Swamped by simplicity

Simplicity is a real catch-word in my life these days, and also in several of the on-line communities I'm part of. This morning I awoke with a cold and ended up feeling particularly grumpy.

I was never truly part of a rat-race, discounting the 75-hour weeks I worked as an intern and occasional ER-shift-heavy locums during my first couple of years in practice. So even pre-simplicity I did my best to find balance. And back in the old, pre-simplicity days I used to get up, make some coffee and sit down and enjoy it before heading out for a ski or to visit friends.

These days my simplicity is More Evolved, and my morning routine consists of many or all of the following. I get up, split some kindling, light a fire in the wood stove, check the yogourt culture, empty the laundry airer and refill it with damp clothes, hand-wash some dishes, start the sponge for the bread, bake muffins, run the nut-milk maker, rinse some sprouts, feed and water the chickens, collect the eggs, roast some coffee, do some cursory snow-clearing on the driveway before it gets too warm and the snow gets too heavy ... and then maybe I can sit down and drink a cuppa coffee. Probably not, though, because my morning routine takes so long that something else usually needs to be done by the time I'm finished it.

When we moved to the Slocan Valley and began our slide towards simplicity, I thought quite fondly of our shift to a slower paced life. I still do, most of the time -- I really do love it. But from the wrong side of a snotty nose a slower paced life really looks like "everything takes such a damn long time."