KISS #131: Health, Books, and Financial Stability

Hello, minimalist lover... How was your weekend? May you always be healthy, happy and mindful. In the phase of life, humans always accumulate desire after desire throughout their lives. Often, humans forget which ones are needs and which ones are mere desires. A lot of problems that are seen, then become even worse because of human unconsciousness about needs. That also happened to me once upon a time.

Until one day, I felt there was a wrong arrangement in my life. There were things that I didn't need taking part and ruining it. Then, I took a break from the hustle and bustle of the social media world, the literacy community, the theater community, and also took a break in socializing. It was a pause that I took consciously in order to fix things to be more organized, especially regarding separating wants and needs.

Until one day when I was ready to return to socializing, I was sure how to behave, how to set limits on things, and finally I could focus on what I needed. This coincides perfectly with this week's #KISS theme, doesn't it?
Of course, humans can't have only one need, so let me elaborate on what I really need right now.

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• My Family's Health and Mine

Perhaps, I reflect on the condition of my late father who suffered from diabetes mellitus for half of his life. My hardworking father had to endure the pain of an unhealthy diet, so as a descendant who inherited my father's genes, I became more aware of the importance of maintaining my diet and started to exercise. Exercise was not something I wanted, but it became a priority and fell into the category of necessity. I became diligent in doing home workouts with the help of tutorials from Heather Robertson's account,

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Heather

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besides that I also run twice a week. (I share some of my running journals in the Hive Run community). I also educate my mom and other family members about this.

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Me when in race AKJR

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• Books

The books I'm referring to are books that I've listed for a long time, such as: Haruki Murakami's trilogy and Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Island Tetralogy. Currently, I don't really have a list of books that I want to buy. When it comes to books, I rarely accumulate or buy on impulse. Because I know what I need to read. Learning from past experience, I feel guilty when I buy something impulsively.

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• Longterm savings for financial maturity preparation

Can this be categorized as a current need? Is it okay to include current needs that are useful for the future? In a short answer, I would say that I need money, but in a longer answer, I would say that I need money to save for the long term.

Saving money is not just for people who are old, or waiting for us to settle down. To me, saving money is how we appreciate our efforts. It's how we reward our achievements. I've long abandoned the term 'self reward' which most people misunderstand as the freedom to buy things/food/etc in a consumptive way, so that they just waste what they buy. To me, by going deeper into the meaning of self reward, people can be more able to reduce spending and also better understand priorities. If you do self reward every day, it's an excuse for you to spend your money without preparing for the future financially.

I also feel that saving money means learning responsibility. I downloaded an app to journal my expenses and income, so that at the end of each month, my bookkeeping records can be scrutinized and evaluated. I don't think this means we're being stingy, but we're being more conscious and responsible with how we spend our money in our daily lives.

Hmm... Meanwhile, I really need the three points above for now. Thank you for reading my writing, I hope you don't get bored.

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