Tag Archives: contentment

Good Food Sometimes Means Doing Hard Things

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 30-Dec 6

Winter often drives me indoors more frequently, which in turn means I spend more time in the kitchen. This is an odd December, though. Although I still find myself in the kitchen most days, it is at the comfort of my desk with a pen and paper in front of me, instead of before the stove and dusted with flour.

In other words, cooking has been a chore rather than a delight. An odd December indeed.

It is easy to compromise our goals and our plans, to literally go for broke, when the body and mind rebel against what must be done. It is easy to frame poor decisions as giving oneself grace or as self-care.

Compromising values, giving up on goals, and taking the easy way is not self-care, no matter what your influencer-guru tells you. Hurting your future self is never self-care. To throw away money — and the life energy we spend acquiring it — on food choices that go against our values and drain our wallets is not self-care. 

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Localize Your Feed and Free Your Mind

Less News is good news

The alarm goes off, and I grope for my phone in the dark. As soon as I silence the auditory noise, I begin filling my eyes with visual noise. The daily scroll has begun. I cycle through headlines on the news feed, helpfully curated by algorithms that no human hand controls.

When that becomes too much, I flip over to social media and begin reading the headlines and hot takes regurgitated by a million countless cogs in a machine that is imprisoning us all. By the time I roll out of bed an hour later, my brain is filled with rot I can’t control, and I have lost all faith in not just humanity, but my own future.

This isn’t some dystopian fantasy; this is the reality for millions, if not billions, of people around the world. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be.

The 24-hour news cycle has created a trap that leads to personal paralysis. If everything is so screwed, then why bother? If you still have the energy to bother, to try to effect change, then where to start? For too many of us, where we start and where we end is by banging angrily on a keyboard. Adding to the noise, but not creating anything of substance. Certainly not creating any solutions.

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Go Outside Every Damn Day

It’s not a choice, it’s an imperative

What do rain, sun, and snow have in common? If you said they are all types of weather, then you are only half right. The full answer is that they are all great types of weather for being outside.

That’s right, rain and snow can be just as lovely as sunshine.

Not the outdoorsy type? Who cares. Is it raining? So what. You have an overriding fear of moths? Grow up.

I’m not saying this to be unkind. I’m saying this because the kindest thing I can do is to tell you to go outside nearly every damn day. This isn’t about some study making the daily news rounds, although there are more than a few of those. It’s not even about vitamin D. Well, not entirely.

It’s about humility, awe, and being true to your most primal inner human nature.

It’s about being fully alive.

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I Am Not Special

These four words will save your life

Chances are, if your life was anything like mine, you were told by someone at some point that you were special. Usually, it’s a parent, grandparent, or other adult who first says something like this to a child. Sometimes it’s a teacher. Sometimes it is twaddle from an esteem-building children’s story.

“You’re special. You can do anything you want.”

“You can be anything you like when you grow up, because you are special!”

“Don’t worry about what that bully said; they are just jealous because you are so special.”

“You aren’t like the other girls (or guys), you’re special.”

However it is worded, it somehow seeps into our psyche. The world is comprised of special individuals like us, and then there is everyone else. For some reason, we never stop to consider that everyone is walking around feeling special.

Everyone thinks they are the main character. Yet, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that none of us is the main character. Main characters live happily or unhappily ever after. All of us die at the end of our story.

No ever after.

Nada.

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Tight Belts, Full Bellies

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 16–22

Although it is both physically and figuratively impossible for one to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, it is possible to tighten one’s belt. Whether that is a good thing depends upon the individual’s need, of course. In general, though, it does all of us a bit of good to tighten our belts periodically — whether necessary or not.

When life becomes too easy for humans, we begin doing stupid things — like running monopolies, hanging out on private torture islands, and engaging in senseless cruelty against the underprivileged. I know I don’t want to begin on that path.

For many in the US, the end of November is the theoretical release of said belt, allowing it to stretch to its utmost as we stuff ourselves with good food and cheer (and, for some, a lot of shopping). Of course, this loosening of the belts often continues into December. This is why so many of us wake up on January first feeling desolate, indebted, and afraid. For the fortunate, there are credit card bills to deal with. For the less fortunate, being short on rent or another important bill may be their lot.

Well, let’s say balderdash to that! 

