Shabbat

This is the second week consecutively that I’ve participated in giving up Facebook for Shabbat. Shabbat is the weekly Jewish day of rest starting at sundown on Friday and ending Saturday night when 3 stars appear in the sky. Me not being spiritual, I adapt traditions into my own meaningful to me traditions. Society is becoming too heavily connected and tech-addicted. I find it freeing to dedicate one 24hr period to disconnecting and focusing on family and friends physically around you. I don’t think I’d ever be able to honor Shabbat in its truest form with all of the rules, but I feel I am on track to something more personal.

In my baby steps approach I’ve started with 2 things: no facebook and no tv. For 24 hours I don’t need to know right away what everybody is up to. If it is important enough it will find a way to reach me. For 24 hours we can find something else to do besides staring at a tv.

Even though I probably could, I don’t think I can eliminate phone and email. I’ve got servers that I am responsible for and I need to be reachable if something goes wrong. I can though screen and filter anything I deem not urgent.

Other rules like no driving, no electricity, and no handling money are rules I’ll have to exclude as well. Saturday morning is youth bowling. No way around that. Again, my focus is on spending quality family time so I believe I am alright.

Next steps: hmm, I haven’t really thought of this. Well I definitely want to try baking a challah. Other than that I’m not sure. Let me think on it.

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Decluttering the Physical Stuff in My Life

This is Step 1 in my Quest to Simplify My Life

Inspired by this article.

Over the years I have amassed too much crap: furniture, DVDs, files, knick-knacks, etc. Society has changed. We are made to think we need to own every movie on DVD. That we NEED complete seasons of tv shows on DVD as if we are collecting baseball cards.

Whenever we want to have a party or guests are coming to stay for a few days, it feels like we spend an entire day to clean the house. Some may say, well you just need a better system for organizing your stuff. I say no. There must be another way, though organization is important too.

The plan is to have LESS STUFF. I already started in my office and I feel so much more relaxed. I’m removing extra desk furniture of drawers so I have more white space. I can actually see my walls! Packing up to store the items I don’t use regularly and only keeping nearby things I might actually use often like scrap paper, pens, stapler, stamps, etc.

Like some of you, I have a bookcase where I display all of my techie books from college and beyond. When is the last time I opened those? lol Most times I need to research something I ask my friend Google and can find the code examples I need online. So I boxed up many of my books.

There is a lot more I can do in here, but it is feeling good.

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Simplify Your Life

I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately. Life in today’s world has become too complicated. There are sooo many options: computers, electronics, cars, clothes, sports, social networks, tv/movies/music, etc. It is easy to let your life be consumed by everything and forget about the things and people that matter most.

The 2 things I have decided to focus on first to simplify my life are:

1)Decluttering the physical stuff in my life

2)Creating more time by removing distractions

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Don’t Accept Fast Food Errors

A couple weeks ago I ordered a couple combos at the Arby’s drive-thru. I was almost home when I took my first sip of soda and noticed it was bad. I didn’t feel like going all the way back for a new one. So I filled out a complaint on Arby’s corporate website and today in the mail received a voucher for a free combo.

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