3rd of February 2017
Kicking my minimalism journey into overdrive in 2017 will be a challenge.
As I mentioned in the previous post, the year has started bumpily. We’re already into February, and I’m a couple of grand behind where I’d hoped to be financially.
To help claw some of that back, and to keep pushing the minimalist reset, I’ve decided to do something fairly drastic. I’m going to find one thousand of our possessions and sell them.
I’m confident they’re there.
18th of January 2017
A bumpy start to the year.
2017 began with me running around the Kentish countryside in the middle of the night, dropping off bundles of newspapers to newsagents and petrol stations. Seven days a week. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
It wasn’t.
4 December 2016
2017 is almost here. Time to put the plan into action.
I’ll keep this short and to the point. The list of things I will and won’t be doing next year is long, but the intent is simple.
At the top of the list is reducing our spending. That feeds directly into the next priority: clearing our debt. Carrying it around feels like a physical weight. It slows everything down. It has to go.
30 November 2016
Over the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
Returning to my meditation practice has helped me straighten a few things out and see how I need to move forward as a human being.
2017 needs to be very different. I need to move toward a state of being free of debt, lighter, calmer, and unconstrained.
26 November 2016
Back in the early 90s, Queen Elizabeth II marked the 40th anniversary of her accession by describing the year as her annus horribilis.
She’d been dragged well outside her comfort zone by a run of personal disasters.
I know exactly how she felt.
Written in November 2016, during a period when several long-running assumptions about work, family, and stability were being forcibly renegotiated.
It’s almost that time of year again.
No, not Christmas. My birthday looms once more. In a matter of weeks, I’ll be 48. Time is dragging me, kicking and screaming, towards the big five-oh.
As usual, that has me thinking about where I fit into the world and into the lives of the people around me. I’ve written before about my struggles with health, diet, work, and the plans I keep making and failing to follow through on. So what’s different now?
Written at a moment when responsibility felt heavier than certainty (October 2016).
October arrived faster than expected. It always does. It is also the month my son was born, which probably explains why it feels louder than most.
This week, we were waiting for the result of his 11+ test. It felt as though the next move for our family hung on that outcome.
If he passed comfortably, grammar school would be an option. If he scraped through, we would need to think carefully. He is bright, curious, and thoughtful, but not naturally suited to environments that prize pressure and conformity above all else. Commitment, yes. Compliance, less so.
Written at the point where calm had returned, and movement felt possible again.
The end of the summer holidays was coming into view, and it felt like time to move again.
The start of summer had been dominated by stress. We had moved house, routines disappeared, and I let diet and exercise slide. That was a conscious choice. I needed a break from self-surveillance and pressure, and I wanted to be present with my family while things settled.
Written at a moment when privacy began to feel like something worth defending (2016).
My life on public display has been shrinking. Deliberately.
This year had already been a difficult one, and the summer forced me to slow down enough to notice what was no longer working. I spent time thinking about my own life and my family's, and how easily attention gets scattered. Real connection had started to feel rare. Digital connection was everywhere.
Written in August, 2016
I am a happier man these days, though it did not feel that way at the time.
The months leading up to this were hard. We were told we would have to leave our home of nearly ten years. Then my car failed. What followed was a stretch of relentless logistics: finding somewhere new to live, replacing the car, and trying to keep our son's life feeling normal as everything shifted beneath us.
Just as things began to stabilise, my mother was taken seriously ill. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it arrived at exactly the wrong moment. Stress has a way of stacking itself.