How I want to live part 2

In July of 2017, I posted my thoughts on how I want to live.

A month later, a hurricane flooded my home, forcing us to evacuate and spend the next half-year dealing with insurance, property sales and purchases and moving. 

Because I'd invested that recent time into considering my goals for day-to-day life, I quickly came to see the forced move as an opportunity to make some conscious, active choices about my new home. Those thoughts, plus many more in the following weeks and months, really helped when we were viewing possible new homes and trying to picture our lives there.

Some insights and decisions I made:

I love to garden and learn about gardening, but don't feel the need to own the garden I work in.  And when I'm the only one tending the garden, I get overwhelmed and frustrated at never managing to do enough.  I decided to forego a large personal garden and instead joined a crew of volunteer gardeners maintaining a large public garden.  So I'm still loving the gardening, and have the opportunity to learn from master gardeners and socialize with other volunteers as well.  So far, very happy with this.

The new place is much closer to public transportation, which means I can eliminate a lot of driving time from my life.  If someone else is doing the driving, I can spend that time paying attention to something else.  Right now, I'm using a phone app to learn a bit of basic Italian, in anticipation of some upcoming travel.

The new place has a bigger kitchen area, similar dining area, and actually a bit less space given over to the social living area (living/family room).  In the past, we had a big living room, dining room, and family room, composing over half the home's square footage.  This was great for throwing big parties, but... we didn't actually enjoy throwing big parties.  We are far more likely to enjoy entertaining a few people at a time.  So, less public entertaining space.  Instead, we have more square footage for closets (so there's less clutter out in the rooms), and for the activities we like to do at home - like exercising, and crafts, and office space.

We'll see how it goes.  And in the future, I suppose I'll be more careful when I muse aloud to the universe about wanting sweeping changes in my home and life!