Books are the new black, didn’t you know? My free subscriptions to Vogue, Allure, and Dwell ran out, and there isn’t any TV that I am interested in now that Friday Night Lights is over, so I’ve got nothing but time. Time to stretch out on the couch and read books all day and night. Okay, that’s a lie. There aren’t enough hours in the day for everything I want and need to do, but I have recently re-committed to reading books for myself. Not just books on how to be a good parent or how to eat or how to make a million dollars and have the life of your dreams. No, I am going to read books for entertainment, like I used to do when I was a kid. I feel better when I read books. Even if I watch quality movies and read quality articles in magazines, they still don’t do whatever it is that a good book does for me.

I’ve started this year off pretty well, it’s only March and I’ve already finished four books and am almost done with two more. I got something great out of all of these books, and isn’t that the thing, really? To spend your time and not feel as though you wasted it? I think that’s my goal in life (or one of my goals), to feel like I made the right choices. I’ve decided that I am going to keep track of all the books I read this year here on Goodbye, Small Heart, both for myself and for you, in case you are looking for some reading material.

I should note that I get almost all the books I read from my public library. We’re on a budget and I don’t like owning books unless I will refer back to them often. Every once in a while I buy something if I can’t get it at the library or borrow it from a friend, but then I usually put it into circulation among friends or sell it. I recently sold a big bag of books and made $6! Woohoo! That’s almost enough to buy a burger at our local burger joint (Phil’s Icehouse in case you are wondering, and I mention this only so I can tell you that Brian refers to it as MILF’s Icehouse because it is a popular lunch spot for the hottie stay-at-home-mom crowd. Ha!).

Anyway, without further ado, here are the books I’ve read so far this year, all highly recommended:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Recently happened upon some good advice:

If there is something you want to do that you don’t have time for, you need to do less of something else.

Man does this ring true for me. There are a million things I want to do that I know would nourish me and make me so happy yet I can never “find” the time. The concept of “making” the time by consciously choosing to do less of other things is so obvious and simple yet never occurred to me. I always think I will do these things in some fantasy future-time, when all my dishes are done and miraculously stay done, the baby takes 3-hour naps (or is in school, ha!), etc etc etc. But the truth is that life will always be like it is now, with a lot of commitments, a lot of little things on the to-do list, and a household that needs my love and attention. I need to take a good hard look at how I spend my time and decide what I am going to do less of. Then I will have time to do more, and to be more.

I went through a phase this fall of feeling very wanty a lot of the time. I hate that, especially because at my core I am really interested in reducing consumption, being happier with less stuff, and living simply. But every once in a while I catch the consumerist bug and it drives me crazy until one day I wake up and feel normal again. I don’t satisfy this bug with lots of purchasing, partly because the single-income budget does not allow for such indulgence, but also because of the minimalist values mentioned above. (Yes, even in the haze of want want want I can still find a minute to actually think–a lesson learned, no doubt, from a lot of stupid purchases made when I was younger. Many of which were returned, but still, what a huge waste of time and energy!)

Anyway, the backlash from my wanty phase this past fall is that lately I’m feeling very ascetic. Like, I don’t want to buy anything at all. I just want to get rid of stuff and pare down and spend my time doing other things besides contemplating all of the material goods I could own. I’m also feeling a strong desire to have more leisure in my life. I’m typically a go go go kind of person, yet am also strangely unproductive. It makes no sense. So I’ve decided to do more of the things I want to do and not worry as much about the stuff I feel like I should do. Certainly some of the should do’s are important and need attention, but I tend to fall into the trap of devoting way too much time to that stuff, most often in an extremely unproductive fashion, and to the exclusion of relaxation and fun. Lame.

This weekend I did some things that made me significantly happier, and didn’t cost me any money. That’s kind of perfect, isn’t it? I thought I’d share these things with you in the hopes that you either identify with me or get inspired to find more happiness in your life as it is now.

1. Painted my nails (and my toenails, but that hardly merits mention as painted toes are de rigueur por moi).
2. Organized our bookshelf and purged the unwanted or unused books.
3. Put three books on hold for myself at the local library.
4. Got started on our taxes. This may not sound fun but it was actually really soothing and gratifying to have an hour to myself to get medical bills and spreadsheets organized. I like being on top of things but am usually doing our taxes at 10pm on April 14th. Reducing my stress level and being proactive = huge win!
5. Sat down and read a magazine instead of cooking/cleaning/doing laundry. This was especially amazing. I sat in our new Eames chair with a nice snack and just relaxed for an hour without feeling guilty about the housework I wasn’t doing at that moment.
6. Organized and cleaned out our pantry, which has been a complete disaster since we moved into our house in September.
7. Organized  and cleaned out our freezer, which was as scary as our pantry. Now I can find stuff, and we have so much more space.
8. Rearranged some side tables and lamps. Now we have bedside lamps! No night stands yet but who cares when I no longer have to get out of bed to turn off the light when we are done reading at night.

