What Does My Life Actually Look Like Right Now?

Sometimes the story we tell ourselves about our lives becomes so familiar that we stop questioning whether it is actually true.

We tell ourselves that life is ridiculously busy, that everything is chaotic, that nothing ever happens, that every day is the same. We say we never have any time for ourselves, that we don’t really do very much, that we’re constantly rushing or that we should somehow be doing more.

Sometimes, of course, those things are completely accurate. There are seasons when life genuinely is relentless, stressful, repetitive or simply far too full.

But sometimes I wonder whether the life we’re actually living and the life we think we’re living aren’t quite the same thing.

Perhaps we’ve become so accustomed to our days that we don’t really see them anymore.

So for this second reflection, we’re not going to create a better routine or design an ideal week. We’re not going to decide how productive we should be or how many meaningful things we ought to squeeze into our days.

We’re simply going to look.

What does my life actually look like right now?

The Story We Tell Ourselves About Our Lives

I think most of us carry around a running commentary about our lives. We have ideas about the kind of person we are, the kind of family we have, how busy or organised we are, whether we’re spontaneous or predictable, whether we make enough time for ourselves and whether we’re making enough of our lives.

Those stories can become surprisingly fixed.

Maybe you’ve always thought of yourself as someone who thrives on being busy. Perhaps you’re the organised one, the homebody, the person who never stops or the one who is always running late. Maybe you’ve quietly decided that your life has become boring. Perhaps you look around and feel as though everyone else seems to be doing far more with their lives than you are.

But what happens when we put that story aside for a moment and look at an ordinary week?

Not the week we’d like to have. Not the beautifully organised version we imagine we’ll have once everything settles down. Not the life we think we should be living.

The one we’re actually living.

What Is Really Filling Your Days?

There are the obvious things: work, school runs, appointments, cooking, cleaning, shopping, caring for family, commuting, exercise, household jobs, looking after pets and all the ordinary admin that keeps life moving.

But there is also everything around those things.

There are the ten minutes spent scrolling while we’re waiting for something, the hour chatting with someone at the kitchen table, the walk we barely count because it’s simply something we do. There are evenings that disappear into television, time spent thinking about things we haven’t actually done yet, constant little interruptions and jobs that somehow take far longer than they should.

There are also the hobbies we’ve quietly stopped making time for, the people we mean to see more often, the things we genuinely love doing and the things we continue doing largely because we’ve always done them.

When we begin looking at our days properly, the picture can become much more interesting.

Perhaps Your Life Isn’t Boring. Perhaps You’ve Stopped Noticing It.

There can be a strange pressure around ordinary life.

We see other people’s holidays, celebrations, renovations, achievements, beautiful meals, days out and exciting announcements. We see the parts of life that are easiest to photograph, remember and share.

Meanwhile, we’re looking at our own Tuesday afternoon.

Of course it can appear rather unimpressive by comparison.

But an ordinary life isn’t necessarily an empty one.

Perhaps your days contain conversations you enjoy, work that matters to you, people you love, a home in which you feel comfortable, books, walks, cooking, laughter, familiar places and dozens of tiny routines that give your life its shape.

Perhaps nothing particularly dramatic is happening.

That doesn’t mean nothing meaningful is happening.

And perhaps the question isn’t How can I make my life more exciting? Perhaps a more useful question is:

Am I actually paying attention to the life I already have?

Because sometimes meaning doesn’t need to be added. It simply needs to be noticed.

And Perhaps Your Life Really Is Too Full

Of course, looking properly may reveal something entirely different.

Perhaps your feeling that life is chaotic is absolutely correct. You might look at an ordinary week and realise there simply isn’t enough space in it. Every evening is committed, every weekend seems to be booked and you’re constantly moving from one responsibility to another.

Or perhaps there is technically some free time, but you’re carrying so much mentally that none of it feels particularly restful.

Sometimes we assume we’re failing to manage our lives well when the truth is much simpler:

There is too much to manage.

That’s useful to recognise.

It doesn’t mean we can immediately remove every responsibility. We can’t. There will always be seasons when life asks more of us, and there are responsibilities we wouldn’t necessarily want to give up anyway.

But seeing the reality clearly is very different from continually telling ourselves that if only we were more organised, more disciplined or more efficient, we’d somehow manage to squeeze everything in.

Sometimes there simply needs to be less.

What If Some of the Chaos Is Coming From Us?

This one can be a little more uncomfortable.

Sometimes life is chaotic because life is chaotic.

