Episode 195 - Summer Sabbatical, Decluttering, & Living a Simplified Life
Hey friends! In this chill episode I want to update you about my summer sabbatical plans, how I'm decluttering my home, and ways I want to life a more simplified life. I hope it inspires you!
Transcript:
Hello, this is Sarah Steckler and as you can hear, I am a bit sick. It's been a rocky month and I've actually been on and off sick for about three weeks now, which is wild. My immune system was greatly compromised right after my birthday in early June when I got a stomach bug. It might have been norovirus or food poisoning, something like that. Very ill for 36 hours and completely just depleted my body.
I feel like I've been ever since then, I feel like I've been trying to build my immune system back up, get fluid, reestablish the health of my microbiome, whatever, but I've just been really low. And then the second week I was hit with some really intense grief over Father's Day weekend and I think that that stress just took my immune system and it was like another hit. So lots of grief around there. And then a couple of days after that, when I was starting to feel better, I woke up with a really sore throat that has only morphed into a head cold stuffy, nose, all that good stuff. So I have really been struggling to get anything done in my business.
My brain has not been accessible, just feeling like mush and I've had really low energy. So one of the things that I decided to do to really honor kind of where I'm at and something I've been wanting to do in my business for a long time is to take a summer sabbatical of sorts. Now, I am still going to be working and doing some things, but mainly it's kind of reprioritizing where I'm spending the majority of my time. So I decided to take a break from Instagram and made a post about my summer sabbatical. And if I do feel called to share something in my stories every now and then, that's fine.
But essentially for about two and a half months, I plan to be off of social media, really limiting my time on Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff. I don't think I'll be perfect with it, but I would really like to refocus and in doing so, I really want to find my identity again. I think as a business owner, it can be so easy to get wrapped up in your identity, being the culmination of your business and what you do online and how you show up for your audience and your students. And sometimes it can be easy to forget who you are outside of your business. And that is something I've just been noticing more and more.
So really taking time over the summer to come back to who I am apart from my business and with a lot of intention. Just look at how I'm living my life, because for so long the majority of my time and energy has been going into building this business. It is no easy feat, as you may know. And I'm very excited to not only reclaim my time but also really go inward and do some more healing, work more through some of this grief and mental health struggles that I have and really start building up my immune system again, but also tending to my home and really decluttering. I've noticed that for me personally with my cPTSD, clutter has just become something that I like more so than ever in my life.
I've always been kind of a clutter bug. I'm not the messiest person, but I'm also kind of a little bit of a hamster. So I've really just noticed the amount of stuff that I've accumulated in my life, how much is around our house, and one thing that I found really interesting about being so sick these past three weeks is when you're sick, you have limited energy and limited capacity. And how much stuff we have, even like the amount of mugs we have, means that the dishes were able to pile up. And when my husband's gone and on duty, there's no one else to help me with that stuff.
It really piled up quickly. And so I started asking myself on these days, lying in bed where I couldn't really do much of anything and the light bothered me and I couldn't even talk or listen to stuff. I just had all this mental time in my head and I started really asking myself, what would it be like if you truly simplified your life, if you truly had fewer things, fewer decisions to make, just looking around the room, having less stimuli on a regular basis. And that's kind of where I'm coming to. So I'm not quite sure how this is all going to unfold or how I'm going to be able to really declutter my home to the ideal that I want.
But there's a couple of things that I'm trying and a couple of things that I asked my mom about who has really decluttered her life in the past few years to an amazing extent. One of the first things I asked her was I said, I have so many things that I've created over the years and especially over the pandemic. Spent a lot of money I shouldn't have, but I was like, what do I do when I have all these things that I truly love but I'm not able to use them right because there's so much of it. There's so many things that have accumulated that now have to go in tubs into my closet or tubs stacked up under my desk to the point of when I want to sit down and journal or scrapbook or any of that stuff. I can't even really get started because I don't even know what all is available to me.
And she really said something that really stuck with me and that really has been helping me. And that was, what's your end goal? Like, what do you really want to be doing with your time and with your space and what stuff is getting in the way of that. And there's something to be said for only having a few of something. My husband, over the years, his thing has been he's been growing his guitar collection slowly.
And that's not something that you can easily grow because guitars are typically not super cheap. And he's got a handful now. And he was telling me the other night, I often think about what it would be like to only own one and to really downsize there how much more I would cherish that one guitar and how I would never have to make a decision about which one I want to play or which one I want to tinker with because it would just be the one that I own. And I think about that with planners. I don't think that's possible for me because planners serve so many different purposes and there's different ones.
However, it did really start having me think about all of the things that I have. All the craft supplies, all the pens, all the washi tape, and how it's all wonderful and amazing and abundant. But at the end of the day, it's almost impossible to even pick a washi tape, to put on a page in a journal to start writing because I have so many. So it's almost like this abundance of choice becomes too much, at least for me. It becomes a barrier to taking action on what I actually want to do with my time.
And if I had fewer choices in my life, that would actually give me more time, freedom, because it would allow me to truly take action instead of sitting at my desk and asking myself all these questions like, how are you going to clear off your desk space? Where are you going to put all this stuff? And then feeling guilty about it and feeling annoyed about it, or which journal are you going to use? I have that question all the time. I have all these different hobanichi, planners and notebooks and sometimes it's hard to know which one I want to use and what would it be like if I just devoted myself to one journal for journaling and writing every year and that was it.
