The Pursuit of Doing Nothing

This post is sponsored by Territory Design. By curating a collection of items centered around crafting a life well-lived, Territory inspires the pause needed for grounding us in our everyday living.

The pursuit of doing nothing is a dying art. Hardly do I ever encounter a human being capable of nothingness. We Americans, especially, are never not doing. We have a bad habit of seeking activity rather than pleasure. We are always looking ahead to the next thing. We are constantly in search of distraction. How many times do you automatically take a moment of stillness and use it to pull out your phone and subconsciously hit that social media icon. BOOM! Time spent, action checked off.

But are you well?

Does it behoove you, the things you cram into your schedule?

We leave the art of doing nothing to the monks, as if it is an occupation that is not worth our time. Or we make up some excuse, saying we were born this way – our personality is just not meant to sit still.

There’s a reason the monks call meditation a practice. Because even monks were not born to be doing nothing. They are human, after all, with human minds that wish to plan ahead and human hearts that wish to conquer dreams. The practice part of it is required in order to master the art of stillness. It is, even for them, a pursuit.

Many of us get uncomfortable sitting with ourselves for too long, constantly on edge should a negative thought fleet across our minds or a scary imagination flicker behind our closed eyelids. We seem to always be waiting for bad news. Why waste time thinking and worrying? Best we get up and go do something about it. DO, ACT, GO. Or so the consensus goes. There is a certain courage required to pause in the face of discomfort and keep going as if nothing was shaking you to the core. There is growth in being able to take a short-coming and process it in ways that transform you.

The pursuit of doing nothing is a challenge worthwhile. It’s not going to be easy, and certainly the world isn’t making it easier. There will be temptations thrown your way, low-hanging fruit dangling inches from your brow, but don’t be fooled. Everyone else will also be holding on to low-hanging fruit. It’s hardly special, and will always be around. You’ve got a job to do.

Look at nothingness as an opportunity. Have you ever found yourself saying, “I don’t have the time”? Doing nothing is required to create space for something new. Therefore, the pursuit of doing nothing is preemptive to moving forward. It is old-age culture that is lacking in new-age thinking. No one else around you is doing that. Everyone else is too busy to take on the opportunities, and losing them too, all at the same time.

The pursuit of doing nothing is a dying art, and we, a backwards culture. Since when did we value filling our time with useless action items that are essentially repetitive loop cycles? Get up, go to work, come home tired, eat dinner and barely see the kids, binge watch TV, go to sleep, repeat five times a week, fifty-two weeks a year, forty-five years of our life. Is this what you want to call a living?

I don’t know about you, but I am committed to pursuing doing nothing.

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Simple Things: Wooden Hangers

Sometimes, simple things matter. Sometimes, it’s all that matters. Our household lives by the adage, “Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. Curating a home is part of living an intentional life, and the things with which you surround yourself does define your lifestyle. In my opinion, a few simple things bring so much more beauty to your home and value to your life than a hundred gadgets. This series is dedicated towards those simple things.

I’ve wanted wooden hangers for a majority of my adult life, which equates to about the last ten years. Many a time I’ve visited department stores and turned towards the hanger aisle, if only to longingly run my fingers along the smooth edges of polished pine, or unfinished walnut. But the cost of wooden hangers is too great, at about a dollar a piece, for me to ever make that leap. So I have spent years begrudgingly using free, hand-me-down plastic hangers that leave pointy shoulders in my tees and dismay in my heart.

But providence proves just and patience is the best virtue, for this weekend when we were walking the two dogs that we were sitting on Rover (get our side hustle monthly income report here), we swung by the recycle bin behind our garages to find it overflowing with unwanted things from what we assume to be a recent neighbor’s move. And there, sitting on the floor next to the miniature Australian shepherd was a box FULL of wooden hangers. Now I am not one to dumpster dive, but in the name of frugality I am also not completely opposed to it. As my roommate fairly stated, it can’t even be considered dumpster diving. Rather, it’s as if someone plopped a box of beautiful wooden hangers in the middle of my path, already unwrapped and ready for use.

I looked to Mr. Debtist hopefully and with pleading eyes. Can I please take this home without you judging me? He carried the hangers home himself. Once we got inside, I started wiping them down with white reusable rags. They were in pristine condition. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was completely prepared to polish them up but there was no need. In fact, there was hardly any dust.

No chore could stop me from immediately switching out those icky, flimsy, plastic hangers in our bathroom nook for these “new” wooden ones. You see, we have no closet in our main living space (only one under the stairs) and so we’ve lived with this makeshift rod hung up in a tiny indent next to the shower. Our clothes have been hanging on plastic hangers exposed to all guests and visitors who use our restroom. We’ve made do, but it’s not been pretty.

