Digging out

The weather has finally cooled off a bit here, and that leaves for cool evenings and mornings, but midday is still nice and warm. We are still in our bathing suits and shorts here, and it feels a bit like the endless summer.

This time of year is my favorite for lots of beach time. The crowds are gone, and we pretty much have the beach to ourselves during the weekday.

I can’t tell you how nice it is, on the spur of the moment, to head to the beach for some surfing and beach combing. We just load up our boards, a couple of chairs, a small cooler of water and beer, and off we go. We head there at least weekly, sometimes several times a week.

A few months back I met a woman who said that she moved here from Wisconsin. When I asked her what brought her here all the way from up north, she said “The beach! But I have not been to it since I moved here.” I asked her how long she has been here, and she replied “7 years….I have just been too busy”.

As strange as that sounds, it is not uncommon. Many people get complacent about their surroundings. They get wrapped up in the routine of life, and sometimes forget that they live in paradise, be it the mountains, the beach or the desert.

Bill and I promised each other that we would not do that. Here we took this huge leap, packed it up and moved to the beach, and damn the torpedo’s, we are not going to take it for granted.

This past weekend, we went to the trailer and cleaned it up. Ewww, it was nasty dirty. Being in storage for so long, the bugs invaded it, so, we had loads of bug poop etc to vacuum up. I bombed it, and basically sterilized it with bleach products. Bill cleaned out all the storage underneath, scrubbed the outside and now it is all shiny and clean, ready for our first escape…..we just have to dig ourselves out of the mound of routine activities that we piled on ourselves needlessly.

Life should not be about running here, and running there…..scheduled stuff that really sucks the life out of you. My kids don’t need soccer, UIL and such to occupy their time. What they need is quality time, spent with their parents and friends OUTSIDE. Why we signed them up for such stuff is beyond me. It has not been a totally enjoyable experience for us, and Quinn really could take soccer or leave it. I think our society has the notion that your schedule must be crammed and your life must be busy or you are not “succeeding”.

Success for me is having the time to sit outside and sip a cup of coffee while chatting on the phone with a sweet friend. Making time for my family and friends is the most important thing on my schedule, and I am glad to have friends who are the same. I feel very lucky.

The rest of the “stuff”, I am starting to think, is just wasted time….mounds of “business” that we should dig ourselves out of.

What things do you think you could eliminate from your life schedule to make more time for the simple things? How can you set in motion a big change that will be hard, but ultimately be the best thing for your family? Do you have a dream? Tell me about it and what brave thing are you doing, or want to do, to make your dreams come true?