In reviewing this list I realize that some of these things sound like “work,” and that it seems unrealistic that “work” can increase your happiness quotient. But items 2, 6, and 7 have been causing me low-level, constant stress for months. And stress means unhappiness. Every time I walked into our extra bedroom and saw the piles of books on the floor and the bookshelf that was totally disorganized I felt stress. I knew there were books I could sell or donate and that there were other books I had been looking for that were lurking somewhere in the mess. Getting this sorted out took about 30 minutes (I was thinking it would take much longer) and now I feel so much better. No more books on the floor and all the ones on the shelf are arranged by topic so we can easily find what we’re looking for. Same thing for the pantry and freezer. I had been putting off dealing with them because in my mind they became these huge daunting projects (do you do that, too?) and I didn’t know when I’d ever find the time. Turns out that the freezer took about 15 minutes and the pantry about 30 minutes, and both were accomplished while Dylan was awake. Amazing.

Perhaps that biggest thing that upped my happiness quotient, aside from the obvious pampering  and relaxing, is that I feel so empowered by choosing how to spend my time and then committing to that choice, whether it’s painting my nails, reading a magazine, or organizing last year’s medical bills. I’m usually the kind of person with a mile-long to do list and everything on it seems so important that I can’t decide what to do and I’m paralyzed by my need to do the “right” thing, OR, I pick something but can’t really focus or be efficient because I am thinking about all the other things I could (should?) be doing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to read a book but couldn’t enjoy myself because I felt like I was shirking responsibility. It all comes down to conscious choice, commitment, and focus.

What choices could you make about how you spend your time that would make you happier right now, in your current life? I’m curious if other people engage in some of the same habitual self-sabotaging behaviors that I have. What can you do right now that won’t cost you any money, but that will reduce your stress, help you relax, or bring you happiness?

There is always a lot of talk about resolutions at this time of year. It’s like we think because it’s a new year then things can be different, we can be different. But January 1st is just another day, and any day you can wake up and decide to do things differently. I confess that I have always loved having my birthday on New Year’s Day, simply because of the whole idea of the fresh start of a new year. I think, this year things will be different, I will finally transform myself into the person I want to be! Of course it usually doesn’t play out that way. The most life-changing decisions come at unremarkable times, sparked by circumstances and events rather than a calendar day. When I think of the most important changes I’ve consciously made in my life, the truth is that none are particularly romantic or dramatic, or happened in a single day. Who wants to hear about that? Or think about the reality that true change in who you are, or the life you have, usually takes effort, or at least some thought, on a daily basis. I haven’t made any official resolutions this year because the past few years my resolutions have been more like to do lists hovering over my head and nagging me to be better better better. I don’t want to feel bad about myself or my decisions, even though I do want to be better. I don’t want another item on my to do list, or another list of things that seem impossible to accomplish or just stress me out.

If I had to pick a resolution for this year it would be: ACCEPTANCE. For me, acceptance is more of a life lesson than something that is reasonable to accomplish in a year or check off a list, but I like the idea of holding that thought close and letting it shape my days.

Also: have more fun! This one doesn’t need any explaining, and if you think it does, then it should probably be on your list, too.

I know everyone is telling you to donate money to the Haitian earthquake relief effort right now. So, um, have you?

When a huge tragedy occurs, sometimes I donate money and sometimes I don’t. What motivated me this time was the realization that there are people in Haiti who are just like me. Mothers with 7 month old babies who are just trying to get through the day and take care of their kids. Except their day is really, really awful and the stakes are totally different. Here I am thinking about Dylan’s naps and making sure he has developmentally appropriate toys, and there are mothers in Haiti who are just trying to keep their babies fed, healthy, alive. Of course if we could find out about every person affected by any large-scale tragedy there would inevitably be someone for each of us to identify with, but for some reason this time that thought really hit home for me. Haiti is a really poor country. If we (we being the people from the moneyed countries) don’t step in to help them out, who will?

Even if you think you have no money, you have enough to give something. It is very easy to feel bad and say a prayer for all of the people who are suffering in Haiti right now. But guess what? It is almost as easy to donate money to help them! I suggest choosing a large, established international aid organization, but I’m sure there are smaller organizations working in Haiti that are also legit.

Donation Resources
The NPR website has a brief list of organizations that you can donate to.

CharityNavigator.org and NetworkForGood.org can help you evaluate charities and make donations to a broader range of NGOs.

And if you’re texty, you can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti (that $10, plus standard text messaging charges, will be charged to your cell phone bill).

The team over at 37signals writes a pretty awesome blog. It is mostly tech-focused since they make web-based software, but I find that a lot of their topics have broader applications as well. Take today’s genius post about the suckage to usage ratio, for example. The basic idea is that when creating a product, it’s okay for some features of the product to suck if they are not the most important or frequently-used features. So often the pursuit of perfection, in software, in projects, in life, can get in the way of progress. As a recovering perfectionist, this concept really resonates with me. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest.

There is an eternal contest in my mind between the following aphorisms:
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing half-assed.

Mostly I try to side with the last two in that list, lest I drive myself and everyone around me insane. I predict that the suckage to usage ratio will become another tool for me to use to combat the inertia that comes along with the pursuit of perfection. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest. Practice makes perfect, right?