In yesterday’s post, I talked about living a “television-free” lifestyle. People often ask me: what do you do with your time if you don’t watch television? I get a chuckle out of this as I feel pressed for time as it is – I couldn’t imagine spending several hours every night watching television. I would never get anything done…
Below are 50 things you can do instead of watching television:
1. Take a walk around your neighborhood
2. Read a novel [click to continue…]
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I consider myself to have been a lucky child. I was raised in a household where our evenings didn’t revolve around the television set. I was rarely allowed to watch TV while growing up and whenever I begged, pleaded, screamed, whined, moaned, pouted or put up a major hissy fit because my request to watch the idiot tube was heartlessly rejected by my mother, she would inform me that I will all the time in the world to watch television when I’m an old man and too feeble to do anything else. She then would chase me outside.
She was right, of course. I was raised on a 180 acre mostly wooded farm located only a mile from Lake Superior. Instead of being constantly spoon-fed entertainment from the TV, I was forced to create my own amusement. Sure, I would be bored at first. Then, I got bored with being bored. In the process, I had to actually become creative and come up with something to do. So I would spend my time romping through the woods, fishing in nearby creeks, playing ball with the neighbors, playing with my two dogs, camping with friends, learning to cook, swimming in the lake, writing stories, inventing games with the neighbor kids, exploring abandoned buildings, selling nightcrawlers and worms to the locals, picking wild berries, digging tunnels in the hillside, growing my own garden, and listening to music or radio events – generally enjoying my childhood. Instead of lamely staring at the artificial glow of a piece of furniture and engrossing myself in the lives that someone else was living, I would get out of the house and create my own life.
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Consume: to use up (resource), to completely destroy, to eat, drink or ingest – Oxford American College Dictionary
A few days ago, David from the My Two Dollars blog wrote a post entitled “I am Not a Consumer; I am a Person“. In the post, he stated how much he hates when he is called a consumer.
I almost cheered out loud after reading his post (actually, I think I did). This has been one of my pet peeves for many years and annoys me to no end. I have asked myself more than once: At what point did we stop becoming citizens and instead become “consumers”, or as the dictionary defines it “one who eats, drinks, or ingests.” Personally, I have always found the term consumer to be insulting. What the term basically says, is that all I am to you is one who eats, drinks and ingests..and destroys. Well, I feel that I am much more than that!
As David states in his post “Shopping does not define who I am, nor do I enjoy being labeled as something other than what I actually am.” This hits it right on the head – calling us a consumer is saying that our main worth (or only worth?) is our ability to spend money on material goods. Maybe that’s why I find this term to be so stinging.
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Photo courtesy of skidrd
For many years now, I have, like many others, kept a daily to-do list to help me accomplish my daily tasks as well as my long-term goals. This doesn’t mean that I am always able to accomplish everything that’s on my list. On the contrary – more times that I care to admit, I am unable to cross off more than a couple of items. Now in the past, I used to get extremely frustrated with myself for slacking on my to-do list and would constantly beat myself up over my inability to accomplish what I had promised myself I would do.
Do you do this? Do you feel guilty when you are unable to accomplish everything on your list?
What I think is important to remember – to think about – is not how much we didn’t get done during the day but rather how much we accomplished. Awhile back, I was reading one of Julia Cameron’s books and she mentioned a favorite tool of hers: The “Ta Da List”. Rather than list out everything we need to get done, the Ta Da List celebrates everything that we accomplish throughout the day.
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The other day, I went to see a movie at the Fox Bay – a local, independently owned theater. I love going there because not only is it simply a movie theater, but it also features a full-service sit down menu – pizza, salads, sandwiches as well as full bar. Shortly before the movie starts, a server comes by to take your order and your food is delivered not long after the movie begins. It’s my idea of a dinner and a movie.
After my last visit there, I thought about how places like this are a dying breed – there are just a handful of them around anymore. Slowly the independents – the Ma and Pa establishments – get pushed out by the huge chains and then what do we end up with? A town that looks like every other town. Cardboard cutouts.
While traveling, you can get off at practically any exit and find that the town is practically identical to the one at the previous exit, complete with a McDonald’s, KFC, Wendy’s, Cousins, etc. More and more the small towns in America are starting to look identical to each other as the independents disappear and are replaced with the same old boring chains. [click to continue…]
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Image courtesy of sk12
As I mentioned in a previous post, I drive very little by choice so I spend a lot of time walking. Today, the sun was shining and the temperature climbed above 32 degrees for the first time in a month so I bundled up and headed out for a seven mile walk.
I usually try to get out daily for a walk, weather permitting as I feel it is one of the most therapeutic forms of exercise you can do. Not only is it easy to do but there is no need for any expensive workout equipment or gym memberships – all that is required is a good pair of walking shoes.
