{"id":3797,"date":"2026-10-27T15:08:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T19:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/?p=3797"},"modified":"2026-10-27T15:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T19:48:28","slug":"what-takes-us-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/27\/what-takes-us-away\/","title":{"rendered":"What takes us away?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Have you ever stopped to ask yourself where the time went and what have you been doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I ask myself that question daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">When we only have so much time on earth, why do we tend to waste a lot of it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe it is like Thoreau said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-cover alignfull\" style=\"min-height:296px;aspect-ratio:unset;\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-block-cover__image-background\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/5.8\/forest.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" data-object-fit=\"cover\"\/><span aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-cover__background has-background-dim-60 has-background-dim\"><\/span><div class=\"wp-block-cover__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-cover-is-layout-flow\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading alignwide has-text-color\" style=\"color:#ffe074;font-size:64px\">The mass of men [and women] lead lives of quiet desperation.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">~Henry David Thoreau, Walden<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Since we have moved to Maine, I have learned a lot about living deliberately. It is easy to do that here, especially where we live. I am not presuming to speak for everyone, I can only speak about my own experiences. This is what I want to focus on in our &#8220;Third Act&#8221; of life and in my art and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I spend a lot of time doing all kinds of unnecessary things. At the end of the day, I can&#8217;t really tell you what I spent my time on. When I think about my limited time on earth, I get angry at myself for wasting time. Now, I am all for relaxing and doing nothing if it is benefiting you in some way. However, for most of us, we tend to let these times consume us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">At the end of your life&#8212;what do you want to be proud of? What do you want to look back on and say, &#8220;Yes, that was living my life.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The reason I put a picture of our house as it currently is as the featured image is because this if one example of time wasted. Ron has been working on the house since last December, but we have not blogged about any of it. We started this blog 12 years ago to document our lives as we navigated the struggles of living small. When we moved to Wooster into a bigger house, our focus changed to keeping up a household in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Now that we are starting again to live in a smaller place and live more conscientiously, I have returned to these ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">I would like to spend my time writing and creating art that reflects this place we call home, and help my readers incorporate the same ideas wherever they are.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">So, we are not living lives of desperation, but vibrant, worthwhile lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever stopped to ask yourself where the time went and what have you been doing? I ask myself that question daily. When we only have so much time on earth, why do we tend to waste a lot of it? Maybe it is like Thoreau said: Since we have moved to Maine, I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[477],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living-deliberately"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/shinytinymansion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20261027_105333-1.png?fit=816%2C1056&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3797"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3806,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions\/3806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shinytinymansion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}