A Quest for Sleep

I’ve been a light sleeper for as long as I can remember.

I have well-engrained habits from childhood that still deter me from getting a “good night’s sleep.” They started in high school, when I had to wake before 5:00 am at least 4 mornings per week for swim practice. I often nodded off in classes as a result of this, but even nodding off was not enough to overcompensate for severely shortened sleep cycles.

In college I made my sleep pattern worse by alleviating my lack of sleep with caffeine. This led to a caffeine addiction. I needed caffeine to prevent headaches, as well as to stay awake through a typical day. On a typical day I would drink two or three Red Bulls before morning classes and several cups of coffee before each afternoon swim practice. I would add another Red Bull, sometimes two or three, after my evening swim in order to stay awake for long enough to complete homework. It was not uncommon for me to have more than a thousand mg of caffeine on a weekday. I’m sure my daily caffeine intake was sometimes much, much higher than a thousand mg.

I’ve spent the better part of the last fifteen years trying to overcome my poor sleep habits that resulted from my college and high school experiences. Lately I’ve full realized that sleep is necessary for wellbeing. I observe it in my colleagues, who seem increasingly irritable in the blue screen era. I also observe it in myself. I read about the multitude of diseases, cancers, and brain issues that are linked to years of poor sleep patterns. I don’t want to be a “poor sleep casualty”. I want to be happy and astute in my upcoming years.

My quest for good sleep has nothing to do with athletic performance. I’m seeking longevity.

As a result, I have one goal right now, and it’s more important to me than any goal I’ve ever had: get myself sleeping well each night.

Over the last fifteen years I managed to slowly cut my caffeine intake down from over a thousand mg per day to about three hundred.

The last few weeks, I’ve lowered this caffeine further to about one hundred mg per day, which is the equivalent of about one daily cup of coffee.

I’ve stopped sleeping with a phone in my room.

I’ve started eating a more plant-based diet.

I’ve started drinking herbal teas with relaxing properties at night.

I’ve started taking small doses of melatonin to aid in resetting my circadian rhythm.

Still, in spite of these changes, there were two nights over the last week when I barely slept at all. When I struggle to sleep, I’ll toss and turn for an hour or so, then take early morning walks and read. My mind is too damn active. Sometimes it feels like it just won’t shut down.

My bad patterns are tough to kick. There is hope though. The other nights, the nights in which I did fall asleep, I managed to sleep for eight hours. I rarely slept more than eight hours before attempting to change my sleep habits. So there is hope in my quest for good sleep. But, I have to change further. I will do anything at this point to sleep well.

How do I eliminate these sleepless nights from my life for good? I realize that further changes are necessary.

• I’m going to quit drinking. For the two nights over the past week in which I barely slept, I drank wine the day before (not much, but it clearly is a factor). Alcohol is proven to disrupt sleep cycles. I might be getting more sensitive to alcohol with age. If quitting alcohol means sleeping better, I’ll quit.

• I’m going to quit watching tv at night (maybe for good?). I always found the passive act of watching tv to be a waste of good life. Clearly minimizing blue screen exposure from the phone is not enough. I need to adjust the eyes to darkness when the sun goes down. Instead of watching tv I’ll take a walk outside and let my eyes and body respond naturally to dusk.

• I’ll take melatonin and herbal tea earlier in the night, closer to sunset, to trigger an effect from the ingredients that syncs with a natural circadian rhythm.

• I’ll wear some noise-canceling headphones made for sleeping (I just ordered them). I live in an urban area. The urban noise, which lingers late into every evening, isn’t natural. Long-term, I shouldn’t live downtown. Who the hell sleeps well in a downtown area?

• I’ll practice meditation.

Of all my challenges in life, I feel that learning to get a good night’s sleep is my most difficult one. You can’t just kick 37 years of bad patterns overnight, or at least I can’t. But as stated, I’m willing to try just about anything to get my sleep in order.

The quest isn’t over. Hopefully this week involves a lot more sleep.

Mimetic Desires and the Art of Being Scrappy

For most of my life, I have been what I consider “scrappy.” I did have one relatively brief flirtation with the pursuit of material things. It lasted about a year and a half, and was born from a number of events that are another story entirely. For the most part, however, I have not followed the normal trajectory of pursuing “stuff”. Stuff does not usually interest me unless it enhances the things I can do. Experiences therefore reign supreme.

