Minimalism
Last week I gathered my belongings in Massachusetts and began the final leg of a three-year nomadic chapter, on to my new home in Austin.
Over the past 36 month I’ve been wildly fortunate to live in six cities, cross the country eight times in a camper, and visit over a dozen countries. This was enabled in part by the internet’s liberating ability to separate work from physical location.
Courtney and I have spent our first few days in Austin crafting a new home environment. This has been a blast, as it’s been a while since we’ve had a space to call our own. It’s been fun to pick out furniture, hang up artwork, and arrange each room.
It has felt strange in a way too though. Everything we’ve acquired over the past week is necessary for home living, but feels superfluous in the context of the nomadic lifestyle.
I mentioned in post 32: A Love of Travel my appreciation for the forced minimalism that accompanies travel. In the fall of 2017, I left my townhouse in Washington, DC, forced to narrow my belongings down to those which would fit in my car. A year and a half later I underwent another purge, down to that which would fit into a couple of bins. The final thinning came last fall when I set off overseas with a backpack.
While enjoying my new home this week, I’ve also taken some time to reflect on my love of minimalism. There are three things that I appreciate about it.
- When we free ourselves from material things, we free ourselves from the fear of loss that usually accompanies them.
- Our mobility increases as our possessions decrease. There were mornings abroad when Courtney and I would wake up not knowing which country we were going to fall asleep in that night.
- When we narrow our possessions down to those which we truly need, we simultaneously narrow our possessions down to those which we truly love.
Subscribe to My Blog: Three-Minute Reads, Every Three Days
Photo: Taken in Antelope Canyon, AZ
