{"id":750,"date":"2010-09-10T14:18:20","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/?p=750"},"modified":"2010-09-10T14:18:20","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:18:20","slug":"its-the-little-things-that-make-life-enjoyable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/?p=750","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s the little things that make life enjoyable."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I&#8217;ve been catching up with housework, clearing out a whole load of junk that has been sitting gathering dust for a while and generally being a domestic goddess. Not an exciting day, but a quiet one where I could see some results and felt a little uplifted as a result. I managed to throw in a little sewing as a present to myself.<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking about my day as I trundled off to the local farm shop to stock up on fruit, veg and free-range eggs for the weekend. It wasn&#8217;t an exciting day, in fact it was very ordinary, but it was a happy and contented type of day. Sometimes I think we underestimate those days.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I read Zen Habits (link on the right!) and as is often the case, Leo Babauta was talking a lot of sense and about things that I can really relate to.<\/p>\n<p>His list for the day went like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>simplify<\/li>\n<li>do and consume less<\/li>\n<li>slow down<\/li>\n<li>be mindful and present<\/li>\n<li>savor things fully<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I truly believe that for most of us this is the route to being happy. It really is the little things that make life enjoyable.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as there is stress and an overload of any sort of experience it all stops being fun. You know how it is when you&#8217;ve over-scheduled your day and you end up running from one supposedly nice thing to the next and at the end of it all you realize that you didn&#8217;t enjoy any of them.<\/p>\n<p>Since I started having S<em>low Down Sundays<\/em> as often as I can, I really see that I enjoy the day so much more and that it feels incredibly long &#8211; it&#8217;s like giving myself the gift of time. And if I&#8217;m feeling better, believe me, it has a pretty major knock-on effect on the rest of the family. I can deal with the issues that arise in any normal family with calmness (mostly) and equanimity &#8211; which generally means that they don&#8217;t escalate. I start the following week feeling rested and looking forward to what is going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly I don&#8217;t have a well-paid successful career (been there, done that and didn&#8217;t like it much) and I&#8217;m lucky to have been able to set up a business where I work from home and I&#8217;m my own boss. (Was that luck or just setting priorities?). I&#8217;m happy to admit that I can accept that I can&#8217;t have everything &#8211; and actually that I don&#8217;t want everything anyway. But doing less and slowing it all down gives me the chance to really enjoy what I do have and what I&#8217;m doing.<\/p>\n<p>So keep it simple out there &#8211; you&#8217;ll enjoy it more.<\/p>\n<p>Wishing you a slow weekend,<\/p>\n<p>Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I&#8217;ve been catching up with housework, clearing out a whole load of junk that has been sitting gathering dust for a while and generally being a domestic goddess. Not an exciting day, but a quiet one where I could see some results and felt a little uplifted as a result. I managed to throw [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQtrc-c6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}