And there was never another decision to make. And so even moving forward into we're coming up on fall and everything in a few months, I'm really thinking, like, I need to really make a decision in a commitment about what all of this is going to look like. So those are a few of the things that have been going through my head. And when I think of my office space, I really think of barely anything would be ideal, right? Like maybe a couple, maybe my main desk and my stand up desk, and then just having a bookshelf with my planners and having a tub for my stickers and things that I can access.
But really just getting rid of a lot of these other trinkets and things like I've always considered myself a maximalist, but I'm just starting to feel more overwhelmed by that stimuli. So those are a couple of things going through my mind. Another exercise that my husband and I did the other night was we sat down on the couch and we each had our iPad and we started making a list of like without looking at our stuff. What are the top 100 things that you want to spend your time using and doing? And so we didn't get into the nitty gritty of oh, I want a desk or whatever, like furniture, all that stuff.
Sure, that's like a given. But I really started thinking of what are the things that I own? Like if I had a blank empty room, what are the things right off the top of the bat that I know that I would want to keep? And it was really interesting. We both actually got stuck after about eleven things.
But for me, I'll share some of the first things that popped up on my list were my Nintendo Switch, my journals and planners, specifically my Brain Dump Book, mindful Productivity Guide, my Hobanichi Weeks Planner Journal specific pens that I own, and my iPad, my iPhone. And after I got through about eleven ish things, I found it was very obvious, like, what I want to spend my time doing, right? And like a couple of other things trickled in there, like my watercolor supplies or a paint by number that I'm working on. And I noticed that the things I was not listing off were all these extra purses that I have that I've accumulated, right? Or all these different decor items that I have that are like super cute, but I'm not thinking of them first.
In fact, I kind of forget that they exist. And I think that's what's tough about getting rid of stuff is I will be like, okay, I know what I want to put in my room. And then I'll see something that I totally forgot about and it's like, oh my gosh, I get this flood of like, I love this thing so much, how could I part with it? And I have to ask myself that question, that wonderful question that my mom asked. What is this?
Is this truly like, serving you? Is it getting in the way of you actually doing what you want to do? Right? And all of this is to say that I feel like this summer sabbatical is going to be about really determining that in this chapter of my life, what am I ready to embrace? What I want to let go of?
How can I let go of any guilt associated with the things that I've accumulated? And how do I ultimately want to simplify? And there's no hard and fast rules about this. I'm not trying to be like a minimalist or only own 100 things or anything like that, but at the end of the day, even some of the books that I own. It's like I've had some of these books sitting on my bookshelf and every time I see them, it almost just causes me anxiety because I haven't read it yet and I feel like, oh, I need to read it.
And I'm kind of like, if you haven't read it in the past five or eight years, maybe it's time to just write down a list of the books that you have and donate them. Because there is a thing called the library. So these are some of the thoughts I'm having. I'm also really excited to simplify my business more and really work on revamping pretty productive life life and getting that to a point where it's more focused and the outcomes are even more clear. And having just publish with purpose pretty productive life life be my main two core offers and really simplifying my business.
And in stepping away from social media for a while, I hope that inspires me to do more writing and blogging and podcasting. I think we hear this all the time that newsletters are dead or podcasts or blogs are dead, but I have really been enjoying going back to blogs and reading and having that longer form content that you can actually understand. I'll be really honest, whenever I see like a real or a ticktock and I have to quickly try to read something that people are pointing out really quickly. It's not enjoyable. I would much rather read a newsletter or a blog post.
Maybe it's because I'm a geriatric millennial, but I want to really go deep with content. And I think that a lot of people are feeling that we want to slow down. The world is so heavy and chaotic right now that all these fast paced, quick social media posts can sometimes just keep us in that heightened stress response. So I'm really looking forward to slowing down and unplugging where I can, taking control of things that I can, and so that I also have the energy to make an impact in the world, to stand up for some of this bullshit that is happening in the United States right now, and to take action and to make sure that I have the energy I need to rally, to peacefully protest, to whatever, so that I can actually vote to get out there, to make things more accessible for people. So those are the reasons for my summer sabbatical.
Those are some of my goals. And if you're thinking about taking a break from social media, I say do it. And just a reminder that real change happens behind the scenes. There are tons of things that we could all post on social media. And I know it makes us all feel like we're doing something and it's important to get information out there and to know what's going on.
But if it drains you and if it just makes you depressed, it's not really truly serving you or changing anything in this country, right? So do what you can and take care of yourself and take action where you can and don't underestimate the power of taking local action. That is where a lot of change happens and we all need to be voting locally and be aware of our local government and the changes that are taking place and that is where we can sustainably all come together and actually change the course of history in this country. So that is my spiel there. Thank you for listening to my very different voice as I worked through this podcast and I've been recording this on my iPad and voice memos and we have our AC going.
It's going to be hot here today but I am looking forward to hopefully getting better soon and not being so sick, boosting my immune system decluttering and simplifying. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe and keep on listening. I hope to be back here soon with more episodes and I'm so glad that you've been listening. Have a wonderful week ahead. Take care of yourself, be safe.
Bye.
