How Should I Live?

I was reading about Mongolian nomads who still live the way their ancestors did 400 years ago- in yurts, herding goats and cattle, but they have motorcycles and Wi-Fi. This got me to thinking, how would my ancestors have lived? I know how they lived once they got to America. I tried to find the daily life of a Celt, but didn't really come up with anything useful. I think they would have probably rose with the sun, put their house to order, tended animals and plants, then worked their craft.

I decided that was sage advice.

I realized if I focus on one day at a time, I will probably be more productive. Sometimes I feel like I can't keep up. Sometimes I feel like I have too much to think about.

It's not that I think life 500 years ago was simpler. It wasn't. Life is a lot harder when you walk everywhere, have no running water, no heat, and you must find the food before you can even cook it.

But 500 years ago, food was just food. It wasn't filled with chemicals. 500 years ago work did not come home with you. When you left the field the crops stayed there. I don't think people worked as much either. Certainly, work was grueling. But people only worked during the daylight. Now we work at all hours. We promote (and consume) items constantly. As an artist, I am expected to network at every opportunity. I am supposed to be creating every day and if I go on social media I am supposed to be uploading pictures of my work or sending links to my friends.

I don't think constant advertising works. I try to avoid ads. I don't watch commercials on t.v. I stop reading articles if there's pop-up ads or if there's so many buttons on the side that they block words. I exit out of a video I can't skip. I'm pretty sure everyone else does the same thing and that's why I won't put ads on this blog.

Somewhere along the line we fell under the erroneous notion that motion meant progress. I think it follows the adage about idle hands being the devil's workshop. We think if we are busy we are good and that's not true either. Motion only fuels our worries because we never take time to think. We don't understand why we have feelings, and if we don't understand why we carry the emotions then we will never figure out what to do about them.

I must admit I fall victim to constant crafting often. I worry that I can't do a fair because I don't have enough inventory. But I don't make sales every day. When I do a sale I don't sell out. I have never sold everything I listed, so clearly I have plenty of inventory. And really, I don't want to sell out because about 70% of the time after I sell I must ship. That means finding a box, packing materials, verifying addresses, then going to the post office. I'd hate doing that every day. So do I really need to worry about finishing projects? No, I don't.

I have begun to ask myself, would a Celt do this? Would she make sure her family had food for breakfast? Yes. Would she load all the kids into the car, drive to a fast food chain, buy junk that barely qualifies as food, then stare at the phone while children run amuck? No. Absolutely not. That would have been inconceivable to her. Maybe it should be foreign to me as well.

Like the Mongolians, I'm going to have the Internet. I'm just going to take care of important things first.