I watched the documentary Minimalism yesterday in an attempt to calm my nerves and expand my horizons.
In my studies at Institute for Integrative Nutrition, we talk about primary food — the concept of nourishing all areas of your life, including career, relationships, spirituality, and physical activity. Home environment has been one element of my world that feels out of balance. Our 1974 house needs some work and now that we’ve been here for 17 years we have acquired a lot of “stuff.” It can be stifling.
I tend to get into nesting mode before surgeries (yes, I have had that many) and clean house from top to bottom, declutter, and get organized. It’s been almost a year since my gastric bypass surgery. I had set up my little recovery area in the living room where I planned to binge watch every Netflix series and a laundry list of movies.
Ironically, I am sitting in the same spot almost a year later and some of the same magazines and books are still stacked on the table. And of course more stuff has found its way to the coffee table along with more electronic devices and remote controls. Hmmm. That tells me something.
Last week on my personal blog, I revealed my recent cancer diagnosis. I am awaiting consultation at UCSF Urologic Oncology department and expect to have part of my kidney, along with the evil inhabitant, removed in the near future. It’s made me turn even more inside myself that I typically am. Thinking and thinking. I’m turning to my typical de-stressors to try to reduce the anxiety: journaling, medication, yoga, rest, sleep, and nutrient dense food choices. That’s only taking me so far.
So back to Minimalism. Watching that film made me thing about eliminating excess in my life. Yeah, obviously, less stuff. I know a massive declutter effort is brewing. But what else is excess? Drama, stress, things I feel like I have to do but are really a choice. We have one life to live on this planet, and this current threat to mine has made me more determined to find joy and focus on the things I am passionate about.
I was listening to one of my podcasts, Her Rules Radio, with Alexandra Jamieson and she walked through what she calls her Fuck-It List, which she defines as her approach to developing a personalized rule book for identifying the things you want to stop doing so you can focus on getting clear about the things you want to do. I downloaded her e-Book. This is the right time for me to take a hard look at my career, relationships with people, my spiritual practice, and to some degree physical activity and do some housekeeping. Adding this to my toolkit.
My mom died at 58, and I’ve always had that number in my head as something to beat. I took my health into my hands almost a year ago and got myself to a healthy weight and strengthened my body and my spirit. I have spent too much time Googling renal cell carcinoma survival and recurrence rates, and knowing I was diagnosed early gives me hope, but the fear of what I am reading makes living more fully the ultimate goal.
Time to roll up my sleeves and get to work.