“We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we’re really wealthy, to an estate. We think we’re moving up, but really we’re walling ourselves off.” - Eric Weiner

The chase for more is born from mimetic desires. We form our desires by studying the desires of other people. It is only natural because we are social creatures. It is what salesmen and influencers prey on.

On a materialistic level, we pursue the homes, cars, clothes, shoes, gadgets, devices, and screens that everyone is in a chase to own. The race makes us frenzied dogs foaming at the mouth for more. We believe we need “it”, whatever “it” is. A model flaunts it in a chic location, under a perfect lighting scheme. It sheens on a corporate VP’s wrist, and the diamonds tantalize! It is everywhere, omnipresent, hovering around us like God, whispering to us that we lack it, but that perhaps if we swipe our credit cards it will bring us salvation. Salvation, of course, is constantly just out of our grasp.

I try to remember: there are some races that are impossible to win.

I have never felt much mimetic desire for things. Only when mistakenly engaging myself in a social competition do they arise. Only for one brief period did I give in to the race. For the most part, however, I was never even on the track.

I lived in a garage during my last year in Los Angeles. I followed that with three years of living with my parents, in my old bedroom, while I worked full time.

For my first major foray into work, I bought one pair of twenty dollar shoes at Wal-Mart and wore them until the soles were completely removed from the uppers.

I drove the first college vehicle I bought until I moved to China, and owning one vehicle felt like owning one too many. I sold it when I knew I was China-bound.

I lived in the cheapest apartment in Chapel Hill with a roommate shortly after moving out of my parents’ house, with approximately 700 total square feet of space to share. I rented it because it was the cheapest apartment I’d ever heard of.

I moved to China for two years. Most of my first year was spent in a dormitory with little heating and no A/C. I spent the summers sweating and the winters sleeping in my winter gloves, jacket, and scarf. I spent most of my second year in an apartment bedroom smaller than most closets. It had a severe roach infestation that I battled until my return to the United States.

My homes, my clothes, my shoes, my cars, were often the worst, and I never cared. I never cared because it meant avoiding debt.

Harsh conditions do not trouble me, nor do people with nice things.

I returned to America at age 33 and it is probably no surprise that scrappiness is now engrained in me. My current apartment is 800 square feet and that feels like way too much. I bought a car fully with cash in 2019 and it also felt like too much, so I sold it in 2020.

I am scrappy by nature. I prefer to sweat. I enjoy wiping dead bugs off my brow and legs after a long summer bike ride.

My mind goes to day 2 of my recent bikepacking adventure. I’m somewhere outside the north entrance to Skyline Drive, at a camp site pretty far removed from what most would call “civilization.”

Next to our tent is a trailer, and outside the trailer is a shirtless man, living alone, drinking a beer and watching the sunset. He’s smiling, but it isn’t the simple urban smile of someone posing for a selfie in front of a cappuccino. Out by the Blue Ridge Mountains, he has nothing he needs to buy. He’s smiling because the mountains are enough.

Remove exposure to those who desire things, and you remove the desires for those same things.

This means removing the people who pursue “more” from your close proximity, but it also means removing exposure to the gadgets that bring them within close proximity.

This is no easy task. How badly do you want to leave behind your longing for more?

The Nothing

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” - Socrates

I had a fun conversation this week with a colleague about the 80’s film The Neverending Story. In the days that followed I found myself thinking about the evil that threatened to destroy the magical world of Fantasia, “The Nothing.”

The Nothing was tied to the human world. In the film it resembled a black hole that swallowed and essentially deleted from existence all of the mystical lands and creatures of Fantasia. It was directly correlated with the adult lack of imagination and failure to dream or read books.

With the film having been released decades ago and the book it’s based on long before that, I wonder if The Nothing would have easily triumphed over Fantasia in today’s world. I suspect it would.

I recalled a friend of mine’s toddler who sat in the back seat while we drove to a museum, the toddler’s eyes glued to her tablet screen. How will such a toddler, always enveloped by dopamine-inducing stimulus, ever have time to imagine? It is through boredom that creativity grows. It seems that The Nothing now swallows many of us before we are even old enough to read in the first place.

The Nothing makes us busy, and in its clutter it makes us barren. With more websites to browse, more things to buy, more emails to answer, more shows to watch, more tasks to complete, The Nothing envelopes us in inadequacy. And at the core of this inadequacy is money. Therefore, money is at the core of The Nothing.

