Coming out of the long( well, not so long! a few days!) dark tunnel of illness!!! Still not 100% but feeling somewhat " normal" both physically and mentally today.
There's a real purpose for this post today. Prior to today I've just been getting on here and writing whatever comes to mind. There are a couple of problems with this for me. It's sort of boring without anything I REALLY want to say, and also my "physical" diary..( the one which is in a real notebook!) is really suffering.. I haven't been writing much in there. I have hit on the idea of writing on my blog and then printing my posts so I can paste them as entries in my other journal so that even if I don't have anything extra to write in that, at least there will be the entries I made on "oilymils"! Smart hey?? That's the reason I had to change the template as well... I don't think I would have been able to print if the screen was black!!!
Anyway, I want to start writing about some of the stuff that really interests me, not just what I've been doing. One of my main "hobbies" is simplifying my life. I've been doing it for a while... slashing all the unneccessary things from my house, my schedule, my wardrobe and even my mind, so that I can live more peacefully and have more time for the things I feel are actually important.
One of the things I've done to simplify are to stop cooking such elaborate dinners and choosing simpler meals... less dishes, less time cooking, less leftovers etc. Less COST even!!! That's another one of my passions these days... after being financially hopeless for most of my life I finally reached what I call " financial sobriety".... I have ceased to spend more than I have!!! Anyway, I discovered a lot of things modifying my kitchen habits. I realised that all my life part of me really indentified ( strongly!)with being a GOOD cook and impressing people with my food. It's been a bit strange letting go of this. I notice more and more how people really heap praise on people who can cook. It's like your're a better person even!! The recent spate of cooking competitions and talent quests reflects the status that great cooks now enjoy! It's gone to a whole new level! It seems to be a really big feather for your cap if people admire your cooking!!! When you're a good cook everyone expects that you will always be serving up more and more wonderful food, it seems. It started looking to me like more and more of a trap. Every time I wanted to have someone over I felt that I had to impress them as much as or more than the last time they visited...entertaining can become more of a chore and a burden instead of something to look forward to and for someone like me, fraught with increasing anxiety.
I'm so glad I don't care now about impressing people in this way... I don't really feel I need to impress anyone actually with anything much anymore....why are we like this anyhow, always needing to " show off" to everyone??? We really are quite ridiculous, human beings, if you ask me, so much of the time... anyway, closely related to cooking more simply is my striving to be less of a glutton cos we live in a world of excess and greed. I've always had a hearty appetite but eating and drinking more than you need, I've come to think, is not only wasteful but also costing more money that I could be using for something more worthwhile
I'm "training" myself to eat less.. last night's example.. I already was using up some food so as not to waste it... often just cos I "feel like something else" I'll give leftovers to the dogs b ut I'm eating them myself now and so in that way I'm not having to buy so much more " new" food. I served up our dinner which was macaroni cheese, glazed carrots and peas, all left from a previous meal and we had fish fingers with that as I sliced up the remaining roast and froze it for another day... I cooked 6 fish fingers each but in the end I only ate 4 and there was still some mac cheese and carrot and peas left so I put them all on a little plate and that can be my lunch today!!! I always said I had a past life as a Scot and finally it's coming out!!!
Hopefully, this new moderation of cooking, eating and saving will take some of this excess weight off me as well.. I read once that excess weight is similar to having too much clutter in your house.. it's like clutter of the body, just as unhelpful thoughts are the clutter in your mind... house, mind, body... I've had to rid myself of all three! And I'm still going.. but it's really become fun and not hard work!!!
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