Now, they still do hang exposed, but my heart is full. The beauty that I feel from wooden hangers make living with no closet that much more bearable. In fact, it makes it that much more exciting. I could live without a closet forever if it means I could stare lovingly at these wooden things every day. Plastics be-gone! Don’t worry though, they won’t end up in the trash. We got these plastic hangers from my parents and they will be returned just as my brother conveniently leaves for college in two weeks. I am sure there they will find a new home.

What about you? Things you’ve found in the trash that have made your home that much more beautiful?

Curating Closets: Letting Go of Trends

Fashion trends are a funny thing. Always, I’m reminded of the day I sat in my college biology class and watched hundreds of lemmings following each other until they’ve all jumped to their perilous death in a state of herd mentality amidst a migration. I think back to my own succumbing to the scrunchy frenzy, the bell bottoms fad, the constriction of skinny jeans, the poofiness of fur vests, et cetera, et cetera. If these trends seem a bit outdated, well, it may be because at some point, I kind of got tired of following, perhaps shortly after watching cute lemmings jump off a cliff. I must’ve said to myself, “Let me be a lemming no more!”

I spent 7 years of my late teens and early twenties in a shopping mall, because that’s where I worked. I spent five of those years working at a retail store. Four of those years, I held the titles of merchandise specialist and visuals specialist. This endowed me the responsibility of displaying products in such a way that makes them appealing to buy. I enjoyed my work because I usually had autonomy over it, working solo in the wee hours of the morning before the mall doors opened to thousands of customers. I was creating beautiful imagery with my work, highlighting certain products in covetable ways. Suffice it to say, I know all about trends.

I know how fast they come about,

How forcefully they are pushed into people’s minds,

How they can shape a person’s wants even before walking into the store.

I have seen them fly off shelves,

The same day they are placed.

I’ve seen disappointment in people’s faces,

when they come a day too late.

I also know how fast they fade,

For the next week, I am back at my job,

Placing a new “It” thing to be chased.

I am not above fashion trends, in the sense that I, too, fell for every single one of them. However, over time, I started following the beating of my own drum, in fashion and other things, and I kind of fell out of sync with fashion trends. As I grew older and delved into de-cluttering and implemented “slower fashion”, I found that fashion trends leave me feeling a bit sick. For one group of people to sway an entire population’s opinion on what is “beautiful”, it has got me wondering whether we’ve got ourselves a real-life state of Panem in our midst. The Capitol would be proud.

Alack.

One day, my I was walking in the mall as my twenty-six-year-old self, when I saw a large quote plastered on the wall.

“Fashion is about dressing according to what’s fashionable. Style is about being yourself.” -Oscar De Le Renta

I remember stopping in front of the escalators and turning to fully face the words, re-reading the quote multiple times. I had flashbacks of the discomfort of skinny jeans, the itchiness of colored stockings, the chafing of jelly shoes, and the hazards of five-inch platform clogs. I remember feeling not-quite-myself when wearing clothes that someone else decided looked good. I, admittedly, was a bit loony for thinking Aviator glasses can look good on everyone, and that I had to buy corduroy pants in every Fall color. There were times where I also felt short of “enough”. The V-neck tee craze had me buying V-necks in multiple colors, and then lamenting my pre-teen bod that had nothing to show off in a V-neck. But they had everyone wearing V-Necks, even the men.

I looked down at my own outfit that day and knew that I was doing something right. I had on a grey sweater over a black tee and my favorite denim. This post isn’t to brag that I’ve done away with vanity all together. I am human, and I still look in mirrors, you know. But I want to look in a mirror and see myself. I still appreciate being polished at times, and elevated, and all-together looking F-I-N-E. But I don’t want to look good only momentarily, until the next trendy thing comes along. Before you know it, you’ve got the trends running the show. Once the new IT thing comes out, whatever IT thing you wore yesterday should no longer be worn, lest you be mocked for being behind the times or wearing something that is so ridiculous that, why again did we think that was cool?! Instead of having the previously 2-4 seasons a year, fashion now has 52 seasons a year, with new trends being released each time. Trends keep you reaching for the next thing, and like life, it’ll have you in quite the chase. It’s a little too exhausting for my style.

So I’ve let the trends go. I’d hate to say that I avoid them completely, for if there is something that I happen to like wearing (and always have liked wearing), and then some guy up in the cloud somewhere decides that this thing is trendy, I’m not going to go out and start renouncing the thing all-together! No, I just let trends do their own thing in a space separate from mine, and I’ll be over here, singing my own tune.

So if you’re looking for curating closets advice, here it is. You do you. You find whatever expression makes your little heart happy, whatever combo you find comfy, and you just remember that your biggest accessory is found in your smile and the way you carry yourself and how you treat others. That’s all the advice I can give you, and I hope it helps you in your curating, to let go of some things that you have been holding on to, maybe because a hypothetical someone once told you you needed to.

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