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Living within Your Time and Money Means

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 9–15

We are in a lull right now, here at the always cozy Sequoia Cottage. It is a financial lull, as our income continues to hover at its lowest since 2009, and a time lull, as few outside responsibilities are tugging at me.

Having little money but plenty of time is preferred over having little money and little time, of course. With time, we can invest in those actions that make the most of small means. Whether unfortunate or not, our time will soon be in high demand, but there is no guarantee that our income will rise with it.

All is well and all will be well, though, for we are experienced at living large on little — whether that little be time or money!

One way to control working-class folk is to make their survival all-consuming. The workers can’t organize for better pay and improved conditions, for example, if their waking hours are booked full with scrambling for a few meager crusts to make ends meet. Without time, who has the energy to trace their difficulties to the feet of the elite, or to change something about it if they do?

Money-deprived folk with time revolt; money- and time-deprived folk simply struggle to survive.

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Taking the Time to Live a Longer Life

Musings from the bus stop.

The journey begins pleasantly enough. I walk down the lane, leaves crunching underfoot. First I crunch through a collection of maple leaves which are satisfyingly crispy even after yesterday’s drizzle.

Next, my feet wade into a sea of yellow heart-shaped leaves. It is the cottonwoods, whose pleasant fragrance reaches me before I see the first impossibly tall trunk. Looking up, I realize our lane winds through a copse of these giant grandmother cottonwoods. Large and wise they tower above. I have driven this lane a thousand times and never noticed them dancing alongside the pavement, ensconced as I was in an aluminum, plastic, and steel cage.

I am disappointed in myself, but also thrilled to have finally made their discovery.

Bright leaves dot the blacktop at my feet like colorful autumnal confetti. I take it all in, my head turning this way and that in an impossible effort to synthesize it all into my being.

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I Paint My Poverty In Beauty

By doing so, we become rich

I am grateful to love old things. Corners worn smooth through years of love and use. Patches and mending threads give proof of adoration to well-worn garments. Repairs and mending are nothing more nor less than a bandage on a loved one’s knee, a kiss and a promise that all will be well again soon.

Old things, like you and I, are perfect in their imperfection.

All I can do is imagine the dissatisfaction and unhappiness for those that depend on the new and shiny, the unobtainably trendy, to bring them joy. Especially when their income is as paltry as ours. It must be painful to covet clean lines, Pottery Barn dreams, and the plastic haberdashery of the finest modern design.

Loving old things lends us the privilege of genteel poverty. Castoffs from a century ago, sometimes less and sometimes more, feel luxurious compared to particle board knock-offs of modern designs.

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True Beauty Is In the Small Details

The homespun foodie’s week in review, Oct 12–18

There’s a certain decor style, we all know it. Walk into a medical office, a corporate coffee shop, hell, any modern shop, and you can’t miss this look.

Bland and boring. Walls painted a color I call Millennial beige. It’s not always beige, of course. Regardless of the hue, the color makes one feel bland and beige inside.

On the walls rests a minimal amount of meaningless art. A closeup of coffee beans or a random swirl of colors in different shades of some bland hue. Inoffensive, unimaginative, without life.

What is missing are the details. Those small things that breathe life into our homes and the various spaces we carve out for ourselves. To pick one example of life without beauty, the corporate-owned coffee shop does the bare minimum of decorating, using the most offensively inoffensive design to minimize cost while doing its best not to encourage anyone to linger.

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Without Effort, There Is No Contentment

The homespun foodie’s week in review, Oct 5–11

Nothing in life should come without effort, with the exceptions of sleep and love.

I know that I harp on the same ol’ themes over and over —

  • There is enough for all of our need, but not all of our greed.
  • The simple things are the best things.
  • Waste not, want not, and be fulfilled.
  • We are not main characters in the tableau of life.
  • Good food, good people, and hope is what makes the world go around.

These themes may be simple, perhaps even a bit old fashioned, but I shall take them any day over the current world themes of greed, consumption, hate, and destruction. Call me a curmudgeon, but those viral videos of destroying things for “ASMR” or unboxing things to engender envious consumption or behaving badly simply to encourage engagement really upsets me. They aren’t just a symptom of the hatefulness of the billionaire class that has destroyed modern culture, they are also direct cause of it.

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