Daily writing prompt

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

View all responses

Small improvement? I can’t think of one. But one big improvement I could make in my life is to eat more vegetables.

I don’t eat healthy enough. I eat a lot of processed food because we don’t have a lot of time or energy to cook at the end of the day. Between Richard’s job and his share of the housework, and my work and writing, we just don’t have the energy to do more than open a jar of spaghetti sauce or eat some faux lobster dip with crackers. It’s a wonder that my stomach hasn’t reached up and strangled me at some point.

It’s not that I dislike vegetables, even. When I eat vegetables, they’re the best thing on earth if ripened well and not overripe or spoiled. I have very good tastebuds and I can tell if a tomato or cucumber is a bit off. Right now I’m craving an Indian vegetarian dinner of channa masala, saag with turnips, and chutney. Or a Thai cucumber salad and some green chicken curry. Or a stir-fry with peanut sauce.

We’re putting in a vegetable garden this year. I hope that entices me to eat more vegetables. I’m also putting in an herb garden for the same reason.

Revamping one’s diet is not a little change, but a big one. Wish me luck.

Daily writing prompt

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

View all responses

Feeling uninspired today, I decided I would try the prompts that are now packaged as part of WordPress. And as you can see from the above, I got a doozy.

I’m all about big audacious goals, showy goals, big reward goals. Intoxicating goals. Probably comes from being one of those honor students who got external validation in the form of praise and trophies.

There’s one little improvement that would increase my quality of life, but thinking about the improvement itself makes me want to sit in the middle of my living room and cry.

It’s cleaning my house.

My house is about what you’d expect with two bookish types working full-time who hate housework. I have writing as my pressing hobby; Richard just hates housework.

Our house is cluttered. Despite the fact that this house is over twice as big as the one we moved out of eleven years ago, it’s just as cluttered. We just got more stuff to fill the space.

I feel like my writing would be better if I didn’t have to look at so much stuff and move it aside so I can sit down. Having a clean house would feel like a holiday!

I have to start somewhere, and there’s just so much stuff and I can’t throw any of it away. Maybe if I (and/or Richard) pick one room at a time and have a sorting basket nearby. Think of places to put the clutter, places that make sense. Don’t put the clutter in yet another pile to be sorted eventually. Proceed to the next room, which hopefully doesn’t have new clutter piles from the last room cleaned. Phew!

It looks like maybe cleaning the house isn’t a “small improvement” after all.