14: Air Conditioning

It got up to 34 degrees celcius around here today. That's 93 degrees fahrenheit for you Yanks. Not including whatever heat index there might have been.

I've spent the entire day (except for lunch hour) either in my air conditioned car, an air conditioned shop or my air conditioned second bedroom/home office.

All I've got to say is...thank goodness for air conditioning!!!

13: Serendipity

I don't know why almost every photo of a
minimalist living space shows a room almost
completely decorated in white. Sure won't ever
resemble anyplace I call home, but it's
inspiring, nonetheless.

There's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Today, two serendipitous things happened which nudged me toward making that thing happen.

The "thing" is simplifying my life. Many times, I've said I want to do a major purge and get rid of a lot of my stuff. The only time I usually come close to doing that is when I move from one apartment to another. The best time was when I moved back home to Ontario from BC. I was pretty much forced to get rid of almost everything I owned because I couldn't find a U-Haul to rent for the life of me (silly me for planning to move on Labour Day weekend, when every college and university student in the country is moving house).

That Big BC Purge taught me something important: Things are just things and they're not important...plus, it's incredibly freeing to divest yourself of most of your possessions.

I felt as light as air. I started over from square one with only five boxes and a hope chest full of belongings to my name...plus what I was able to stuff into the back seat and trunk of my car for the drive back home from BC. It wasn't a lot of stuff. I needed help when I set up in my new apartment...gifts of used furniture and kitchen items got me started, and fourteen years later I have managed to once again accumulate so much stuff -- most of it unnecessary -- that I feel like it's swallowing me up.

I've never been a good housekeeper. I've learned to accept that and not beat myself up over it. However, I'm so bad that I live my life in terror that someone I know (or even someone I don't know) is going to show up at my door and expect to come in. No! The mess! You can't!

I figure the best way to keep a place tidy is simply to not have much stuff to clutter it up with.

Also, I have so much stuff that I feel overwhelmed by it all. It literally stresses me out. I don't know what to do with it, where to put it, where to start in on getting control of it...whether I even need most of it. The answer to that last point is, of course, no, I don't need it. I'm just too attached to it -- for no good reason at all -- that I can't bear to part with most of it. So I make pathetic little attempts to control it by shuffling it around a bit, putting some of it away somewhere that seems logical. But before you know it, it's out again. I seem to be a person for whom the objects of living need to be close at hand and not stuffed away in a cupboard or drawer.

But I'm going to -- part with it, that is. My first goal, I think, will be to get rid of 50 per cent of my stuff by the end of this year. Sooner, if I decide to move before then. I refuse to cart all this stuff with me to a new apartment where it will just start multiplying again.

So...back to the topic of this YBT post: Serendipity. What were the two things that happened to me today that spurred me into this tentative beginning at simplifying? First was a conversation I had with a couple of people at the lunch table at work. We were talking about a former colleague who, along with her husband, seems to be addicted to buying things. They must be so deep in debt. Thinking about them made me feel good that I'm debt-free, but at the same time, I thought about all the little things, all the stuff, cluttering my apartment because I so often feel that buying this thing or that thing will solve some immediate problem in my life. It doesn't. Most of it gets used once and then starts gathering dust.

The second serendipitous event was receiving an email from a website I subscribed to recently (www.theminimalists.com), which offered a really low price on a book they had written. Since I'm more inclined to read a book than a lot of web site pages, I bought it and started reading it this evening...and now I'm all fired up to minimalize and simplify my life...and hopefully gain all the advantages those things will give me, according to the authors.

So, yes, today I'm thankful to serendipity for, in effect, ganging up on me and getting me started on this. Who knows what will come of it. It'll probably be just another one of my "micro-passions", forgotten in a few months...or sooner. But in the meantime, if I can even make a start at getting all my clutter and stuff under control, it will have been worth it.

11: Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work I go

I honestly don't know what I'd do with myself if I couldn't work. I think I'd go crazy.

If you don't count the last two and a half years of self-employment, I have been employed consistently for almost my entire adult life. There was one period of about three months after I first moved to British Columbia in 1991 when I was unemployed. My first unemployment cheque came in about the same time I started working again. I figured I might as well give the cheque back...I wouldn't be needing it, and I could maintain my pride in the fact that I had never accepted unemployment money from the government. I still have not to this day. And I really am very proud of that.

Giving that cheque back to the unemployment office really screwed them up, too. I don't think anyone had ever done that before! They honestly didn't know what to do with it. They tried to talk me into cashing it, but I knew they'd just ask for it back because I was working again. So I refused. They had to figure out how to deal with it. Thanks for being there just in case, and all, but I'm not taking pogie unless I really, really need to.

I like working. I was lucky enough to have parents who paid my way through college without asking for the money back, so when I graduated I was debt-free and had a marketable skill. Very lucky. I've been a graphic designer ever since...though just in the last couple of years, I've branched out into other types of work (you kinda have to take what you're offered when you're self-employed), and now graphics is only a portion of what I do.

But I still like it. I like the variety. I like the challenge. I like having something worthwhile to do. I really like being of service to people...providing something they need, whether it's transcription, or a business card design or some research into something.

For the first two years of my self-employment I worked from home. I loved that. Loved it. But about 18 months on I started to realize that working from home, all by myself all day and night, all week long, was not really all that good for my mental health. I started feeling like I might be suffering from mild depression. So when my biggest client asked if I could start coming in to their office from 9-5 every day to help cover off some overflow work for one of their staff, I was happy to accept. It's nice to go in to the office every day and see other people, interact, socialize a bit, bounce ideas around, get feedback on stuff.

I think the most important, vital, critical, can't-stress-it-enough factor about working is that it allows me to be independent. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to me if I couldn't earn a living for some reason and it scares the bejeebers out of me. I like being in charge of my own life. I like living alone. I like having a car and the money to eat out when I want and treat myself to little luxuries now and then. All that would be gone if I wasn't earning a wage. I couldn't stand it.

So...while many people might raise an eyebrow at the concept...I'm very thankful for work. For being employed. For being able to make money doing something I enjoy (most of the time), and being independent and self-sufficient. I wouldn't have it any other way.