Just get on with it

I'll take the opportunity today to answer an email I received last week from a reader. "Jackie" told me she started on her simple life journey last Easter but she is letting it all go because nothing she does is perfect and it takes too long to learn what she needs to know. I get the feeling from Jackie's email that she thinks Hanno and I live in a perfect world, that most things flow along nicely, nothing bad ever happens here and housework is quick and simple. I'll happily burst that "perfect" bubble right now Jackie, because like everyone else living in the real world, in my home things go wrong, cakes burn, plates are dropped, the washing machine breaks down, crops fail, I forget things and sometimes I'm the only one who thinks my ideas are brilliant (!). Few things are easy when you're learning how to do them.

Nothing is perfect, you just have to try your best on any given day. That is enough. To tell you the truth, I'd hate to live in a "perfect" world. I think tough times and mistakes are when we learn the best lessons; lessons that aren't forgotten. It's definitely that way for me. If I hadn't taken nearly three months to learn to bake a good loaf of bread - teaching myself every day by touching and smelling dough, then eating some of what I made - I wouldn't be able to easily make good bread now. If I hadn't unpicked hundreds of rows of knitting I wouldn't be knitting as I am now. If I'd stopped when I failed, I wouldn't be writing this and probably have ended up miserable and wondering why nothing ever went right and why life is so hard.

No matter how easy or difficult your life is, every day the sun comes up and that single event gives you the magnificent opportunity of a new day with new choices. Don't think of yourself as someone who has the family who doesn't get it, or the job that gets worse every week, or the children who never help. You cannot live everyone's life for them; live your own well and they might want to change themselves. Decide what's important to you, have a plan every day, learn from what goes wrong (or right), do your best and just get on with it. When you least expect it, things will fall into place, what you're trying to learn will make sense and you'll start thriving.  It's all small steps and it takes time.