The toddler therefore abandons nature in favor of WiFi.

On the other end of the age spectrum is the retiree. Consumed with planning, the 65-year-old retiree is concerned almost entirely with projections. Projections of lifespan, projections of benefits, projections of health. All of these projections gravitate around money.

Whereas they once fretted for their job security and bonuses, retirees soon fret for health security. The primary question of the consumerist model does not fully disappear: Do I have enough?

Gone are simple days spent being. With money having consumed the retiree’s every thought, every worry, and every bit of motivation, for years upon years, the modern consumerist model has completely devoured the retiree’s spirit. Wholly dependent on the system for what the retiree now values most, which is predictability and stability, the retiree no longer focuses so much on what he or she deems trivial: things like creation and meditation. What money, what insurance, after all, are supplied by creativity? Instead, the retiree’s focus is on wills, on healthcare, and on potential future nursing homes.

Burn me at the stake, I say, before sending me to a damned nursing home!

Free from the shackles of work, the retiree is shackled to insurance and rife with anxiety over pension plans. “Will I get my promotion” is quickly placed with, “But will it get me through?”

The what ifs of the working world subside, and the what ifs of the healthcare world infect.

It is no wonder then that so many retirees struggle to find purpose, when in fact there is a thousand years’ worth of purpose in a single ray of sunshine. The retiree’s sole focus for so many decades was on “finally having security” that the act of retirement only breeds more insecurity: a lack of passion, a renewed anxiety over wellbeing, and a focus solely on money.

The retiree, consumed by being busy, struggles to breathe. He or she will therefore often find new things to be busy over, and there is great risk in these things being too superficial to live long for.

The focus for so many decades was on having enough money that money can become the retiree’s primary value. It will not simply dissipate because one is retired. It will instead shapeshift into forms more sinister. The Nothing will prevail.

And in between the toddler that is introduced to a consumerist model of screens, and the retiree fully consumed by the consumerist model of funeral planning and pension spending, are those lost in between, navigating the unknown, figuring out what is truly valuable to them.

Will The Nothing finish them off, or will they learn to read again?

It is easy to be rendered cynical by the hoard, but it is still relatively easy to defeat The Nothing.

Take a moment to breathe. Do nothing, just stare and breathe. Let your mind wander where it may. Don’t look at any screens or the wasteful notifications that blink from them. Don’t prepare anything or mark anything or clean anything or throw anything away. Was it easy? Then do the same, but for ten minutes. Then try an hour. Look at a plant, or an animal. Let your mind wander. Then when you’re done, pick up a book and read a few pages.

The Nothing just shrank a bit.

Rule: Don’t Chase

Being told I have to obey rules can give me an ill feeling, maybe because I usually associate rules with school. The modern school system is more focused on molding and shaping thoughts than enhancing them. It’s also more driven to produce perfect workers than to produce modern intellects and abstract thinkers.

Rules, however, can add value to our lives. Rules are required for any civil contract to form between people. Without civil contracts, we devolve into a form of Darwinian savagery. The constraint brought forth by rules can allow for liberation; rules can focus us on what matters while blocking what doesn’t.

Give a film a time limit and the story can be told concisely.

Tell a classroom of students to listen and respect one another, and each individual’s thoughts can be expressed freely, and contribute to the search for a greater meaning.

Tell an employee not to work on weekends and this person’s wellbeing will be extended.

Sometimes, but not always, rules should be unmalleable. The Ten Commandments provide moral tenets that universally prevent the inner destruction of a culture. It is the absolutism of them that has brought forth much of modern civilization. Some rules, therefore, must be permanent.

If an individual does not set forth personal rules and boundaries, that person invites others to set rules and boundaries for him or her. And these rules will likely not be to the benefit of the individual. Therefore, by neglecting rules, one invites tyranny into his or her life.

I have a rule for myself, a primary rule, based on my own experiences and struggles. Maybe it can or should be a rule for you. It is not a rule I have always obeyed. In fact, it’s a rule I’ve often neglected, and when I’ve neglected it I’ve paid severe consequences.

Rule: Do not chase unless it’s for fun.

• Do not chase material things, because even ownership is ephemeral. At some point in the future, a time you cannot possibly determine, you will die, and a loved one will be forced to either rid your belongings, take them, or sell them to someone else.

