for a lunch together. We chatted, we ate excellent food, we looked after the elderly great-grandfather and we sat in the sun and played with blocks and bikes with the babies.
On Monday, we were at church once again, this time for the funeral of a very dear friend. We joined with all her friends and family from all stages of her life. We overflowed the church and some of us watched from the hall next door. We sang ‘If I Were a Butterfly’ with the actions, we listened to beautiful music and to stirring stories that made us laugh and cry and think. Afterwards, we hugged each other and cried some more and ate good food and drank hot drinks that were made for us by the café next door. (First funeral I’ve been at where I could drink a decaf lactose-free flat white!)
Both of these happenings have made me really think about the importance of community. But it doesn’t have to be these big emotional happenings that draw us into community. Community can happen in small ways too.
On Saturday night, a few friends got together for something that has become an almost regular occurrence. A jam session. No, not toast, music. We all take our instruments, and some of the more organised among us have made small booklets with the lyrics and chords of a few of our favourite songs in them. We play. We sing. We make mistakes. We eat snacks. And after a couple of hours (which pass really quickly) we pack up and head home again.
Community isn’t only for the extroverts among us either. On Tuesdays I’m part of a writing group. We get together, make a cuppa and grab a snack, then each of us takes out the project that we are working on right now and begins tapping or scribbling away. We sit in silence for about 90 minutes, maybe a bit longer. Then we wash up the dishes and head home again. You may think that we’re not making community, but even the little conversation around the edges has built firm friendships that will last and that also extend past the writing group and into the rest of our lives.
Communities like this, whether they are part of an historic institution, or just something you’ve come up with on the side, are the glue that hold our society together. I’m beginning to think that community is vital to civilisation. And if you can’t be part of a community in person, you can now be part of one online, which is almost (but not quite) as good.
Here are some more communities I’ve come to know:
Song Space meets to sing together once a month. Just for the joy of singing.
NaNoWriMo – a writing event that encourages people as they attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Nothing draws people together like shared hardship!
Story Dogs where participants take their dogs to schools so that students can read to them.
Stitch and B*tch sessions where people knit and chat.
A community of bike-riding volunteers get together to maintain mountain bike tracks so that they can use them later on.
Ultra106.5 – the community radio station where I record part of my podcast every fortnight.
A square dancing community that keeps old dances alive and choreographs new ones. And the swing dancing community is pretty lively too, both in Tasmania and around the world.
There are as many communities as there are human activities. Everywhere people come together, whether frequently or infrequently, to be a part of each others’ lives and to support one another. I’m not saying that you have to add another thing to your life every week. Some of these things are annual, some are monthly, some are more frequent. You need to find the thing that suits you.
I’m so glad you’re a part of the Quiet Life community, and I hope that you have other in-person community in your life too. If not, seek it out. Even for super-introverts like me, being part of a community, linking our lives with others, is vital to a good life.
Drop me a note at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook or @aquietlifeblog on X. And feel free to pass this blog on to anyone who would find it helpful.
The summer holidays are almost upon us and I think I’ll be taking a small break from the blog and podcast. To make sure you don’t miss me when I come back, sign up to my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au and you’ll get an email as soon as I’m back to work.
Beautiful tulips from the north west coast of Tasmania
This week I’ve been working on the interior of the companion workbook to Boots That Fit. In Boots That Fit I have a whole lot of activities to help you find the special creative way that you can serve God and the world and to make the time to do that thing in your daily life. I thought that it would be good to have a workbook with all the activities spelled out. It has spaces set out for you to write and/or draw in, a time tracker where you can track your time for a week, a list that you can use to help you find the values that you hold most dear, and all sorts of other helpful and interesting stuff.
So it needs to be pretty. It needs to be something that will be fun to fill out and that will capture your attention. It needs to be beautiful.
I’ve been working on it all week and I think it is beautiful. It’s been so much fun to sit here at my desk and create something that I think is gorgeous, something that I just want to show the world.
‘Look! Look at the thing I made! Isn’t it beautiful?!’
It has made me think that we all need beauty in our lives. That beauty lifts our spirits and fills us with joy. That beauty can help us through really hard times.
We find beauty in nature. I will never forget the stunning beauty of the Grand Canyon – the colours, the depth, the immensity of it. But even the smallest things in nature are amazingly beautiful. Have you looked up close at a tiny flower? Just gorgeous. Or listen to the birdsong from small brown birds. They may look dull, but their song is a delight.
