Getting Rid Of, Simplifying

This process of having children which seem to be ever more involved and work which seems to want an ever increasing amount of my time has been biting deeper and deeper into what I consider my "personal time".  That list of things that I always want to do has become more and more compressed until it almost seems like a black hole, not allowing even light to escape.

I suppose on one hand this is a good thing, because it enables one to (by default) focus on the few things that one really wants to do (since that is all the time there is); on the other, it is frustrating because even as one tries to cut down to the essentials, time continues to run away and even those things seem beyond reach.

Essentials.  I have been thinking about those a great deal lately, propelled by the Steve Jobs biography in two areas.  On the one hand, his continued effort to simplify, eliminate and get down to the core purpose of an item; on the other, the very real sense of mortality that hangs over all of us:  it is really not so very far from my age that he himself passed away.

Moving helps, of course.  The fact that our space arrangement has changed, that we have essentially "settled" on a location to be in (given interest rates, perhaps for quite a while), means that by default we are having to question everything we have:  do we need this.  Is this essential to what we do as a family?  I am having to apply it to my own stuff as well:  do I need this?  Do I use this?  Does this at all fall into the area of essentials that I have identified in my life?  If not, I am starting to attempt (sometimes a difficult thing for me) to move it out of my life.

But I am trying to apply this to my own personal, inner life as well.  The essentials:  what is Toirdhealbheach Beucail about?  Who am I as a person?  What I am trying do?  What is my core purpose and where can I simplify or eliminate elements of my own life - of me - to be more fully true to my purpose?

It is not something I have mastered by any stretch of the imagination - in fact, merely trying to put it into words solidifies my thoughts that this is something I have only unconsciously been working towards and it needs to be more conscious.

But needed.  Time continues to compress and run away from me.  It would a pity to arrive at that time when horizons begin to expand - or contract completely - and discover that my purpose continues to be buried beneath things real and psychic.