Studies have indicated that walking helps reduce the risk of heart disease, helps ease arthritis pain and reduce levels of stress and anxiety. I find that it especially helps relive depression in the darker, winter months when many people are prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Walking can also help prevent osteoporosis – a common disease that causes bone loss, leading to skeletal fractures, height loss and pain. The key to preventing the disease is to get enough vitamin D and calcium – and the most natural way to get vitamin D is to expose your skin to sunlight several times a week (you will also need to make sure you receive the recommended level of calcium as well). [click to continue…]
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Photo courtesy of Rob!
I was sick and tired of rifling through piles of papers to find what I was looking for so I decided that I had to do something about it. Thus, my goal for 2008 was to move to a paperless office. I feel that I have pretty much accomplished that goal – and surprisingly, it was mostly painless. These days, my inbox consists of bank deposit envelopes, Priority Mail envelopes and a manilla folder into which I place items that must be scanned. Additionally, I have gone from a file cabinet with 4 overstuffed drawers to only 1 drawer containing a couple of file folders (tax returns and legal documents such as birth certificate, passport, etc.)
The process was fairly straight-forward – here are some key tips that I used:
1. Set up a digital database
I purchased DevonThink Pro Office, an awesome intelligent database solution for your digital files. In my goal to have a “paperless office” (or paperless as much as possbile, anyway), it is indispensable. It allows me to store all of my digital files – graphics, sound files, movie files, spreadsheets, word processing documents, pdf’s, etc. in one repository – and retrieval of information is almost instantaneous. You can also easily collect and store data from the Web and from your e-mail application with just a couple of keystrokes. [click to continue…]
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I remember a particular day last summer where I had spent the entire day making bread and canning. My kitchen shelves were lined with raspberry jam, applesauce, bread and butter pickles and there were four loaves of bread cooling on the kitchen table. In the living room, the soft glow of an oil lamp provided a dim and comfortable light. A friend of mine stopped by in the evening for a visit and as we were in the kitchen pouring coffee, she said to me, “You’re like – a 19th century who is stuck out of his time. You don’t drive, you can all of this food, you bake everything under the sun from scratch no less, and you’re always out camping or doing something outdoorsy. And then there’s this whole simplicity things of yours….”
I got a chuckle out of that. I suppose it does strike some people as strange that a relatively young man would spend his Saturday making bread and jam. To many people, the concept of canning one’s own food or baking homemade bread is so foreign to them that they would never contemplate doing such things themselves. Maybe they just didn’t have the type of childhood that I did. Even though I spent many years as a young man caught up in the whirlwind of consumerism and working myself to death trying to make money, living a simple life was not anything new to me.
I was lucky enough to have grown up on a farm, a mile down a dirt road. I learned to can and bake from my mother. We always had a huge vegetable garden, as well as usually plush patches of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. [click to continue…]
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I have read many books over the years about simplifying your life and the majority of them warn about the evils of Credit Cards. “Chop them up!” they tell you. “Throw them out and never get another one!” they warn you.
I happen to disagree. I personally use credit cards for everything – clothes, utilities, gasoline, repairs – even groceries. The reason: cash-back rewards.
Every couple of months, I receive a check for $50 in my mail box just for using my credit card. I take that check and put it in my “Vacation Fund” so that by the end of the year, I have received a nice chunk of money from my credit card company.
There are some things to keep in mind about credit card rewards however: [click to continue…]
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As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing like being able to go into my basement in the middle of January and retrieve a jar of raspberry or strawberry jam that I had made myself. Just because you live in a city, doesn’t mean you can’t can your own fruits and vegetables.
A few years back, I put in a few raspberry plants and they produce enough berries for about 32 jars of jam as well as numerous pies. I also drive out to a nearby farm (20-30 miles away) to pick strawberries when then become available. I then spend the rest of the day canning my harvest. If you have no berry or vegetable farms near you, Farmers Markets are also a good source for fresh fruit and vegetables.
When Christmas or birthdays arrive, rather than buy my loved ones the latest plastic trinket from a department store, they usually get a basket filled with homemade jams, jellies, chutneys, relishes, pickles and applesauce.
Many people are intimidated by the whole idea of canning but once you get a few basic concepts down, it’s not difficult at all. There are two basic types of foods – high acids and low acids. Most vegetables are low acids while your fruits (tomatoes included) are considered to be high acid foods. High acid foods are typically processed in a boiling water bath whereas it is essential that low acid foods be processed using the steam pressure canner method. I will only be talking about high acid canning in this post.
ITEMS YOU WILL NEED TO GET STARTED [click to continue…]
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