And sometimes we may be contributing to it.

Not because we’re failing at life, but because all of us develop habits and patterns that can make our days easier or harder without really noticing them.

Perhaps we leave everything until the last minute and repeatedly create the same rush. Maybe we automatically say yes before considering whether we actually have the time or inclination. We might make simple things more complicated than they need to be, fill every available space and then wonder why we never have any, or spend time on things that don’t particularly matter to us.

Perhaps we start lots of things and finish very few. Maybe we procrastinate over something small until it becomes something large. Or perhaps we keep telling ourselves that this is simply what our life is like, when one or two recurring sources of chaos could actually be changed.

This isn’t about criticising ourselves.

It’s about being curious.

If some of the pressure is being created by circumstances outside our control, perhaps what we need is more support, more rest or more realistic expectations.

But if a little of it is coming from habits we’ve fallen into, that can actually be encouraging.

It means there may be somewhere we can make a small adjustment.

Where Does Your Time Actually Go?

We often say we don’t have time for something when what we really mean is that it isn’t currently receiving any of our time.

Those aren’t always the same thing.

And that doesn’t mean we can magically make time for everything we want to do. We can’t. Time is finite, and there will always be choices and compromises.

But it can be worth noticing what those choices currently look like.

Perhaps you keep saying you’d love to read again, but most evenings an hour disappears into your phone. Maybe you say you never see your friends, but your weekends are regularly filled with things you don’t particularly want to attend. Perhaps you desperately want more time alone but automatically use every quiet moment to catch up on jobs.

Or maybe you’re longing to be creative, but creativity is always the first thing sacrificed when life gets busy because it doesn’t feel sufficiently necessary.

You might discover something reassuring too.

Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself that you never do anything for yourself and then realise that your morning walk, exercise class, gardening, reading before bed or coffee with a friend absolutely is time for you.

Maybe you’ve simply stopped counting it.

What Do You Want Your Ordinary Life to Feel Like?

This is where I think intentional living can sometimes become unnecessarily complicated.

It doesn’t have to mean creating a completely new life.

Often it’s much smaller than that.

Maybe you look at your week and realise that, actually, this is pretty good and you’d quite like to protect it. Or perhaps the opposite becomes obvious: there is simply too much, and something needs to give.

You might discover that there is more space than you thought, but very little of it is being used for things that really matter to you. You might even realise that the life you’ve been describing as boring isn’t boring at all. It’s peaceful — and perhaps you quite like it that way.

Or maybe you simply want a little more fun.

And even then, the answer doesn’t have to be a new career, a house move or a dramatic reinvention.

Maybe you need to invite somebody for dinner, go somewhere on Saturday, put your phone down in the evening or start painting again. Perhaps you need to stop automatically agreeing to things, leave one evening empty, read your book, sit in the garden or make something simply because you enjoy making it.

Sometimes the difference between a life that feels as though it is simply happening to us and one that feels a little more like our own isn’t enormous.

It can be one or two small choices made deliberately.

A Week in My Life: Your Free Reflection Printable

I’ve created a simple one-page printable to accompany this reflection.

And importantly, it isn’t a weekly planner.

There is nothing here for you to schedule, organise or optimise. Instead, A Week in My Life is simply a way of stepping back and looking at what is already there.

The page gives you space to consider:

• What fills my time?
• Who receives my time?
• What do I make time for?
• What keeps getting squeezed out?
• What do I choose to do?
• What do I do because it needs to be done?

And finally:

Looking at the life I’m actually living, what surprises me?

How to Use This Reflection

There are a couple of ways you might use the printable.

You could sit down with it now and think about a fairly typical week. Don’t choose the week when everyone was sick, you had three appointments and the washing machine broke. Equally, don’t choose an unusually lovely week when you were away from home and ordinary life had temporarily disappeared.

Think about normal life.

Consider where your mornings go, what fills the middle of your day and what usually happens in the evenings. Think about weekends. Who receives most of your attention? What do you repeatedly make room for? What repeatedly gets pushed aside?

Alternatively, keep the printable somewhere nearby for a week and add to it as you notice things. That may turn out to be even more revealing because you’re recording your life as you live it rather than relying entirely on your perception of it.

And once again, don’t immediately turn what you discover into a plan.

Look at it first.

Is the life on the page the life you thought you were living?

What surprises you? What feels good? What seems too full? What appears to be missing? Are you spending significant time on things you barely care about? Are there small, ordinary parts of your week that are much more important to you than you had realised?