Music is beautiful. It can just fill your heart and soul. You can get lost in it.
Poetry and some forms of prose are beautiful. Have you ever read something that made you stop and close your eyes and just dwell in it for a while?
Visual art can be amazingly beautiful. When I was visiting Jess in Canberra once, I went to an art installation of Indigenous art at the National Gallery. We immersed ourselves in oranges and browns, in blues and greens, in the outback and the water and the night sky. It was a delight as well as an educational experience.
I love seeing people share their artwork on Facebook and Instagram. Their talent is amazing, and their work is beautiful.
And you know something else I’m finding beautiful? The interplay of colours in the jumper that I’m knitting. I keep stopping to spread it out and gaze upon it. And then I tell Moz, ‘Look! Isn’t it beautiful?’
Something I’m noticing as I write this is that beauty needs to be shared. Our great desire when we see something or experience something beautiful is to share it with someone. To exclaim, ‘Look! Look at this! It’s gorgeous!’
So beauty doesn’t just lift our spirits, it also builds community and connection.
I encourage you to fill your life with some beauty today. Why don’t you intentionally either look for beauty around you or create something beautiful to share with others?
It’s going to make your day better!
What are you finding beautiful at the moment? I’d love to hear about it. Drop me a note at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook or @aquietlifeblog on X. And feel free to pass this blog on to anyone who would find it helpful.
The summer holidays are almost upon us and I’ll be taking a small break from the blog and podcast. To make sure you don’t miss me when I come back, sign up to my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au and you’ll get an email as soon as I’m back to work.
If you’ve been listening to my podcast recently, you will know that I’ve been going through a very busy time. I’ve had family visits, heaps of editing work (my day job) and extra fairs and festivals where I’ve been selling my books. I know what my limits are, and I have swung very close to them in the last couple of months. I’ve met the deadlines, I’ve done the events and I’ve enjoyed the family visits (they’ve been brilliant), but a whole lot of other stuff has fallen over.
Here are some things that I haven’t kept up with:
Writing my novel for half an hour each weekday
The housework (yes, even the ten minutes I do each day)
Going to the gym (partly due to flu and such)
Journal writing each day
I’m not proud of this as you can probably tell by the excuses I’ve felt the need to write next to each bullet point. But that’s beside the point. The point is, what to do now? Do I just give up on these things? I’ve been thinking it over and I think the thing to do here is to start again on all of these, without shame, without getting all down on myself about the failure.
Just to start over.
You may find yourself in the same place with some goals or daily habits that you are trying to achieve. Some times are just busier than others. Sometimes we need to make a big push to get everything done. And that means that some things just have to fall by the wayside.
If you’re in that situation (with me) then I encourage you too, don’t beat yourself up about it. Don’t wallow in shame. Just get yourself back up and start again.
I don’t think we should try to catch up on everything at once. I’m very tempted to spend a few hours deep cleaning the house, but if I just go back to doing my 10–20 minutes of housekeeping a day, and in a week or so we’ll be back on track. The kitchen floor may look like the floor of an aviary in the meantime, but that’s ok, no one will get seriously hurt by that.
I do think that we should help ourselves by remembering the benefits of the habits that we had. I needed to be reminded (by Moz) that the reason I go to the gym to exercise daily, or almost every day, is for my mental health. I am a lot less stressed and sleep a lot better when I do 30 minutes of good cardio exercise most days.
On that note, it is also good for us to ask for help when we’re trying to get back into the swing of things. Help doing the things, or accountability help. Maybe there is someone who loves you and can check in with you as to whether you are spending time doing the things you know you need to for good living.
My last tip is that we check whether we’ve slipped into busywork and whether that is keeping us from the things we feel are important. Yes, some months in our lives are naturally busier than others, and sometimes we really have to make a big push and work long days to get everything done. However, it is easy to then fall in the habit of being busy when it’s not quite necessary. We can add things to our lives that make us feel busy and important but are actually not needed. When and as you can, just check that you’re doing the important things in your life and that you haven’t given in to the ‘tyranny of the urgent’.
