Life Change

Why shelving our dreams is no longer an option.

I met up with two dear friends the other day. They are both artists and we had travelled to RHS Harlow Carr in Harrogate to enjoy the spring flowers and to have lunch in Betty’s tearoom. We had also taken our sketchbooks and some art materials to do some drawing.

Armed with a comfortingly warm latte and wrapped in a winter coat (because April thinks it’s still March), we settled at an outside table, decanted our art materials and quickly absorbed ourselves in our sketchbooks. As we drew, we talked.

One thing I like enormously about these meet ups is that when you are busy drawing, interesting conversations unfold. We were talking about a project I had been thinking about for a long time, yet still hadn’t done much about. Both Marloes and Marna were curious to know why I wasn’t progressing with it.

Marna said, ‘I’ve been telling her to do this for the last couple of years!’ I nodded in agreement whilst acknowledging this with some surprise. Had it really been that long? As we chatted, and I offered lame reasons as to why I hadn’t invested more of my time on this project, a realisation began to dawn.

I was postponing my joy.

How often do we put off doing what we want to do, the things that make us happy? In the day to day busyness of running a business, earning money, taking care of a family and dealing with the highs and lows of midlife it’s easy for me to forget about these things or think, I’ll do this some other time.

I appreciate this might sound silly or obvious, yet I think it’s easy to get consumed by what we believe is necessary, to the point where we lose ourselves on the hamster wheel of making a living, forgetting the small pleasures that we can enjoy along the way.

And then two days ago I stumbled upon a You Tube account - ‘Accepting the Universe’ - and the very next day, I found this video from the same account that Marloes had shared on one of her Substack posts. This wasn’t just a coincidence. This was a message.

One of the revelations I got from this video was to make a list of priorities and to do them first thing each day. Was this something I could do? It felt almost indulgent to consider it.

Could I actually designate time to things that made me happy, before tackling life admin and the work that brings in the money? Could I accept that I’d blindly shelved some of my dreams? That they’d become something to be enjoyed at a later date when I’d achieved all the other stuff?

It was suddenly obvious that I’d been living with my head in the sand for a long time, losing myself in the daily grind in order to earn more money to buy more stuff and pay for more things. Each day I would end up exhausted, collapsed on the sofa scrolling through the monotonous grind of Instagram, looking at picture perfect lives of people I didn’t know and would probably never meet, who, if the photos and reels were anything to go by, were living their dream lives on the screen, right there in the palm of my hand.

Was this it? Was this my life? Working all day and collapsing at the end of it feeling tired and anxious?

This was the mother of all wake up calls and I resolved to try and do things differently. I would start by thinking about what I really wanted to do, and about the things that made me happy - and if I’m honest, it was not more ‘stuff’. I’d actually forgotten some of the things I used to enjoy doing, it had been so long since I had done them! Thinking about it a little, I have started a list which I’m sharing here:

• Declutter and donate, sell, or give things away that I no longer need or use.

• Make time each week to do something that I really want to, but at the moment don’t make time for.

• Get outdoors and spend time in nature, even if it’s just a cup of tea by the river at the bottom of my garden.

• Plan to do the exciting things I’ve postponed.

• Spend less time on the internet and social media.

• Buy less ‘stuff’ - ask myself, do I really need this, or do I just want it? The money I save will be put towards concerts, travel, holidays and things I really want to experience.

This has all been something of a revelation for me, along with the realisation that I spend way too much time on the internet when I could be using that time more productively. It will no doubt take some practise - new habits don’t form overnight - but I feel good about making a start. Life isn’t something that happens for us in the future, when we’ve retired or reached old age (if we’re lucky). It’s happening now and we must remember this each day, to get up and be conscious of how precious it is and to start prioritising what makes us happy - today.

Thank you for reading.