What an enormous question! I don’t feel like I make that many choices a day? I feel tired just thinking about it.

And all our choices – even the unconscious decisions – can have a profound effect on the people in our lives, the homes we live in, the planet?

From when to sow your tomato seeds to how you clean your woodwork to where you place a lamp.

How many of our choices do you think we make after due consideration? (Don’t answer that!).

Mr Flowers made the choice to react badly to a duck trying to share. leapt out of the way and the ducks rushed in to fill the void.

I call this video Ducks Revenge.

Many of our choices are unconscious. Instinctual. Reactionary. Luck.

When I was a child and we lived in the big house by the beach, there was one light suspended from the ceiling in each room. The light fitting was placed in the center of the ceiling with a little umbrella light-shade over it. Thats it. One light with one light bulb per room. There was no extra lights over the kitchen bench. No lights beside the beds. No lamps on sweet little tables on either end of the couch. No outside lights. No special reading lights.

The house had been designed in the 1800’s to rely on natural light.

There was a window above the kitchen sink.

The kitchen table was close to the French Doors.

A reading chair in the big window.

Stuff like that.

So, dinner was prepped early, we ate at 5pm and had the dishes done before sunset. In the winter we just ate earlier. Homework was done at the dining table under that one light. All together.

Dad would read the paper and was always saying to a kid – ‘ Move; you are in my light.”

Then, when my parents designed the open plan kitchen+dining+living room upstairs in the 70’s (it was upstairs so we all had the best view of the sea), Mum incorporated lights above the work stations in the new kitchen. She discovered lights that would attach to walls and found table lamps. (Though she still arranged all the reading chairs by the big windows with the ‘best light’). There were light switch panels! Light was everywhere! Lights above new desks and two lights above our enormous dining room table.

All these light choices changed the way we lived. That one decision to light the kitchen in a way that enables night work meant that we baked at night and left the dishes until later and when it was peach season we bottled well into the night.

With her choices Mum literally extended the life of our day. We ate later and went to bed later. And the electric lights scattered everyone around the house to create their own spaces to read or do homework.

I wonder if she thought about that?

She also made the choice not to let a television into our big open plan living room. That choice had some really amazing consequences too.

Choices. I need to think more consciously about where each of my choices will lead my sustainable farm and my sustainable home.

And now I am going to make the choice to go outside and begin the summer fields for Hey Jude and FreeBee.

I will make another thousand choices out there and will work very hard to be present for at least some of them!

Do you think Decision Fatigue is part of getting old? The oldies just get tired of having to make so many decisions across the course of the day. Starting with what to wear? Or what chair to sit in? Making a choice about dinner becomes too hard? (Personally I wish I could go back to a school uniform and I am not even old yet!!).

Maybe I will fry some left over macaroni cheese with bacon before I go out. Have you ever made the choice to fry your macaroni? You should. It is SO Tasty!

Cecilia