For the past two years, my partner and I have taken some time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve to get out of the city, unplug, and simplify life. It gives us an opportunity to decompress in what is often the busy lead-up to Christmas and to think about what we want the next year to hold for us.
We stay in a small, one room cabin that is heated by woodstove and powered by a single solar panel. We cook all our meals on this woodstove and go outside to pee. The cabin itself is about a kilometre in from the road, which means cell service is basically non-existent. Even if we wanted to check our phones, while we were in the cabin, reception is spotty and unreliable. Needless to say, life in the little cabin is a lot different from the daily whir of text messages, work emails, deadlines, and social engagements.
One of my favourite parts about these visits is when we go into town and visit The Wool N’ Tart in Wolfville. During our stay, I often pick up a skein or two of yarn for working on some simple projects in front of the fire during the evenings in the cabin. It’s so inspiring to connect with the people who work and shop at the Wool N’ Tart. They LOVE knitting and are always so excited to hear about what everyone is working on and sharing their own projects. This year, we also visited a spot that’s been on my Nova Scotia yarn store bucket list for a while: Gaspereau Valley Fibres. It’s an amazing little shop that has been set up in an old barn complete with wood stove and shop cat.
The time we spent in the country this year was a much-needed retreat for me. By the time I got to Christmas vacation, I was basically a zombie running on eggnog lattes and cookies. Spending time disconnected and living a much more simple version of life really gave me the space and time I needed to recharge and think not only about surviving and getting through my day-to-day, but also how I can lean more into the life I want to be living. Before the holidays, I had really started to be more cognizant of how I wasn’t making enough time for sewing, or knitting, or reading, or being outside, or any kind of self care, even those were the parts of my life that I felt called to more than anything. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my day job and am very passionate about what I do. But without fulfilling myself in my creative life, I felt like I couldn’t show up for that properly either.
In our time at the cabin, I spent full days having nowhere to be and nights cuddled up, knitting in front of the fire. We took time to explore little villages and towns in the Valley and dream about what our future country house would look like. We took a long hike on the property where the cabin is and followed the river there out to the sea. It was everything I needed to replenish my mental capacity and re-engage with myself. Unstructured play time is crucial to my mental well being and it’s something I don’t prioritize enough when life gets busy.
Something I always have to remind myself of is that while a long break is necessary, it’s also important to make time to disconnect every week. A big part of this, for me, is finding ways to simplify life as much as possible. Stripping away the responsibilities of every day life, I was able to think about the things that I want to make more time for and the things that I can stand to let go of. In my next post, I’ll be sharing all about the values I want to live into more in 2020. It was through my time at the cabin that I was really able to reflect on and distill these values, but more than that, identify ways to live into these values in my every day life.