From Aspirations to Reality

I spent 2023 doing a lot of thinking. I thought about things like my fantasy life versus my aspirational life versus my current life. My fantasy life is somewhere between homesteading and cottage core with a dash of Little House on the Prairie thrown into the mix. My aspirational life, is just a simple, quiet homestead that is highly self sufficient and beautiful. My actual life is a little shabby farm, a tiny, heavily cluttered shabby house, and a whole lot of time spent at my job or on the go rather than farming. I thought about the fact that my life is changing in some pretty major ways and what that would mean and look like in the near future. I had to do a little separating reality from fantasy to decide which parts of my dreams would only ever be fantasy and which I could actually make come true. That was tough because it meant letting go of some things that just cannot be in this life, but then again, that was also a good thing because it means that I won't be spending any more time, money, and energy working toward things I'll never have or be.

If you're unfamiliar with these terms, let's take just a moment to define them.

Fantasy Self--The person you dream of being. Think cloud castles and all the cores such as cottage core, princess core, fairy core. They are the perfect dream world. This is the kind of thing Tyler Durden warned us against when he said we're all told we'll be movie stars and rock gods, but we won't. Well, it's the same message holding us hostage except now it's influencers telling us we should have these perfect lives we'll never have and even they don't actually have.
Aspirational Self--This is the person you aspire to be. It's different from the fantasy self because it is achieveable through effort. For example, you may not live a cottage core life, but you could start a garden and get some backyard chickens or start keeping bees.
Real Self--The real self is the way you are, right now. Hitting snooze instead of going to the gym or getting up to garden, working long hours instead of having a family picnic or just a relaxing glass of wine while you watch the sunset, etc. Sometimes it's not at all where you want to be, sometimes it's a healthy blend of I do what I have to but I aspire to do things I want to.

One major realization that I came to is that after six years here, we won't be building a house. Sad, but also good because realizing this meant that I could move forward instead of being stuck waiting on something that was not going to happen. So, after that epiphany, it was time to make our lives and our belongings fit into this tiny house. I spent my summer, from July up to this very day, so eight months and counting: cleaning, organizing, remodeling, decluttering, and donating. Have I been talking about it a lot? Yes, and I do apologize to everyone except this one rusty old heffer who left a bunch of nasty comments that no one will ever see and even I didn't fully read, but the thing is, this has been a pretty big deal for me and it's my blog, so I'm probably going to go on talking about it.

I have given away at this moment in time nine huge trashbags filled with clothes. I didn't bother to count all the bags of kitchen gadgets, books, and other household goods that I donated, and I shudder to think of all the things that got thrown away. I know I've said this before too, but again, this is pretty major for me. However, something amazing happened during all this work, the more I gave away/threw away, the lighter I felt. I have been ashamed to even let people into my home the entire time we've lived here because, quite frankly, it was kind of a dump. We never really made it into a home because we were just waiting until we built a new house. The more we remodeled and decluttered, the better it looked, the more I felt joyful and content and proud I felt of this home and this place in my life. Heck, I might even start inviting people over once all the renovations are done.

Somewhere around the new year, I began to realize that I truly had been stuck for the past six years here. I was stuck waiting for a house we were "going to" build, a life I was "going to" have, things I was "going to" do. I want to live right now, in this life, actually taking steps to build the kind of life I want to live. Part of that does include my wardrobe and how much I spend on it. The kind of life I want to live is quiet, practical, and simple. In that life, my family and I don't spend every waking moment at work or on the way to or from work. We have free time because we live frugally and well within our means. So, that meant cutting spending and you know the number one place I spend is on my beautiful clothes. My beautiful, gorgeous, totally-impractical-for-the-life-I-am-aspiring-to-live-clothes. That's why I gave so many away. And it made sense too because so many of those clothes went to young girls who needed them for prom or homecoming or their athletic banquet, it wasn't a fantasy for them, it was reality with a real need for a gorgeous dress and I got to be part of making that happen for them. And then there was a whole other age group of younger girls who got the less fancy but still fun stuff that made them feel beautiful, and I got to see the way they felt confident and glamorous.

I have done a lot of looking back during this time of introspection, a lot of sorting through all the feelings and the facts, call it emotional delcuttering. And now I am ready to move forward. In fact, it's become sort of a mantra for me. Lately, I often find myself looking at the way things have been, taking a deep breath and then saying, "That's in the past. Moving forward, let's____." I feel like I have not only been stuck, but completely lost and now it feels like I have some focus, some reachable goals and some hope for the first time in a very, very long time. I think I am finally on the verge of living the kind of life I truly want to live, of making my aspirational life a reality.