Coffee Talk #179: The Art of Letting Go

It’s Tuesday! Grab your cup and let’s start chattin’.

If we were having coffee together today, I’d tell you that this is a BIG week in the Anderson Home. We’re moving! We’re down to SINGLE DIGIT days before we move into our second home together. Everything is packed. We’re ready to move!

If we were having coffee together today, I’d tell you that moving leads to several walks down memory lane. We’re going through everything we own, making decisions whether to keep, donate, or toss items. I am way less nostalgic than most, so I have limited my entire childhood/keepsake items to ONE bin. I’ve been carrying that bin around with me since my first adult move. It’s nice to hold onto items that are sentimental, but you can’t take it with you, know what I mean? I’ve moved countless times and each time, I’ve learned how to take the ‘essentials’ only.

If we were having coffee together today, I’d take a walk down a digital lane with you! (with social distancing — stay 6 feet away please.) I am in the process of building a new website for my fitness business, and I’m working on the content now. I’m actually going page by page on the current site to determine if I want to keep the content, recycle it, or delete it, similar to the process we’re going through for moving homes! I thought I’d share a few musings with you:

1. Back in the height of my admissions career, I thought I was pretty hot stuff – I created this brand for myself “A Millennial Girl.” I was all over social – super crazy on twitter, all over tumblr, and I kept a blog. I’ve deleted most of it (tumblr still LIVES). I was obsessed with twitter and Higher Ed Live and #EMChat and even got featured in The Chronicle for the time a writer invited me to see the movie “Admission” with him and share my thoughts. I was SO sure that I would be working in higher ed admissions forever. Isn’t it funny how we can just change course? I’m no longer on twitter at all.
2. I created THIS blog as a way to document my growing Backyard Homestead. (Um, that was TEN years ago). I wanted to show everyone how to live on 1/4 acre. I had a backyard oasis, complete with chickens. That seems like a LIFETIME ago. Here’s the first post. I was invited by several local farms to come and check out what they have to offer, write stories, etc. I got invited to present “how to start a backyard homestead” at a blogger conference. Again, a different world. I have moved, rewrote my script, changed careers, and totally changed the direction of this corner of the blog world.
3. I created a totally separate instagram account, Ctown Yogi, to document my yoga practice, yoga challenges, and to share more about Buti, Barre, and my Yoga Teacher training experience. I recently deleted it. It’s so much trying to keep up with two different personas (even for a Gemini) and I wanted to focus on my FWA fitness brand. Thanks for joining me on my yoga journey — there’s plenty more yoga to come on the @fitwithaundra page.

Digital spring cleaning – good for the mind, body, and soul. I’m so glad I kept little nuggets to remind myself where I have been, and to really energize my path moving forward. I love this quote “If you can’t look at your past self and CRINGE, you aren’t really growing.”

My goal is to EVOLVE, to GROW, and to be vigilant in the pursuit of my truest self. Ten years of this blog has helped me capture that.

This time next week, I will have a new home address. While moving seems like a big deal, this is move #21 for me. But this is the most profound move. This is the first move I’m making where I will own my house. To clarify, we own our current home – but it’s my husband’s house. He purchased it before we even started dating. Of course it’s also my home, but this NEW home is the first one that will also have my name on it. We searched and searched for the right place, creating a list of ‘must-haves’ and a list of  ‘would be nice if…’ and found the PERFECT place for us. We have 4 acres. We have our Cape Cod house. I get a whole room dedicated to fitness. Stoked is an understatement!

If we were having coffee together today, I’d tell you that I know lots of people are taking this time in quarantine to spring clean, and you should. This is a a great time to LET GO. What no longer serves you? What can be reused or recycled or loved better by someone else? What can you LET GO of today?