In my busy time, I have managed to keep up with a couple of things: I have kept this blog and my podcast going, and I have held on (by my fingernails) to my weekly Sabbath day off. Like I said, I know my limits, and working full weeks is definitely not good for me. That day of rest (whether it’s my normal Saturday, or a Monday like it has been the last two weeks) is keeping me well and reasonably sane.
Now, being accountable to you all, I will work to put the other habits back in place so that life goes back to being quiet, and so that I can do the writing that I know is mine to do.
Yours in hope.
Do you have methods for getting back on track when you’ve been busy (or sick) for a while? I’d love to hear them. Drop me a note at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook or @aquietlifeblog on X. And feel free to pass this blog on to anyone who would find it helpful.
The summer holidays are almost upon us and I think I’ll be taking a small break from the blog and podcast. To make sure you don’t miss me when I come back, I’d love for you to sign up to my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au and you’ll get an email as soon as I’m back to work.
Our very much not magic coffee table. We all worked together to clean up this mess!
Have you seen the skit about the magic coffee table? The guy of the house swears that his coffee table is magic because at night he leaves it full of rubbish, food scraps and dirty dishes and in the morning it is empty and everything is clean. The same with the magic laundry basket – he fills it with dirty clothes, and like magic, they turn up in his wardrobe, clean and neatly folded. He can’t understand it. His girlfriend, however, can understand it. And I’m sure you can too.
Eventually the girlfriend goes missing. The guy tells the police that she must have sat down on the magic coffee table … yeah.
It’s a funny skit, but it’s based in reality. So often we don’t see the work that others are doing for us and around us. Or we see the surface work but we don’t see the mental load that takes place behind the scenes.
This can often lead to one person in the house feeling taken for granted (like the girlfriend in the skit) while another can be completely oblivious to how much work is being done for them.
I don’t think it is usually intentional and I think that it can change with good communication and with a lot of grace.
I like the idea of each household (whether they are flatmates or family members) taking on their share of the jobs that are required by the household. You could write the jobs out on cards or you could make a list or just chat about it. But the trick is that when someone has taken responsibility for a job, the other members of the household need to leave that responsibility with them and everyone must be prepared to suffer the consequences.
For example, if it is my job to wash my clothes and I don’t get around to washing my clothes, then I need to wear dirty clothes.
Or, if it is my job to make dinner, and I don’t get around to making dinner, then I need to go and buy something or heat up some soup or somehow get food on the table. I need to make it right. It was my responsibility.
This can go wrong in two ways:
1) the person who has previously been in charge of the jobs can refuse to let go. They will nag others until the job is done or they will just heave a huge sigh and go do the job themselves. This leads to the other members of the household knowing that someone always has their back and they don’t need to take on the responsibility after all.
2) the person taking up the responsibility can refuse to take it on. They take the easiest possible route around their responsibilities and make everyone else wear the consequences.
I don’t have a quick fix for this. It takes a lot of communication and working through. It’s hard work to get this right, especially in a family setting. And the way that every household does it will be unique. But it’s worth it.
I believe it is a parent’s job to slowly give more and more responsibility to their children so that when the child leaves home they are able to keep a house for themselves. Our kids started cooking meals for us in grade 7 and the were fully responsible for their own washing by grade 9. Yes, sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes they had to live with the failure and sometimes we did swoop in and save the situation, but mostly they did the work and helped us out around the house.
They might not have done things the way we wanted. They were responsible for their bedrooms, for example, and both of them chose not to have chests of drawers or other bedroom furniture (we offered!) but to instead store their clothes in plastic tubs and hanging from hooks on the wall. Now that I know they are blessed with ADHD, this visual method of storage makes more sense. But even back then, I chose to let them own their choices for their bedrooms and I let the responsibility go.
Taking care of our homes is a big thing and each of us need to take on our own load. When we do a job around the house, let’s make sure we do the whole job and not just the surface job. And when we give others a job to do, let’s trust them with the whole responsibility and allow them to fail occasionally.
There are no magic coffee tables, just human beings working together to make our systems run. Let’s appreciate what people are doing for us, and let’s each do our bit to make everyone’s life better.
What do you think about magic coffee tables? Let me know by writing to me at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook.
Sign up for my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au to get regular updates and never miss a blog. You can listen to my podcast here. If you want to know more about my novels head over to rjamos.com where there’s another newsletter to sign up to, and a storefront for all my fiction.