You don’t necessarily have to do anything with those answers yet.

For now, noticing is enough.

Your Life Doesn’t Have to Look Impressive to Feel Meaningful

I think that’s perhaps what I most want to take from this reflection.

We’re surrounded by invitations to make life bigger: to do more, go more places, achieve more, improve more, make every season memorable and make every weekend count.

But perhaps a meaningful life doesn’t necessarily look particularly remarkable from the outside.

It might look like work and dinner and walking the dog. It might contain school runs and cups of tea and conversations in kitchens. It might be noisy and full, or wonderfully quiet. It might need some changes, or it might need fewer things rather than more.

And sometimes we won’t know which until we stop looking at the life we imagine we’re living — or the one we think we’re supposed to be living — and look properly at the one that’s already here.

Not so that we can immediately transform it.

Just so that we can begin to live it a little more deliberately.

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Continue Reflecting

Previous: Where I Am Now — A Gentle Life Check-In

Begin with the first reflection in The Life I’m Living Collection, a quiet opportunity to check in with yourself and notice how life feels right now.

Next: Where Does My Energy Go?

In the next reflection, we’ll look beyond time and begin noticing what takes our energy, what restores it and where we might want more of ourselves to go.

Explore The Life I’m Living Collection

A growing collection of thoughtful reflections and free printables designed to help you slow down, check in with yourself and make a little more space for the life you’re actually living.

Chat soon,

Ciara x

Printable FAQs

Is this printable free?

Yes. All of the reflection pages in The Life I’m Living Collection are free to download for personal use. You can print just the pages that speak to you, or work your way through the complete collection over time.

What size are the printables?

The printables are designed primarily for A4 paper, which is the standard paper size used in Ireland, the UK and many other countries. If you’re printing on US Letter paper, select Fit to Page or your printer’s equivalent setting and the design should resize neatly to fit.

Occasionally, a reflection may work better in landscape format. Where this is the case, it will be clearly indicated on the individual printable.

Do I need to complete the collection in order?

Not at all. The Life I’m Living Collection has been thoughtfully arranged so that the reflections can naturally lead from one to another, but there is no right way to use it.

You can begin with the question that feels most relevant to you today, move through the collection in order, or simply return to individual pages whenever you need them.

Do I need to answer every question?

No. These pages are invitations rather than assignments.

Some prompts may immediately give you something to write about, while others may not feel particularly relevant to the season of life you’re in. Write a sentence, fill a page, leave something blank or come back to it another day.

There is nothing to complete and no score to achieve.

Can I use the printables as journal prompts instead?

Absolutely. You don’t have to write directly onto the printable. You can use any of the questions or prompts as starting points for longer reflections in your own notebook or journal.

You might also find that one small question gives you far more to think about than the space provided on the page. Follow it wherever it takes you.

Can I print the pages more than once?

Yes. For your own personal use, you can print the pages again whenever you’d like to revisit a reflection.

In fact, returning to some of these questions six months or a year from now could be particularly interesting. Our answers change as our lives do.

Can I put all of the printables together in a binder?

Yes — and the collection has been deliberately designed with that in mind.

Although the individual layouts vary depending on the reflection, the pages share the same cream, navy, antique-gold and blue-and-white visual style so that they form one cohesive journal when collected together.

🖨️ Create Your Binder

If you’re planning to print several of our printables in this collection, a few simple supplies can make it easy to create your own beautiful binder to enjoy year after year.

(This section contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting Our Little House in the Country.)

• 📗 A4 Display Book
• 📁 A4 Ring Binder
• 📄 Plastic Document Wallets
• 📎 Adjustable Hole Punch
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Can I share these printables with someone else?

You’re very welcome to share the link to the relevant blog post or collection page so that friends, family or your online community can download their own copy.

Please don’t upload, email, reproduce or redistribute the PDF files themselves.

Can I use these printables in a group, class or workshop?

The printables are created primarily for personal use. If you’d like to use one as part of a class, workshop, group or other organised setting, please contact me first so we can make sure it is being used appropriately and with full credit to Our Little House in the Country.

What are the terms of use?

All Our Little House in the Country printables are provided for personal use only unless specific permission has been given otherwise.

Please do not sell, reproduce, alter for resale, upload, distribute or include the printable files in your own digital or physical products. If you’d like to recommend a printable to someone else, please share the original page on Our Little House in the Country rather than the PDF itself.

You can read the complete Printables Terms of Use for further information.

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