Tuesday 22 October 2019

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On Being More Intentional with My Time

A photo featuring a black fountain pen bottom left, at an angle, with the nib in the centre partly on top of a mostly out of focus handwritten letter that's bottom right, with an out of focus envelope top right, slightly under the letter, and some lilac flowers to top left
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash.

On Being More Intentional with My Time


As I've mentioned before, the recent changes in my lifestyle have led me to slowing right down. In turn, this has given me space that's allowed me to reflect and re-evaluate my life, and what I spend my time on.

We're all so busy, and we often talk about how there aren't enough hours in the day, and things are no different for me. However, taking time to look back has made me realise that what I spend time on is what I prioritise, and what I prioritise is what I say - because actions speak louder than words, right? - is important. Outside of work and household chores, what do I spend the majority of my time on? Blogging, reading, and watching TV. Reading and watching TV are things I do when I'm relaxing at the end of the day, when I don't have anything else I have to do. But blogging, while I absolutely love it, is something I feel I have to do. This partly goes back to the pressure of blogging, but it's also me, and how I prioritise things. As we know, hours of time go into a single blog post, and those hours build up, over weeks, months, years. Hours that I don't spend doing other things I love, hours that I'm not spending on the things I consider important.

Blogging is important to me, I love it, and I will still continue to blog. But I do think I spend too much time on blogging. I need to spend more time on me, on self care. I need to spend more time doing the other things I love to bring more joy into my life. I need to spend more time being/engaging with the people I care about. I need to be much more mindful and intentional of my time, and what I'm saying with how I use it.

I have friends who don't live in London, or even the UK. These are not people I can spend time with whenever. But these are people I feel deserve more than a text or message on social media. I want to be more intentional in my friendships. One of these friends I used to write to - until I struggled to find the time it would take to write to her, because we wrote very long letters to each other, that would take hours to write. I've started writing to her again, and suggested writing to another. Not only do I absolutely adore writing and receiving letters, but I'm taking this time to engage with them. Giving these friends my hours, spending that time on them, saying that they're important to me. And on top of that, I actually want to do this. I want to spend my time chatting with my friends, catching up, learning about their lives. Yes, it's by letter, but it's still the same thing. I want to write these letters. And I want to appreciate the time they spent on writing theirs, that they chose to spend on me. This is important to me. More important than blogging.

So I'm taking my foot off the gas when it comes to blogging. I'm not going to stop blogging completely, because it's my creative outlet, and I need it. But my schedule has been binned. You'll get content as and when I'm inspired to write it, when I have the time. This doesn't mean I'm going to go AWOL for weeks on end - at the very least you'll get one post a week, with my book reviews on Mondays - but I'm no longer going to sit at my computer for hours working on it when there are other things, more important things, I want to do. This is probably the best way to lose followers (as well as completely changing the MO of the blog), but my blog has to work for me, not the other way around.

I'm pretty sure that writing letters to my friends isn't the only thing that will change. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of other things I love, spending more time on self-care, really putting in the time and work to my spiritual path. And all of these things, I think, will lead to more content, because I'll have more to talk about. It just might not come as frequently as it used to. And I've decided that that's ok, because there's more to me and to my life than blogging, and I want to prove it by how I use my time.

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Over to you graphic
What are your thoughts on how we spend our time? Is there anything you're prioritising that you're now maybe thinking should change in some way? Or maybe not? What are your thoughts on me taking my foot off the gas with the blog? Let me know in the comments!

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1 comment:

  1. Definitely do what's best for you! I do the same on the blog - although sometimes I've found that stepping away too long means I'm not "taking care of me" - because I really do like to blog. But definitely there's much more to life than blogging!

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