• Do not chase material things because the chase will carve a hole in you, and the hole will only widen as the chase continues. To chase a thing means to assume that ownership of said thing will fix something broken in you. After a time, you will realize that you are no better or worse off with your newly aqcuired object, and you will chase another. The chase will drain you of time, money, and individuality. The objects you purchase will not relieve you of any burden, but rather will add new burdens. You will fret over them breaking and degrading, and you will scramble to find places to put them.

• Do not chase status, because to do so assumes that status brings you self-worth. It assumes that your current status is not worthy of being. Because there is always a higher status than your own, this chase cannot possibly satisfy you. Social media presents the epitome of this danger. One can never have enough likes, and there are illimitable people to compare yourself to, if you choose to compare yourself to others.

• Do not chase the validation or approval of people because you subject yourself to their judgment. The basis of this mentality is that your own wellbeing is dependent on the whims of another’s opinion of you. There is nothing more dangerous than giving someone else this sort of power over your health. If you chase a job promotion to the extent that you subject your sanity to the whims of a boss, you enslave yourself to that boss. If you chase a lover to the extent that you place your livelihood on the whims of their approval of you, you invalidate your own self-worth.

Games are another matter entirely. To chase for fun is to enjoy a moment and accept a potential thrill. What, then, is it okay to chase? Some examples:

• Chase the queen on a chess board.

• Watch a child chase butterflies and rabbits. Can you do the same?

• Chase green lights while cycling through a city.

• Chase your dog if it won’t give up a ball in a game of fetch.

• Play tag, or baseball, or basketball. All involve a chase of some sort.

To ease the sense of lack in your life requires you to stop chasing material things. Chase something if it’s fun. Be brave enough to let others chase the rest.

6 Tips for Minimalist Travel

I do not believe the absolute number of things in ones life will contribute much to wellbeing, unless that number is too high for one to manage or too low for one to exist in nature and society.

A race to compare how many things one owns is as pointless as a race to compare how few things one owns. While an overstuffed room may cripple a resident with its sheer heft and clutter, an empty room will cripple with boredom (and a higher likelihood that the room is empty due to a lack of hobbies).

That said, I believe minimalism plays an important role in travel. The main purpose of travel, in my opinion, is joy, and overloaded suitcases will always be a detriment to joy for the nomad. In an airport, checked luggage will add cost to a journey. It will add time: the time from waiting in lines to check the bags, and the time waiting to collect bags at baggage claim. It will also add anxiety, because any bag removed from the traveler will be less likely to arrive at a destination.

There is never a reason for a nomad to check luggage. Ever.

I lived in China for about two years as an ESL teacher, and most of what I learned about minimalist travel was through trial and error. Here are a few basics for the aspiring nomad:

1. Travel with a backpack, not a shoulder bag.
   As shoulder bags get stuffed, the weight distribution on your back will become uneven. It can strain you. A backpack is more versatile and if properly constructed, allows its wearer to walk long distances. A solid 30-40L backpack is all you need. If you are going somewhere rainy, have a backpack that’s water resistant. I got through China with an Osprey Farpoint 40. These days I mostly fly with just a Mission Workshop Fitzroy. The focus should not be so much on the brand as it should be on shoulder comfort and durability.

2. Bring laundry detergent with you.
   The novice traveler will attempt to bring a set of clothes for each day that he or she travels. There’s no need for that. Just bring one or two sets of what you need, and put some detergent in a small liquid container. Something like these should work. You’ll likely be staying at a hotel or airBnB with a washer. If not, learn to wash clothes in the sink.

3. Merino wool is not necessary, but it’s nice.
   I did not take merino wool to China with me. Admittedly, though, it makes travel easier. I don’t want this blog to be about replacing what you have, however. You can easily onebag travel without merino. Merino wool is antimicrobial and odor resistant. You’ll be able to wear your clothes for several days at a time, and perhaps longer if you switch off two merino wool garments. It’s also wrinkle resistant, which is especially nice for shirts. But if you don’t have merino…

4. Bring a portable steamer.
   This is especially useful if you either suck at ironing or are staying somewhere without an ironing board. Fill the steamer with tap water (make sure the steamer has a built-in filter) and let the steam smooth out the wrinkles from your luggage. They aren’t too expensive either. This will be especially crucial if you are traveling with a lot of cotton or linen garments.

