Getting Rid of Those Things You Always Wanted

 My "dream" double treadle spinning wheel.  

Since I was a little girl I wanted a spinning wheel with which to spin my own yarn.  I finally got one a few years back.  A beautiful Ashford Traditional with a walnut colored finish.  Promptly, I signed up for beginning spinning classes with a friend at our local fiber guild and began my foray into making yarn.  It was fun, very time consuming work.  My single treadle wheel was lovely to behold, but it wasn't easy to use and I kept getting out of rhythm and breaking my yarn. This got me to dreaming of getting a more modern double treadle spinning wheel where both feet work making it easier to keep in time.  I stalked Craig's List and my local fiber guild for a used version of the model I thought would be just perfect.  Finally, one turned up at a price I could afford and I quickly snatched it up, brought it home and got to work.  It was everything I had hoped it would be and yet spinning yarn was still time consuming work.  Making a skein of yarn took days.  One day to spin each ply (I would make 2 or 3), another day to ply the plies together, another to wind and wash the yarn, and days to wait for it to dry.  Whew!  A lot of time and effort.  As lovely as my skeins of yarn were I sadly found I didn't really like knitting with them.  True, I could spend more time at my new craft of spinning, (I had only been at it for three years) honing my skills to produce yarn I did like knitting, but I found it was not how I wanted to spend my free time.  This realization made me feel really, really guilty having spent so much effort and money on this hobby and it also left me a bit confused.  Why was this not working out as I had planned?  I believe it is because my dream was so much more about an idea than the actual object of a spinning wheel. 

I loved the idea of quietly spinning yarn all day.  It made me think about the slower pace of a life many years ago.  It was idyllic in my mind.  But, since I don't live in that time period, or have the large family to help with all the other chores of everyday life, and that my son is homeschooled, and am often interrupted by the phone, the doorbell or the dog barking, and and.... My dream was in actuality more about that slower pace of a simpler life than it was about spinning yarn.  Purchasing a spinning wheel really only added to my already frenzied full life.  Instead of simplifying I was really cluttering my life with yet another thing to get done.
 
These associations we have around objects I think are the problem.  Like for instance, how I thought purchasing an ice cream making machine was going to make me happy and my family closer.  It sounds truly odd as I write that sentence, but looking back that was really what I thought.  I saw a vision of my family picking raspberries together in our backyard, bringing them in and gathering around the machine as it slowly churned our fresh ingredients into ice cream.  But, this is not what happened.  In reality no one wanted to help me, the neighbor boy ate most of our raspberries so I used frozen cherries instead and when I was finished nobody cared much for the end product.  I was trying to force a family moment in an area only I was interested in.  I didn't consult my husband or son before purchasing an ice cream machine.  I jumped in because I associated making ice cream with hearth and home - probably due to reading too many homesteading blogs.  Our time would have been better spent playing a card game, having a tickling battle or watching a movie together as they are things we all like to do.  Also, none of those things need some specialty kitchen gadget that has only one purpose.

What I'm trying to say is that often we buy something we've always wanted only to be let down in the end.  Our culture tells us in so many ways that buying stuff will make you happy, but the reality is only you can make you happy.  What I've found is that I the more stuff I get rid of the clearer the vision of what I do want emerges.  The "what I want" that has emerged for me is that I want a close family that spends their time together leading a simple slower paced life.  Thus, I'm getting rid of all this extra stuff that I've always wanted and oddly, that purging is going to make me much happier than the stuff ever did.

Don't Get Ahead of Yourself

The path to your goal may be a long one, but see if you can enjoy the journey.

For some people having a long term plan helps keep them on their path.  I am finding that while we have a long term goal of a tiny house, it's better if I don't think that far ahead.  Why?  It's scary for one.  A tiny house is a very unconventional dwelling for anyone let alone a family of three plus dog.  Sure, I talk about it here, but this platform is rather anonymous in its' way.  I'm a woman who needs to talk to process what's going on in my mind.  Writing this blog helps me process what it is we're doing by downsizing without the risk of scaring friends or family members by our unconventional dreams.  Since when you scare someone who really cares about you they want to protect from what they perceive is a risky move.  They try to talk you out of it.  Show you all the pitfalls to your choice. And let's face it dreams can be fragile things.  They need to be nurtured in order to thrive and grow.  My husband always says to me to not share my dreams with people who will not help/support me to achieve them.  While this may seem harsh, for someone like me who questions myself all too often in can mean the difference between moving towards my dreams or a frozen static existence.

My dreams have often in the past stayed just that, dreams, and not transformed into my reality as I had hoped.  I'm trying very hard to shift that paradigm this time by focusing only on what is in front of me now.  Asking myself "What movement can I make right this moment that will get me closer to our goal of living smaller?"  It's about being mindful.  Not letting yourself go down the rabbit hole of the "what if" or "how do I" routes of thought.  Being present in the now is powerful.  You can control what you do with the moment in front of you.  You simply cannot change the past or know what lies ahead.  It is hard letting go of all that we can't control.  It's difficult to not map out the details of all you are wanting to do in the future.  But, if you can avoid thinking too far ahead you can keep disappointments, which lead to inactivity, to a minimum.

For instance, I used to make proclamations like "Today, I will finish painting the bathroom."  Sounds  good huh?  Positive thinking right?  Wrong.  For me it's a set up.  If I don't finish painting the bathroom I feel like I failed, and get disappointed in myself which brings along future inactivity.  See, I couldn't predict that the Spackle would take longer to dry than I planned, or that we didn't have the right paint brush for the trim and I had to go to the store making me run out of time.   Instead of patting myself on back for working on the house all I can see is I didn't achieve my goal.  It may sound like semantics to you, but it makes a world of difference if I say instead "I'm going to work on painting the bathroom today."  Then if I do anything, any little thing, towards painting the bathroom I've succeeded from the get go.  Because I only know what I can do in the present moment.  If I keep my focus on the here and now I keep moving forward towards my dreams, which hopefully will bring them to fruition.