Paring back

 I'm not sure what I want. 

This morning, idly looking at a jar of hawthorne jam made in 2017 on our kitchen counter, I began thinking about that first year that we lived in Cwmgors. Our first home that we bought together. Ivy was just a baby, so the only home that she would ever know. Where our next child would be born. Where we would begin our new lives. We were so full of hope and spirit then. I was 26 and this was just the beginning. And for the next little while, despite some hurdles and worries, we were happy. We had big plans for the house and garden and did lots of them; perfected our little bubble. I went out for walks in the hills and admired all of the moss and lichen and fell more and more in love with this damp country.

And I think about what it was that we wanted back then, and how we made our decisions. And it feels now that our life has become so ruled by worries, and by stuff, and by being 'overwhelmed'. Yet when we lived in our damp house in the country with babies and a to do list as long as the garden, I never would have called myself overwhelmed. Busy, yes, but never overwhelmed. 

And what I really want now, in our not so new house, is to get that feeling back. Excitement and possibility, and freedom really. It only takes the littles thing now to make me feel trapped, and I don't know why. Was it the heartbreak from the move? The lockdowns? Lost friends, lost confidence? I don't know. And I don't know how to get that feeling of simplicity and freedom back, but I think the first and most obvious way, is stuff. We are a family of four and our children are getting bigger all of the time, so we have stuff. An amount of stuff is fine as long as it's useful and not broken. So that's what I want to do, is go through the house, find the energy to separate what is useful from what is not, what gives us freedom and what traps us. It is something I have been threatening to do since Hazel started reception, and I mustn't put it off anymore. I have become so tired. I can't get out of bed in the morning. I can't get anything done. I am lethargic. I let worry rule my life.

The timing is apt, if not essential, as I have news. It looks like I will be taking on some paid work. This isn't something I had ever planned to do, and have only considered it in a half hearted sort of way in recent months with all of the cost of living stuff. But I have been offered a job, it is something I think I can do, and it will be a great help in difficult times. It will be an adjustment and I am going to have to make a great effort to ensure it doesn't interfere with our family life, and that I am still able to be a housewife as well. So you see a great deal need to change and simplify. 

I am also excited because we are going to try a new church this week. We haven't been to church yet since moving, and it is something Will especially hasn't been sure about. But I know that it is the right thing to do, and I feel called to go. I feel that I can't not go anymore. 

I am in a difficult place at the moment really. I wish more than anything that there was some kind of community that I could lean on. But I also feel that myself, and those who want it, are building it all the time. My friend has recently started up a women's group, which I had joined. We met last week and swam in the freezing sea, and I didn't feel alone. 

It must be time for me to go now. Get out some bin bags and sort my life out. Make things easier. This worship of stuff, of leisure. It's so harmful.