Not sure I agree, but I thought it would get your attention 🙂
Last night I was reminded of a time when I stopped reading. Yes, me. I stopped reading for years. I can hardly believe it myself.
This dreadful thing happened because I set a rule for myself that was stupid and unnecessary. And probably also because I was quite stressed. Which is ironic, really, because one of the benefits of reading is that it lessens stress – reading has been shown to lower the stress hormone cortisol.
So what was the rule?
I stopped reading when I was studying for my PhD and when I was working as a scientist. I stopped reading because I thought that, as a scientist, if I read anything, I should be reading scientific papers. None of this useless fiction stuff. I should be poring over other people’s research for fun.
One of my professors mentioned that he read the week’s research publications on a Saturday morning, for relaxation and to catch up on the latest that had happened in the week. To me, that sounded professional and glamorous and from that day I determined that I would be a researcher like that.
But I wasn’t.
I would get to Saturday morning and be utterly exhausted from the week’s work and the last thing I could bring my mind to do was read more scientific papers.
But if I couldn’t read papers, I figured I shouldn’t read anything else. So I stopped reading altogether.
When I decided that I wanted to be a novelist it was such a relief. You see, as a novelist, I can read, watch, and listen to anything I want. Everything that I’m interested in has a chance of going into a novel that I’m writing. All of it is grist for the mill.
I was so thrilled. I took off the limitations I’d put on myself and I began to read again.
Reading has always been a huge passion of mine, and now I was free to follow that passion.
I guess this blog is about two things:
1) I want you to know, it is ok to read whatever you enjoy reading. I was talking to a friend last night who has also stopped reading fiction. She didn’t think it was a good use of her time. But reading fiction has many benefits: it lessens stress, increases empathy, increases concentration, helps you prepare to sleep and may even help you to live longer. It improves memory, cognition and creativity.
Read what you enjoy. Read widely. Read for fun. I can’t really think of a downside to reading. Go for it!
2) Take this as an opportunity to look at your life and see whether you have made a rule for yourself that either no longer applies or was a little unnecessary in the first place. Why did I stop reading? Really, for no good reason. Scientists who read widely from both fiction and nonfiction will make better creative connections and perform better science than those who don’t. There are no reading police that would have told me that I was reading the wrong things. I totally put that rule on myself. Have you done the same? Do you have a rule, about reading or about something else altogether, that now you look at it, is totally unnecessary? Set yourself free!
Reading doesn’t have to be expensive. Our libraries are wonderful places. You can choose from an amazing range of books, and you can even borrow ebooks and audiobooks. If your local library doesn’t have the book you want, you can ask them to order it. Your library is a precious resource that is worth supporting.
Don’t know where to start? Here are a few books that I really love:
Mystery: Anything by Dorothy Sayers. Or my own Deadly Miss series available at rjamos.com. Or Donna Leon, her stuff is set in Venice and is great. And Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. And Anne Cleaves. And I could go on …
Urban Fantasy: The City Between series by WR Gingell
Science Fiction: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (absurd but excellent), and if you like that, a new one called The Pitfalls of Being a Goddess by Eva Leppard.
Fantasy: The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien but for something lighter and easier, try the Greenwing and Dart series by Victoria Goddard.
Historical Romance: Anything by Georgette Heyer. Hilarious and light. And Jane Austen, of course: Pride and Prejudice, but also I love Sense and Sensibility and I think my favourite is Persuasion.
Romance: My Small Town Trouble is a romantic suspense – a bit of romance, a bit of mystery. I’m not a huge romance fan, but there are so many books out there. Romance is probably the biggest genre there is.
I love stunt memoir – books where the author tries things for a year and writes about it. The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs and A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans were both quite a lot of fun. And I love Deric Longden’s writing especially Lost for Words.
Comedy: Can’t go past The Theatrical Tapes of Leonard Thynn by Adrian Plass. I cry laughing every time I read it.
Literary fiction: I love the My Friend series by Jane Duncan. And the book I love most of all is The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge.
Some of these are older books and may be hard to find, but these are books that jump to my mind when I’m thinking of what I love to read. And this is not counting any of the more serious nonfiction that is also great and wonderful and helpful to read.