5. Wear your heavier clothes and shoes.
   These days I travel with only minimalist sports sandals as “shoes” whenever possible. They are the most versatile shoes ever constructed, particular for the barefoot runner. I use them for everything from casual walks and dining to working out. These are my favorite. Honestly, they are pretty much all I wear, traveling or not. If you will need more shoes at your destination, wear the heavier shoes and pack the lighter ones. If you are going to live abroad in a place with cold winters, wear your boots and pack your shoes/sandals. Likewise with clothes. If you are going somewhere cold but flying out in summer, wear your summer clothes, pack what you can, and buy cheap winter stuff when you settle at your destination.

6. You do not need many electronics.
   Every item you own takes up space. Physical books, headphones, portable computers… each will be an added weight on your back and on your mind. Luckily we live in an age where there are portable solutions to almost everything. I do not own headphones at all. I prefer to read. I bring a Kindle so that I have plenty of reading material without the associated weight of pages. I don’t own a portable computer because a nice tablet performs everything I need. Poof. I just eased a few pounds off of my back.

With practice, you will become an expert onebag traveler. I suggest taking less than what you need on your next trip and assessing what went wrong afterwards. You’ll likely see that most things left behind are not as necessary as you once thought. They either will not have been worn at all, or eventually picked up at the destination (or often in airports themselves these days).

This blog is focusing specifically on the nomad. These days, I own more than a backpack’s worth of stuff. There is an added freedom that comes from living out of just a backpack. So why, then, do I not subscribe to this onebag philosophy for the non-traveler? Here are a few basic reasons:

1. Hobbies are awesome, and they require stuff.
   I enjoy cycling through rain, sleet, snow, or shine. This requires more apparel than one can fit in a backpack. Similarly, many hobbies require stuff to perform them. It is okay if your belongings enable you to do the things you dream of doing.

2. Having more items prolongs the life of the items you own.
   This is especially apparent for shoes. You will wear through your shoes quicker if you wear one pair daily because you are pressing approximately 200 pounds on a material that likely weighs less than a pound, with each step, possibly thousands of times a day. When you switch your shoes by the day, time allows the sweat in your shoes to dry and the compressed materials to decompress a bit. Trading off shoes is therefore more cost efficient than only owning one pair. Similarly, clothes need time to breathe. The wash and dry cycles on garments wear them out. Washing a shirt several days a week will wear it out exponentially faster.

3. People need art.
   This is the most opinionated of my three arguments in this blog post. Art teaches us about life. It also provides food for our minds. The clothes we wear can be art, as can be the paintings on our walls and the furniture in our living rooms. There is no need to go overboard in a quest to own art, but a piece or two that mean something personally are worth having. We deserve to have some things in our immediate surroundings that spur our brains into thinking about the deeper questions.

There you have it. Plan a trip. Even if you have always checked your bags, challenge yourself to fit everything in a backpack. Force yourself to do so regardless of the length of your trip. Take the risk of lacking enough essentials, and watch yourself come out the other side just fine.

A Schism Created by Cushion

We enjoy comfort far too much. Sometimes it seems to me that for most, finding a higher degree of comfort is the meaning of life.

Maybe linked to our obsession with comfort is a fear of death. Or at the very least it could be an obsession with security. Maybe a fear of death and an obsession with security overlap to some degree.

We want the most “ergonomically comfortable” office chairs so that we can sit still for hours without our backs aching. We want the densest amounts of foam in our shoes to prevent soreness or injury. We want the most plush mattress to sink our bodies into at night when we sleep.

Indoors, I am always amazed by how Americans in particular blast their air conditioning. God forbid we form a little armpit sweat.

I often wonder how much weaker we become due to our obsession with comfort. The foam in our shoes prevents the nerve endings in our feet from feeling the ground, and over years our feet weaken. Our office chairs encourage a state of inertia in which no part of the body can form a semblance of struggle, and over time our blood stops flowing. Our beds make us soft, mentally and physically, and our backs ache more with age, requiring still plusher beds.

And all this foam, all this cushion, creates a schism between us and the world around us. As our foam technology improves, the schism widens. We become unfeeling, overly sanitized forms with casts, going through corporatized motions of how a human should behave.

