Everything You Know is Wrong

I’m not sure what put me here, but my world as an adult was focused upon pushing myself harder and harder to get more and more.  Maybe it’s simply because I was a child of the 80’s, wherein Alex P. Keaton rejected his parents’ hippie ways to become a business-minded youth.  That was pretty much my speed at a very young age.  I needed to unlearn, as wise Yoda instructs in the Empire Strikes Back…

Make More or Do More With Less

In order to free myself from wage slavery, either I needed to become incredibly rich with passive revenue streams out the wazoo from God-only-knows-where, or I need to start cutting back.  Of course, I did what every red-blooded American is conditioned to do… try to become incredibly rich with passive income streams, of course!  I’m sure I’ll get into the details of all that madness at some point or another.  However, suffice it to say, that’s not where I ended up.

My lessons from this path substantially reinforced Ludwig Mies van der Rohe‘s well-worn quote, “Less Is More”.  Everything I own seems to end up owning me.  The big house needs dusting.  The lawn needs to be mowed and patched up.  The lawn mower needs a tune-up.  And the list just goes on and on.  Where does the time go? It goes to taking care of the accumulated “trophies” of material gain.  More time comes from less “stuff”

Work Smarter, Not Harder

In order to make do in my life, rather than make doo (💩) of my life, I needed to understand how to work smarter, not harder.  Not in the general sense, mind you – that seemed obvious.  But, how does someone live a simpler life?  What do they do?  How do they live?  What fills their days?

So I began to research my buns off.  I started looking into all sorts of ways that would allow me to jettison my existence of excess, my life of luxury, and finally face frugality.  These were only a few of the method of frugal living I looked into as a means of escaping the rat race:

• Retiring to Costa Rica/Mexico
• Extreme Couponing
• Minimalism
• Tiny House Living
• Self-Sufficient Living (backyard farming/solar power)
• Van Life

Each one of these investigations yielded a unique world of interesting tools, techniques and tips.  The attempts at mastery of these skills combined have shaped my concept of a meaningful and interesting existence.  Not one of them is right or wrong, in and of themselves, but each must be approached and implemented in moderation.