I’ve decided to cancel my Amazon Prime account. The two-day shipping perk doesn’t cut it. I can’t ever seem to find a decent book to borrow from the Kindle Lending Library, either – a user error, I’m sure, but a worthwhile justification to my way of thinking. Add the distraction of Amazon Prime Instant Video, and it’s too much. I need to be done with it. I have better things to do, but I’ll never do them as long as I let the diversion live.
My decision isn’t for everyone, and I’m not trying to encourage people to take it. I’m just tired of feeling like I’m wasting time and space. I want to focus on bigger and better things. I want to become the woman God desires me to be. I want to know I’m filling my mind and heart with good things. I want to go to bed with a sense of accomplishment rather than a nagging guilt. I want my life to be a pleasing aroma. The only way to do that is to remove the things that hinder me, to take an action that borders on a type of asceticism.
It’s like running. I’m a better runner when I’m getting enough sleep, eating healthy, and drinking more water than coffee. To be my best, I have to set aside the extra cups of coffee. I have to set my alarm for an absurd hour so that I don’t have to run in the heat. I have to make sure my shoes are in good condition so that I don’t trip in them and ruin my knee yet again. I have to push past the excuses to clamber out of bed, put on my shoes, check my blood sugar, dial down the basal rate on my insulin pump, and head out the door. I do that not because I want to be a better runner but because I want to be more fit. I like the way I feel and the person I am when I’m at my physical best, so I replace the permissible – the extra cup of coffee – with the beneficial, the water.
The same holds true with my emotional, spiritual, and mental wellbeing – all three of which affect the physical. I have to treasure the state of them more than a temporary indulgence in a television show available on Prime or a daydream. I have to decide what’s more important, a fleeting pleasure or a longterm accomplishment. For me, it’s the latter, and, because of that, I’m going to quit wasting time on things like Amazon Prime and start filling it with better and wiser things.
Image: Cristian V. (Creative Commons)
[…] like to think that practice could turn me into a competent one. In any case, it’s beneficial to the ways in which I’m now ordering my life. It reveals lessons I’d forgotten or hadn’t thought about in detail […]