And as the years pass we become pale shells of our younger selves; yet ironically, our younger selves had a more intimate connection with the world and therefore a greater understanding of eternity. Where we once embraced a little dirt and a little stench and a little ache here and there, we now obsess over eliminating all grime, all smell, and all pain from our lives. We foam at the mouths over the latest cleaning products to sanitize our homes and ourselves, and our self-induced paranoia makes us think every little exercise requires six rehab tools and a chiropractor.

We seek some sort of overly sanitized utopia in which pain is a distant memory. Death is something beyond the horizon entirely. We buy dozens of products to make life more comfortable, and then we buy a dozen more to ease the weakened body caused by the first round of products. And thus we become perfect consumers, and our purchasing cycles repeat until death.

Yet there is another option: embrace struggle rather than seek a product to ease it.

Shop ‘Til You Drop

“By parading a stream of other people’s lives in front of us, screens remove the responsibility to create our own lives. This makes us radically powerless, and powerlessness leads to anxiety. And Anxiety leads to shopping. Shopping leads to debt. Debt leads to more anxiety. The cycle ends with death.” - Tom Hodgkinson

I attempted a return to Instagram recently. I know intrinsically that Instagram is mostly toxic, but I intellectualized a justification to return. I want to connect, I told myself. I want to show people what I’m doing! If I ride down the world’s tallest waterfall but no one is there to see it, did it really happen? Besides, I thought, Instagram can be a potential aid to my blog readership!

And as the bright, dopamine-inducing flashing colors that embroider new Instagram stories and notifications rushed over me, I felt some sense of elation. It felt like belonging. I was genuinely sharing with a community.

The first few days upon creating an IG account, I was able to log out of Instagram pretty easily. This doesn’t seem so toxic, I thought. Besides, people want to see what I’m up to!

But as days went by I found my thoughts increasingly turning to Instagram. The updates to my newsfeed were constant, and this platform seemed to lead down a rabbit hole of possibilities. I can peak into the lives of famous people, catch glimpses of new company products, and show the world my latest jacket. Isn’t that great? I have a lens into anyone and everyone I want to see.

But are we meant to see anyone and everyone? Does it remove us too much from where we are today?

Before I knew it, Instagram was invading far too much of my time. And my thoughts were no longer on writing, or cycling, or traveling. They were on Instagram.

So what if Instagram aids in blog viewership? I write this blog for myself. And so what if no one can witness me ride down the world’s tallest waterfall, or swim with great white sharks (I have done neither of these by the way). If I saw and felt the experiences, and I still have two hands and a page to type or write on, I can try to put my recollections to words. If my camera captured anything, all the better.

It’s more meaningful when you write on your own platform.

I feel better having deleted Instagram again. I don’t envy young people who are given such apps and “tools” at a young age. If someone gives a 12 year old cocaine but slaps a warning on the bag that states, “Don’t take too much because it’s actually kinda harmful,” I’m not sure if the 12 year old is going to remain sober for most of his or her waking hours.

These days my main goal is to escape compulsive consumption. Yet there are few tools more effective than Instagram at making us want more. Better clothes, bigger homes, fancier furniture, better vacations. We’re introduced to millions of people seemingly living better lives than us, and we spend increasingly amounts of time living vicariously through their fake world.

But the real world is here and now, in the silence of the present, in the clothes we have on today, on the couch that currently rests in our living room. And if we are ok with this silence, if we are healthy, if we are not suffering… how do we tell ourselves that it’s enough?

Edit: I’m back on Instagram.

Minimalist or Maximalist?

“Everywhere, the same myth is perpetuated: you are just one object away from happiness.” - Tom Hodgkinson

I have an itch for more. It’s in my DNA, and it’s probably in your DNA too. It’s a rash that Western civilization evolved to have, as it keeps the cycle of constant consumption perpetuating. The rash must remain. Purchasing more products will temporarily alleviate the rash, but the rash will never heal.

I also have an itch for less. I wish for less stuff, but mostly I wish for less noise. Due to the advent of the current Techno oligopoly, companies are constantly in my ear. So long as my smartphone is near me, I am allowing companies to track me and manipulate me with their advertisements. I turn on my phone and Google tracks my browsing to determine products I want to buy. I log into Instagram and advertisements invade my feed. “Tag our company and become part of our community,” they beseech.

