Author: Carolynn Gaiason
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Making Room and the Art of Enough
We often hear about “Swedish Death Cleaning” as a practical way to manage our belongings so others won’t have to deal with them later. It’s a thoughtful way to manage our possessions. However, there is a deeper, more personal version of this practice. This approach offers benefits well before the end of life; it points…
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Living Lightly, Living Fully
The Eco-Logic of Enough: Why Living Lightly is the Ultimate Adventure In our pursuit of contentment, we talk about clearing the clutter from our homes and calendars. But there is a broader, more profound layer to “The Art of Enough”: how our footprint affects the world around us. I’ve learned that living lightly on the…
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Refilling the Cup: How Contentment Fuels Our Fire
I recently took some intentional time away to recharge. In our fast-paced world, “rest” is often treated as a luxury or necessary evil so we can return to being productive. I still struggle with performance as worth. But during this quiet spell, I was reminded of a core pillar of The Art of Enough: we…
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The Fine Line Between Stillness and Stagnation
In our last conversation, we explored The Balm of the Process, examining how the “ordinary magic” of working with our hands offers a soothing sense of enoughness. Yet as we slow down to appreciate these affirming processes, a common and uncomfortable question sometimes arises: “Am I actually content, or might I be bored?” In a…
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The Balm is The Tender Process
I watched David and Sarah in their workshop last Tuesday. There was no grand audience, no gallery opening, and certainly no filtered “aesthetic” being chased. There was only the rhythmic skritch-skritch of sandpaper against raw oak and the earthy smell of sawdust that seemed to anchor the entire room in presence–a singleness of purpose. It…
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Enoughness: Extending Reprieve to a Depleting Earth
We speak of “enough” as a personal boundary—a psychological fence we build to keep out the noise of comparison and the exhaustion of continuous consumption in all its forms. But there is more to the story. Living in contentment fosters a lightness of being on our dear Mother Earth. In living lightly, we find beauty…
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Dispelling the Myth that Less is Less
We live in a world that whispers—and sometimes screams—that “more” is the ultimate goal. More followers, more productivity, more square footage, more plans. We’ve been conditioned to believe that abundance is measured by material volume. But what if the math is wrong? The myth that “less is less” implies that by removing superficial or low-meaning…
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Full Disclosure: I didn’t start here.
I used to think contentment was something you achieved after checking every box. I didn’t realize it was something you practiced while the boxes were still empty. Like so many people, I bought into the “wanting more” philosophy from an early age. From early days, I understood that I came from a family of high-achievers,…
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A New Beginning
Introducing Soulful Everyday, a new blog space dedicated to exploring identity in life beyond. Like many women of my generation (late boomers), I married young, started my career, had two children, advanced professionally, cared for an aging parent, retired, and now I find myself here. Quite literally, I hope to actually discover myself here. It’s…
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Welcome to the Contentment Conversation
For a brief time, this space was called Soulful Everyday. It was a fine home, but less descriptive of a specific theme that began to emerge in the stories we want to share here: the quiet, radical power of being content. Why ‘Contentment’? We live in a culture of more–‘The Next Big Thing.’ We are…