Pursuits in 2017

#1. Everyone please go watch ‘Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things’

"It's easier to be mindless and consume. When it comes to the overwhelm, the easiest way to deal with that...is to turn it off."

#2. So, in an effort to “turn it off,” I’m gonna do a thing.  I've thought about it long and hard and I’m giving up social media for 2017.  I find myself sitting on my phone, constantly refreshing all while thinking, “Why am I sitting here spending my precious time this way?” 2017 is going to be one of my biggest years and I don’t want to miss it with my nose stuck in my phone.  My last semester living in my college house with eight of my best friends (😭), my last semester as an active member of my sorority, last semester leading Young Life College, last @jmumadithon, undergraduate graduation (!!!), and who knows what else: big girl job, new city, grad school, going abroad?! I don’t know! But I don’t want to be blind to it and I don’t want to miss anything.  I want to be teachable and moldable and authentic.  I want to limit unconscious comparison and blaze my own trail.  Our society puts so much emphasis and weight on social media that makes this seem so daunting, but it’s just all extra and unnecessary! We think we need these things and we’re told we need these things by society.  And honestly, social media is exhausting. And I'm tired. There’s so much life to live aside from social media and I’m excited to experience it fully again.  I like to read. I want to read again. I like to write. I want to write again. So for those who might not see this, I haven’t “fallen off the face of the earth,” I’m still here, still breathing, still experiencing - with open eyes, heart, and hands. Believing and trusting that this is gonna be the best year yet.
So, I guess email me?! And feel free to join! Even if just for a week or two! You're welcome here :) 

Oh, and I'm also giving up shopping for clothes, accessories, shoes, random "stuff."  And also getting rid of a lot of clothes that have accumulated.  Watching this documentary only confirmed what I have thought for a long time about excess!

“When you talk to people about not consuming, people think that you’re trying to take something away from them, but the truth of the matter is that what I think this movement is really about is questing after a life that’s good for ourselves and good for the people around us.”

‘When you recognize that this life is yours, and that it’s your one and only and when that ceases to be the esoteric bullshit, when that’s not hippie poetry anymore, when the pragmatism of that statement seeps directly in your bones, when you recognize, “this is it,” everything changes.

“Love people and use things, because the opposite never works.”

Jimmy Carter, Crisis of Confidence, July 15, 1979: “After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.

It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed. Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: "We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves are the same Americans who just ten years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.” – Jimmy Carter, Crisis of Confidence, July 15, 1979


I have so much more to say and maybe will eventually, but it's 2 am, I'm tired, and there's ice cream in the freezer calling my name.