I hope, I really hope, that this blog has been an encouragement to you to make time to read some of the amazing and fun books out there. Don’t limit yourself to big-L Literature. Don’t limit yourself to nonfiction. Don’t limit yourself at all! Enjoy the creativity, relaxation and other benefits of reading. If you don’t like reading the written word, then listen to an audiobook. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but it’s the same thing!) Bring some richness, humour, and joy into your life.
Read!
What are your favourite books? Please let me know – I’m always ready to add to my TBR list. Write to me at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook.
Sign up for my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au to get regular updates and never miss a blog. If you want to know more about my novels head over to rjamos.com where there’s another newsletter to sign up to, and a storefront for all my fiction.
Yes, this is me in Hollywood, visiting my sister (not having a big breakthrough)
Or how to make it in Hollywood
My sister has been visiting from LA this past week. Catherine Joy works as a film and television composer, and she also performs orchestration and arranging and does the studio recordings and all the bits and pieces involved in getting music together for films, TV shows and documentaries.
I was privileged to attend a Q&A session that she held with composers and film makers here in Tasmania. One of the questions she was asked was, ‘How do you make it in Hollywood? What advice would you give to someone just starting out?’ Her advice was brilliant and applies to so much more than the movie industry. So I thought I’d repeat it here.
There were three steps:
1) Turn up on time
2) Deliver what you promise
3) Be easy to work with
These are the basics. If you do these three things, Catherine says, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.
Let’s unpack them a bit.
Turn up on time.
When I was a teenager, I got a job as an after-school carer. I was working already at the supermarket in Glenorchy, but I thought it shouldn’t be a problem to finish a supermarket shift at 2pm, catch a couple of busses to West Hobart, and work from 3 until 6 as a carer.
Turns out, the busses were just as unreliable then as they are now. My first bus was late, and that caused me to miss my second bus. I got to work a half hour late. And we didn’t have mobile phones back then, so I couldn’t tell them I was going to be late. I just turned up and explained, ‘I missed two busses.’ Probably not the best explanation of the situation either. Needless to say, I didn’t get invited back for another shift.
Turning up on time shows respect for the person you are serving and it also shows a level of time management that’s fairly fundamental to most jobs. Strategies like leaving large gaps in between meetings and having a reliable alarm system so that you know when the meetings are, will help you to (most of the time) turn up when you say you will.
Deliver what you promise.
It always works better to promise less and deliver more. If I think that an editing job can be done in three days, I usually allow a week, just so I don’t get caught out by some emergency (there always is one). Then I look really great if I give it to the client in four days.
Part of this is about clarity. I received a 20,000 word document for editing the other week. The client sent an email saying something about hoping to get it back from me ‘soon’ but there were no other details, so I performed what I thought was more urgent work first. I figured that it was a large document and they shouldn’t be expecting miracles in timing. This became a problem when my client emailed me on Sunday saying that the original deadline for the paper was last Friday. That made for a very long day on Monday as I edited like mad trying to make up for lost time.
So yes, deliver what you promise, but also, make the promise clear in the first place. If things change and you run into a problem then you need to let the client know as soon as possible and also, you need to find a solution for them, so that they don’t have to come up with one.
Finally, be easy to work with.
A large part of the reason why my sister has been successful is that she doesn’t create drama in the workplace. She will solve problems, not create them. She will be a calm, sensible voice in the room even when everyone else is going slightly crazy.
If you are easy to work with, people will come back to you again. If you are a drama queen, they are likely to try to find a different solution next time.
Of course, you are not going to always have a great time with everyone you work with, but when you let off steam after a difficult day, make sure it is with someone you 100% trust and that the words won’t get back to the client. If that means just telling your journal, then that’s what you have to do. (Then maybe burn the journal …)
So that’s my advice this week. If you’re wanting to make it, in Hollywood or anywhere, these are the three basics that you should aim for. Then on top of these, add your unique self, your creativity, your own flair.
Go for it! I know you can do it!
Do you have something to add? Or a story of your own? Write to me and let me know at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook.
You can listen to a podcast version of this post here.
If you want to find out how I go about ‘making it’ in Tasmania, sign up for my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au to get regular updates and never miss a blog.
Life has busy times, and less busy times. As I write this, I’m looking ahead at what is going to be a very busy month or six weeks. I have been given some amazing speaking opportunities that have just happened to coincide with some family visits and a whole lot of editing work. All of it is good. But all of it is happening at the same time. It’s going to take some doing.
