Thursday, March 19, 2009

Nice Assignment: Make a Release

I have been reading Operation Nice for a couple of months now and I really enjoy it. I'm going to start participating in some of the assignments. Go check it out. Maybe you'd like to join in?
Today's Assignment: Make a Release

Taking on more and more responsibilities or rituals or habits only make life busier. So while I can say something like, "I need to relax more, so I'm going to start giving myself pedicures every week, and drink a glass of wine at night, and spend an hour a day reading," that will only make things worse. I need to release the parts of my life that distract me from the things that I love. But I needed to start small.

[Read here to know what Melissa is releasing.]

I think this small purge could be a great thing! Anyone care to join me? Have you been feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day? Is there something that you can rid your life of that will give you more time for the important things? Let me know what it is!

Melissa is singing to the time-strapped choir with this assignment!

I seem to always be searching for time to do something! I'd love to give up laundry, but I can't imagine that will ever happen. But I can give up some of the blogs I read. I believe I mentioned before that I follow 140+ blogs. Fortunately they do not all post at one time! But it can be pretty time consuming as I have at least 60 to read every morning.

By the end of this month, I would like to pare down my list of blogs to a few that provide me with challenges, interesting reading, those that stretch my imagination and my soul. I don't want to give it a number, I just want to read consistent, balanced, kind and honest blogs written by people like me who have a positive outlook no matter what the daily challenges may be: those who influence me to be a better me. Unfortunately, I think I've just described 139 of them!

What will I do with my extra time? READ BOOKS rather than blogs. I've been on a book-collecting-binge of late, all those gorgeous tomes recommended by those blogs I read! I've amassed about 50 of them in the last three or four months.

I'm off, to sit in the sun, and read :)

4 comments:

Jayne said...

Sounds like a good assignment :) I have to say I am pretty good at saying "no" - I used to be horrible at it but I ended up constantly volunteering for things I really didn't want to do and it made me resentful so I just stopped and it is so much better now :) Good luck with your parring down!

Sherry said...

Wonderful assignment. I think that our thoughts are in tune with each other right now. I could've written this post, except I don't have as many blogs I read, but still, I've had to cut back. I have cut out 99% of wasted time on another online activity that I realized that was just depressing me and eating up my time. At least the blog reading or catching up with friends edifys in so many ways... thanks, Lee!

Anonymous said...

Great assignment.

It sounds like you were talking right to me - I have a million (ok, maybe a half million) books to read. I'm never going to stay caught up if I keep reading blogs. It's a never ending circle, someone recommends a book on a blog and I want to read the blog + the book!!

Kaye said...

Right before Christmas I realized that I had just over 200 blogs in my Google Reader. I just couldn't keep up! I've pared it down to just under 50. I had a hard time paring it down, but it's been a good thing. I kept only the ones that were really important to me.

I've also pretty much given up message boards. It used to be that I would sit in front of the computer reading boards for hours. And then I would get frustrated with myself because I would walk away from the computer feeling like I had wasted my time. It wasn't filling my life with anything useful, you know?