In April of 2020, my husband and I decided we wanted to change our lifestyle and do more of what we love, while cutting out as much stress as possible. Sounds like a pipe dream, right? Of course, deciding is the easy part, but then what? How do you go from nothing to a business? Well, as you can see it is now 2022 and we have spent considerable time getting our thoughts together and figuring out what would work for us. Sometimes, it seems like the dream we want is impossible. I had many days where I would be discouraged and think this is never going to work. I still have those days. It may not work, but it won’t be from a lack of trying on our part. Some days are good and we accomplish our goals and some days I end up on the couch playing on Tik Tok in my pajamas. The best advice I have ever heard is “Just get started.” So, that is what we are doing here at Abstract Living. Getting started.
The first step we took was to write out a list of goals for ourselves and for our family. This was harder than we anticipated because it forced us to think of what kind of life we actually wanted. Both of us wanted to spend more time being creative. Joe loves woodworking, but he rarely gets time in his woodshop because of all of our obligations. I love to garden and paint furniture, but it is hard to find time to start a project when you are committed to something six days a week. We wanted to travel more as a couple and as a family. We also decided it was time to get back some of our roots. We both grew up in rural Virginia, where life was much slower. Our grandparents spent time teaching us skills like breaking beans, growing food, cooking from scratch, sewing, and building. We played outside and built forts, played in the creeks and in dirt.
Our current life seemed to have no place for any of this. I think this is where we really started to flesh out what kind of daily life we wanted. Spending hours talking about our childhood and what we loved the most about it made us realize how far off course we were now. We decided on a semi-homemade, outside the box lifestyle. We couldn’t quit our day jobs. He works for a chemical plant and I teach at a small Christian school. Despite what HGTV would have you believe, ordinary people don’t have a budget of 2.6 million for a new home or the ability to drop everything and start from scratch.
So this is where we are starting. We know what kind of life we want, so instead of spending every weekend trying to forget about the workweek or escape our lives, we are going to spend that time building the life we actually want. Follow along as we figure this out and who knows? Maybe you will find your inspiration along the way.
Abstract Living 