I find myself convinced, largely by these companies, that there is something lacking in my life. I have a problem and it is dire. Luckily there is a product out there, somewhere out there, that can solve this problem. Solving it might be a matter of life and death. After all, to lack complete security is to risk the abyss.

Despite modern consumerism getting out of hand, I am not a minimalist. I don’t have much interest in discovering how little I can live with. I believe materials can matter. Boots with lining keep our feet warm in winter. Waterproof clothing allows us to bike in storms without getting sick.

Stuff can also be a reward for hard work. Sometimes said stuff is worth owning. My bicycle keeps me fit, healthy, and happy. My Xero Z-trail sandals allow me to run, bike, travel, and walk with almost no weight on my feet and without a need for socks. Linen pants allow my legs to breathe in the hot and humid summer.

I am not a true ascetic because I am not a derelict, trapped with only the things on his or her body, left the the arbitrary conditions of the environment. That is suffering, and I’m not interested in that when I have a choice.

I do not want to avoid materials altogether. I want to avoid vanity. I am interested in living efficiently, not minimally. There is a difference. Living efficiently does not necessarily mean racing to the bottom or striving for a mostly-empty closet. It means being conscious of purchases and aware of the constant manipulation companies put us through. It means choosing, but choosing wisely, and recognizing what brings you value.

Living efficiently does not require a complete rejection of stuff. When I buy something, I want the quality to be as high as possible. I want use out of it. I’d prefer my winter and summer pants to have substantially different fabrics, rather than be trapped with just one fabric for both seasons.

If an object brings aids the wellbeing of my life, it is of value. What aids ones wellbeing is a subjective matter.

I am not interested in cosmetics or fragrances, but you might be. I’m also not interested in owning a lot of art pieces because it can often be appreciated just by seeing it. I’m not interested in driving because cycling is more fun. But I do like a t-shirt that doesn’t get too clammy in the summer.

Some might consider me a minimalist, but I often regard myself as a maximalist. It’s just a matter of maximizing ones hobbies and minimizing the rest.

The Still Point of the Turning World

T.S. Eliot referred to the act of reading as “The still point of the turning world.”

Finding such moments of stillness seems crucial to sanity, now more than ever.

With the advent of clockwork came the creation of anticipation, and with anticipation inevitably came anxiety. Yet time as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon in relation to the span of human history.

The first mechanical clock was likely invited some time in the 14th century. Portable clocks, or pocket watches, arrived much later, in the 1700s. So while clocks entrenched a spot in societal life only over the last several hundred years, humans have existed for over 200,000 years.

Before clocks, we evolved to sense time as something that ebbs and flows, like the rise and fall of the sun.

With clocks came a march toward “progress”, something that could only be tangible if we had “markers” and “goals” to anticipate.

Now there are such time markers everywhere. Beeps on phones serving as reminders of looming appointments and peers to call. Blings on computers reminding of upcoming work meetings and due dates. Deadlines on projects. Metrics on spreadsheets marking durations of tasks to push employees in the assembly line faster, for the sake of “efficiency.”

Where can modern people find stillness?

Alarms pull the languished out of bed so that they can rush and “hit a calorie count” on a gym machine, which has a set duration that counts down to an end time, after which that person must rush to work. Hurry, or your exercise time gets reduced! Even time outside of work is spent hurrying to get to work.

Phones remind us at lunch that our eating time must be brief. We have appointments, and tasks, and deficiencies to address!

The constant tick of the modern mind has never been louder, and I have never more ardently sought stillness to counter it.

I do not exercise with a phone on me. I bike and run without one to get lost in the moment and appreciate the elements, and how they interact with me and the world around me. “End time” be damned.

I try to hide screens when I read. Reading is a rare opportunity for absolute focus and meditation, and time does not need to exist while in this state of mind. I don’t want schedules and reminders distracting me from my chance to push time aside.

I hand write these blogs first, then type them later. I don’t want a sense of urgency in a rare opportunity to reflect.

The march forward creates a longing for more and uses a tool called time to hammer feelings of incompleteness into the minds of the masses. It is this sense of urgency that turns a state of peace into a state of longing. Clocks are now tattooed into our upbringing and we justify the need for them by fooling ourselves into thinking we need more. We become obsessed with addition. More screens, more material stuff, more upgrades, more responsibilities, more promotions, more emails, more phone reminders, more bills, more Xanax, and more work hours.

It feels so damn good to just hit the pause button on it all.