Life is feeling fast lately.  The days are full of choices, appointments and activities.  And just stuff.  Lots and lots of stuff.  Weeks go by in the blink of an eye.  My kids are growing at an alarming rate.  Our family has been brainstorming, plotting, and moving to make our life suit us.  More authentic.  But even though all the changes are positive, the stress of buying and selling homes, choosing, working, living adds up.  It is easy to get caught up in the things that need to be done.  The things that we need to have.  The people that we need to be.  I would like to stop living on cruise control.  I’m the driver of my life.  I don’t want to just live my life, I want to make it.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has this definition for the word making: the act or process of forming, causing, doing, or coming into being.  This is how I want to live my life.  Forming, causing, doing, coming into being.  I don’t just want to react, settle, endure.  I read a lot of wonderful books and blogs about simplifying and living with less.  I could certainly do with getting rid of stuff.  But whenever I set out to simplify, I end up overwhelmed.  I think my clutter feeds on my decluttering stress and grows even bigger.  So a grand simplifying project isn’t the answer.

And I think some of our clutter is inevitable.  We are  homeschoolers, I run a childcare in my home, we love books.  While I’m sure that simplifying would make my life better, I need to accept that life is screaming by whether I declutter or not.  I want to be able to  look back at the end of the day and have more to see than the checklist I completed on autopilot.  We are happy with who we are, we know our big picture is right for who we are.  But I don’t want to lose sight of all the little things that make up our big picture.   So I’m going to write them down.  Take pictures.  Be aware of who I am and what we are doing.  Make choices.  Make this life.