“Conformity is the drug with which many people self-medicate.”
Ten days into the Minimalism Game, I wondered how, by Day 30, I would find 30 more things to sell/donate/leave on the sidewalk with a sticky note.
Twenty days in, I wondered how, by Day 30, I would be able to stop.
By the second week, I’d started working ahead. So far ahead, in fact, that I had two piles of 30 things for Day 30 and two piles of 31 things for Day 31, a growing pile of “maybes” and a surprise pile of money. I was going to need more days.
Not surprisingly, once I decided to rid my space of my excess stuff, most of my stuff was easy to call excess. After traveling for almost all of 2015, it was obvious that most of what I owned at home was not most of what I needed in life. My motto became “If it doesn’t fit in a suitcase, it's gotta fuckin' go.”
Minimalist Linen Closet
Minimalist Office, complete with sticky notes.
The surprise? That as my gear disappeared, other stuff showed up. Clingy, desperate, hollow, fearful, anxious, biting, stinging, grieving, tortured, wretched, wistful, lonely, bitter, stormy, heavy fucking stuff.
The stuff of breakdowns, of betrayal, of regret, of wrongs-not-righted. The stuff of stagnation and pain.
The stuff of a lifetime of not letting go.
Maybe it's just (sexy) me?
Sexy Me, staring into the eyes of my empty, sexy apartment just moments after crying "THIS IS BULLSHIT!" 40 times. Meow!
To break from the norm–even that of simply owning more things than can fit in a suitcase–and not just Kayak Dot Com away from it from time-to-time, is a treacherous place to travel.
When you ditch your distractions, whether that be television or alcohol or sex or work or travel or boxes of books that you might read again someday, all that you hid with that stuff you now rid steps into the light to defend and to fight.
And make no mistake: it is a fight to the death.
Your history, your habits, your memories, your assumptions, your desires, your fears, your public persona and your personal dramas will fight to live on, scratching and scraping at your psyche long after you’ve turned out of the Goodwill parking lot and onto San Fernando Road.
These are my peeps!
But history, habits, memories, assumptions, desires, fears, a public persona and personal dramas are not all of who you are or are meant to be. And the sooner you get rid of all that stuff that stuff hides behind, the stronger you’ll be to Fight Club for your own life. The life worth fighting for.
But make no mistake: getting rid of your fucking khakis can be fucking hell.
"When the mind molts, when it sheds the shell, a model or philosophy into which it securely wriggled itself and starts to form a new ring of growth, is that not the time when a wider vision fights to take possession of a man or woman? New longings meet a chorus of protest when they are born. One becomes out of step with common convictions while pursuing further goals. There will be other commandments. Old tears, answers, friendships and slippers might have to go. I worry then and reflect on how vulnerable I could become in such openness and how alone. A terror of change rattles my mind." (Author unknown. Quote found by my friend in travel, minimalism and nonconformity, Kerry J.)
Packing Party, anyone?