What's In a Name?

Hi there, how's your first 4 days of a brand new year been so far?

I was thinking recently about my "blogger name".  I Want a Simpler Life.  I wondered what that conjured up for people.  I wondered if folk would imagine me as someone who is crafty and can turn her hand to making new clothes or home soft furnishings, makes everything from scratch, has a sparsely furnished home and hand feeds sparrows in my garden which may be peppered with home grown root veg and herbs.

Sadly none of those are true.

When I started my blog I was in a fairly bad place.  I hated my job; it was in an overwhelming, chaotic place which was poorly managed from the very top down.  Pretty bad for a global organisation you definitely would have heard of.  (I won't name check for fear of reprisals!)

My husband was only just into a permanent but part time job after a period of hit and miss full time work and was embarking on a degree via the OU.  So money was starting to evaporate and so was any fun in my life.  I wasn't exercising as much as I used to and so some weight was also starting to pile on.

My life seemed to have come to a halt and I felt like life itself was just passing me by.  I live in one of the most culture-less and featureless places in the UK.  You can go for a walk sure, but it's as boring as hell.  The beach is at least an hour's drive away.  There's nothing much to look at around here and anything 'fun' is away down the motorway somewhere.  I was completely uninspired by everything.  And to boot, I'd been seeing a counsellor about completely hating what I saw in the mirror. 

My brain seemed cluttered with a lot of....crap, basically.  Life felt complicated. Truly, nothing felt particularly straight forward even getting up in the morning.  Nothing really serious was going on, certainly I know people have it a lot worse.  But I just wasn't happy and was terrified at the prospect of life continuing this way.  I guess this inspired the name of my blog too as I really wondered:  "Is this it?"

What I longed for was better clarity in my mind, an uncomplicated start in the morning where I wasn't wrestling with roller coaster emotions whilst getting ready for work (you generally have to look in the mirror) and driving into the car park of that hateful place of employment.  Also some stability financially wouldn't have gone amiss.

I needed to make more sensible financial choices.  I needed to try and find more joy in life without having to pay through the nose for it.  I needed to leave that job!

I was at times longing to go back to the days when I have just left school aged 16 and brought home around a paltry £200 a month but I know I was happy.  I bought a little moped, I had independence, I didn't have credit cards or loans and an overdraft was unthinkable.  Just being with my friends was enough, we didn't need much else to enjoy ourselves and even a walk around the block together, chatting was nice.

All these things just added up, in my mind, to the word simplicity.  That's what I needed.  More simplicity.

So that's how it started.  I guess I am making progress, yes, I am....but, it's a long process taken day by day.  The main thing definitely though, is I did leave the hateful job!

So tell me, did my name conjure up the description I started with?  Or had you imagined something else entirely?  I'd love to know!  I hope your life isn't complicated...unless you want it to be of course!

Bye for now, take care.

x x x