Yearning for a -Free Life

There has been, naturally, discussion here and there of people not being ready to end their Christmas vacations. If you have already ended your Christmas vacation and wish you were still on it, I'm sorry to be admitting that we've had two weeks.

But it doesn't feel like enough.

I could really use another week. Or two. Or three. And I am looking inward to figure out why.

The only answer at the moment is that there is some sort of disconnect between how I am living my life and what I really want. What the innermost part of me says is how I was made to live. But what is it that I really want? Well, watching Pride and Prejudice recently, the version with Keira Knightley, I found myself going, "Yes, that is the life I would like." Not just like, but would thoroughly enjoy and love, I think. While they only show a bit of the involvement the family had in the goings-on of the household, it was all so much calmer and less rushed. Sure, there's laundry and some tending of the animals and some cooking. But other things, too. Go for walks. Hang out under trees with books. Travel by carriage--and not be in such a rush and it's not even that big of a deal if your carriage breaks down and affects your timing. Attend parties. Live fairly simply--yet still have enough to have hired staff. It was, as at least one site has described general life in the early 1800s, a leisurely life. Even for those who worked in typical lower and middle class settings.

from http://janitesonthejames.blogspot.ca/2011/08/trees-in-jane-austens-landscape.html

As this Christmas season comes to an end (it's the 10th day of Christmas, by the way), I find myself really longing for that kind of a -free life: constant-rushing-free; constant-outside-demands-free; too-much-excess-free. I'm not sure at the moment what the first step to take is for that--to attain a leisurely sort of life that doesn't slip into just plain laziness--but the desire is there.

What about you? Do you have similar thoughts about your own life? Things are too fast-paced? Too full of outside demands and even too much stuff? Will you join me this year in reclaiming the simpler, -free life that your inner self is asking for?