I don’t know about you, but when I look ahead at times like these, I tend to feel exhausted. I start living in the future, thinking about how tired I’m going to feel when I’m doing all these things, and that makes me feel tired now. Often, when the busy period comes around, I feel less tired than I did beforehand when I was just thinking about the busy time.
I turn the days over and over in my mind, wonder just how I’m going to cope with it all and how I’m going to make it work. I ruminate on it, dwell on it, worry about it. All of that takes loads of emotional energy and leaves me depleted.
I live in the future as well as living in the present. And that doesn’t work.
I am trying to teach myself to take a different tack.
I want to plan for the future, but live in the present.
There’s a lot I need to do to prepare for the busy time ahead. I need to print out worksheets, write sermons, fill the car with petrol, make a cake, and buy a couple of cards. And I’m not suggesting that I leave all that work to the last minute. If I decided just to live in the present and not think at all about the future, I would be making life a lot harder for myself. It is good, in the not-so-busy times, to do what we can to prepare for the future. I have been so grateful for the time I spent writing my course and preparing the worksheets and advertisements. This has made my life easy as I take what I’ve written and tweak it for the next situation.
Planning and preparing for the future is good. If you’ve got a busy time coming up, and there’s something you can do to prepare for it, then do the thing. Act. Get ready.
But worry is different. That’s like sitting in a rocking chair, rocking and rocking and rocking but getting nowhere. Worry doesn’t help with the future at all. It doesn’t even help clear your head. It just makes you tired.
Worrying also stops your subconscious from being able to be creative about the situation. If you’re always bringing your concerns into the front of your mind, the creative, imaginative subconscious brain doesn’t get an opportunity to work. But if you stop worrying, you’re more likely to come up with creative solutions, if and as they are needed.
So, plan for the future, prepare as you can, do the actions you can do. But once you’ve done that, turn off the worry in your head. As much as you can. I’m preaching to myself here just as much as I’m talking to anyone else. I’m hoping that I can turn the worry off, because I know it can’t do anything, not even add a single hour to my life, as Jesus said.
He tells me, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’ Matthew Ch 6.
I’m going to try to live each day as it comes, do the work I can when I can do it, and leave the rest up to him. I’ll plan for the future and try to make wise decisions about just how much I can fit into each day and each week, but I’ll live life now and leave out the worry altogether.
How do you cope with busy times? Do you have a strategy that helps you not to worry?Write to me and let me know at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook.
If you want to see how I go with my very busy time, sign up for my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au to get regular updates and never miss a blog.
It was the homework that people didn’t love about my course (Photo by Pixabay)
I’ve been running my Boots That Fit course for the past few weeks. Everyone seems to be enjoying it. I’m really enjoying it! I’m so excited at the end of every Thursday night that I’m having trouble getting to sleep. Which is probably a good thing.
The only thing that people seem not to love is the homework. But of course I’m going to give homework. I want my participants to think about the course during the week and not just on Thursdays. But there is a problem with the homework that I didn’t anticipate. I had blinkers on. I just didn’t see this thing coming.
The problem is, much of my homework consists of writing. ‘Write a story’, ‘write a paragraph’, ‘write a letter’.
I am a writer, so when I want to think deeply about a subject, I write about it.
I didn’t necessarily want the participants to write. I definitely don’t have time to read what they write or to mark it. That’s not what the homework was about. I wanted these lovely people to think deeply about the subject. Writing was just the method of choice for me.
There are many other possible methods for people to use when they think deeply about something. Here are just a few:
Draw a picture
Create a dream board or a mood board
Compose a song
Record a video
Draw out a mind map
Make a collage
There are many different methods for reaching the one goal.
The same is true for our lives. We may have a goal that we’re reaching for, and we may be using Method A to get there. If Method A doesn’t work for us, it is tempting to give up on the goal completely and tell ourselves, ‘It just won’t work for me.’ But if we can think creatively I’m sure that we can find Method B, Method C, and Method whatever, all the way to the end of the alphabet and beyond. There are many ways to get to the same goal.
We just need to be a bit curious, a bit creative.
For example, if we want to write lists to organise our days we might try pen on paper. But if you find you’re always losing the list, then you could try using an app on your phone, or a whiteboard on the fridge. If the list itself is the problem, feeling too stark and linear, you might like to try a mind map. Or you might colour in one segment of a colouring in page until you’ve completed the whole picture and feel totally satisfied by all you’ve accomplished.
