Challenges
For this year Iāve decided to do a new challenge every month. This idea is inspired by Matt DāAvellaās 30 Day Challenges that he did in 2019. I may or may not get inspired further by him and do some of his challenges. However, my main focus is on things I can challenge myself to do everyday that I think could have a positive impact on my life.
By doing these things everyday for a month I will see if and how they benefit my life and how I could integrate them into my daily life after the challenge has ended. If one of the challenges had a profound impact on my wellbeing or made my life exponentially better, I will probably continue to do it everyday even after the challenge. However, I also have to cut my losses in case a challenge proves to be in the way of my life or I simply donāt enjoy doing it anymore. I think the question whether I actually donāt enjoy doing the challenge and, consequently, should stop doing it or whether Iām just a whiny little bitch is going to be one I will have to face a lot.
The challenges will mostly be things I intended to do for a long time, but that I put off due to procrastination reasons. These may include doing sport everyday for a minimum amount of time, going vegetarian or even vegan, or working on my story writing and blog posts. The challenges will force me to make some time everyday for my passions and for intriguing life style changes. Who knows, maybe after the year is over Iāll be a football playing king in space with a mustache. Apparently, I only have to set my mind to it.
I have some challenges already, but I donāt want to fix myself to a specific schedule. Rather, I want to settle on a challenge a week before the next month. That way I have enough time to specify what exactly the challenge entails and whether it is even feasible to do given my life circumstances. Itās probably not the best idea to build a spaceship in a month where I write exams. Anyway, as it is already February, I already set and completed my first challenge. Yeah, Iām a little late on this one, but better late than never, right?
Decluttering
My first challenge of the year for January was decluttering. More precisely it was the 30-Day Minimalism Game proposed by Josh and Ryan from The Minimalists. Together with Matt DāAvella they released a documentary on Netflix called Less is Now about minimalism and Joshs and Ryans story. I really enjoyed watching the documentary and it made me question my own relation with stuff a lot. Although I wouldnāt consider myself to own a lot of stuff, I still had a lot of unnecessary things at home that I could probably throw away. And so I decided to make the 30-Day Minimalism Game my first challenge of the year.
The rules are simple. On Day 1 you throw away 1 thing. On Day 2 you throw away 2 things. And so on. The goal of the challenge is to get rid of all the stuff you own that donāt add any value to your life, but rather make it more cluttered. Depending on how much stuff you actually own and how willing you are to throw them away, this challenge might be easier or harder for you. For me, well my journey begins on Day 1.
I started the challenge by throwing away a photo album that a dear friend of mine gave me for one of my birthdays many years ago. Well, I should say ex-friend, because we went separate ways long ago. And while I donāt resent him for anything he did, I still get sad looking at our old pictures together. I never once grabbed that photo album and got nostalgic about the good old times we had. Rather, I just saw all the moments we could have had more of, if weād still be friends. I intended to throw away the photo album some months ago, but I could never get myself to actually do it. Iād regret throwing it away, I thought. I will get over the sadness and look at it in joy at some point, I said to myself. I suppose I realized this time I was waiting for might never come and even if I get over it, I still wouldnāt want to look at the photos. And so I decided to make the photo album the first thing to throw away from a whole pile of stuff I own that donāt add any value to my life.
Some of the things I threw away included old clothes that I donāt wear anymore, sports gear for sports that I tried out but never sticked to, bunch of small toys from surprise eggs, a bag full of tupperware and a lot of unused electronics and cables. One place, where I didnāt think Iād get rid of a lot of stuff, was my memory box. Everyone has one, probably stuffed somewhere under your bed, which is filled with stuff that reminds you of great times and adventures. And so I grabbed my box and emptied it on my bed and spread everything out. I picked each thing up individually and evaluated it. A lot of things I could barely remeber the context of how I got them, let alone the great experience that it should remind me of. Those obviously went into the trash. But then there were the things that actually reminded me of my āgood old timesā. Times I had with friends back in school and early university, where we were drunk and had fun or went travelling. I looked back at the memories and it filled me with joy and nostalgiaā¦And then I threw the thing that reminded me of all that into the trash and went to the next thing. It may seem cold or even heartless to do so, but I realized that I didnāt look at all these things in my box for years. They donāt hold the memories in them, I hold them in my head and I donāt need this trash to remind me of it. And so I threw probably 90% of it away. Some really sentimental things I kept and I put them in my living room for everyone to see. This way they are actually seen and I can enjoy owning them.
I have to be honest, I didnāt make it through the 30 days. After 20 or so days I didnāt have a lot of unnecessary stuff left to continue the game. Although I probably still had enough to get to the end of the 30 days I didnāt want to force it and throw away stuff that I wasnāt ready to separate from. This also shows another really important thing to consider for these challenges: if I donāt feel like a challenge is making my life better in any way or, as was the case here, I got what I wanted and I know how to integrate it into my life, I will just stop the challenge. I threw away a whole lot of useless crap and I feel like I can make a more conscious decision now on what things I want to bring into my life. I will continue to re-evaluate the things that I own and get rid of more stuff in the future, but I will do so on my own pace and not some arbitrary challenge.
In addition to physical decluttering, I also started to digitally declutter my life. I started to remove subscriptions/follows of channels on YouTube/Twitch of channels I donāt watch anymore or never even watched in the first place. I also organized my digital documents, sorted them and removed unnecessary or useless files. I also removed apps, programs and games on my phone and PC that I donāt use anymore. Lastly, I also decided to delete a lot of the photos that are saved on my phone. A few days ago I wanted to show a photo of my travel through Europe to a friend of mine, but I needed some time to find the one picture I was searching for. There were so many useless photos in there that I couldnāt actually find the ones of value. And so I want to organize my photos and remove everything there that doesnāt add any value to my digital life. Although I donāt know if I want to actually delete them or just archive them so they donāt show up in the app when scrolling through the photos.
In the end, I have to say that I really enjoyed this challenge. While Iām still not at the end of my decluttering and minimalism journey, I feel like I have more room to breath in my room. Less stuff that gets in the way of my everyday life and that makes finding the things of value harder. If you didnāt already watch the Less is Now, I highly recommend it.
Next Up: Sweating like a fucking pig
My next challenge for the month of February will be to do sports everyday. I will alternate between running and doing strength training. I donāt really have a clue on what exercises I want to do at home, as I donāt have any weights or equipment at home, but I will probably find some exercises for every muscle group that I can do with my body weight. I am really excited for this challenge as I wanted to integrate a consistent sport routine into my life for some time now, but always failed due toā¦well laziness.
Anyway, see you in a month :)
Ash