If my 10-minute-a-day method doesn’t work for you for cleaning your house, you could try assigning a specific job to a specific day: Mondays are washing, Tuesdays are for groceries and meal planning, Wednesdays are for bathrooms, etc. Or you might put everything off until one special day of the week where you make the house, the laundry and everything into one big project to be worked at and finished off until that day turns up again next week. What works best for you?
If you don’t enjoy the gym, do you enjoy riding a bike? Swimming? Dancing? Does it work best to exercise with friends or alone with a podcast? Is there a Zoom class you can attend from the comfort of your lounge room? Or is it better just to walk to work and home again each day?
These methods don’t change the original goal (organising your day, cleaning your house, getting in some exercise) but they may completely change your attitude to achieving the goal. And if one method only works for a few weeks, then you can change to a new method and try that one for a while.
Think of your goal and then think creatively of different ways to achieve it. Then be curious. How did you feel about that way you just tried? Did it work for you? What could you change to make it easier?
Let’s apply some curiosity and creativity to our goals and see just how far we can fly.
Do you have an alternative to the norm for a way that you fulfil a goal? Let me know about it. Write to me and let me know at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook.
If you want to see how I’m achieving my goal of writing and publishing my book, sign up for my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au to get regular updates and never miss a blog.
My book stall all ready to go the the local market in Cygnet, Tasmania. The Universe is a Small Place is set in Cygnet so it felt like a good place to start. And it was!
I’ve written a book called Boots That Fit and it’s coming out February 2024. It talks about finding your ‘thing’ and making the time to do it. I’ve been giving it to various readers for feedback and one issue has come up a couple of times.
The reader has asked, ‘What if you were stuck cleaning toilets for a living? What would you say to that person?’
So for starters, I’d like to say that I have a friend who used to clean houses for a living. Now she has combined that activity with the provision of in-home care to aging clients. She is an amazing house cleaner, she does a fabulous job, and she finds it very satisfying. I’d go so far as to say that cleaning houses is one of her ‘things’ – something she loves to do and would do (for others) even if she didn’t get paid every time.
Cleaning toilets is a hard job and if you love it and do it well, you have my respect!
But that doesn’t really answer the question. The real question. The root question.
What if you have something you’d really like to make a living from, but because of your circumstances you are not able to pursue that thing. What then?
Today I want to make a suggestion:
Think smaller.
I am applying this to my own life right now. I’d love to sell my books to a wide audience internationally, but for now, I’m thinking smaller. I’m selling at markets around southern Tasmania where I live. I’m running a course for a dozen people at my church. I’m giving a talk at a local primary school. I’m making connections where I am.
If you’re a musician, play concerts for your friends. Find another musician and write music together that you share with residents at your local nursing home.
If you’re really into making websites, ask your creative friends if they’d like you to work on one for them.
If you’re really into baking, sign up for the meal train for someone with a new baby. Or provide morning tea for your church, or find a book club that would like a delicious cake for supper.
You may only be able to do your thing once a month or once a quarter. That’s ok. Just getting out and doing it will help you feel more purpose in your life.
How can you serve others, those around you, with your gifts? How can you, without leaving your day job, still do the activity that gives you joy?
Can you squeeze it into your day for 10 or 15 minutes each day?
Can you give it one day a month? Or one weekend a quarter?
We’ve been sold a lie that we need to do our ‘thing’ all the time for it to be worth doing at all. That we need to make a living doing what we love.
If the thing you really want is fame and fortune and millions of TikTok followers, then I guess you need to go all in and live off nothing in order to do it. But I think that for most of us, we just want to know we’re making a difference.
Making a difference in a small way is still making a difference.
Sometimes we just need to do what we can, and leave the rest up to God. We might never ‘make it’ but if we’ve done our small thing faithfully, I think that God will be pleased with us in the end. And that will make it all worth it.
Are you going to try something smaller over the next week or month? Write to me and let me know at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook.
If you want to know more about the small things happening in my life, sign up for my newsletter at ruthamos.com.au to get regular updates and never miss a blog. You can also find my podcast at ruthamos.com.au or under A Quiet Life on any podcatcher.
A Quiet Life 