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.

Suffering, the Precursor to Art

I was reflecting today on why old Soviet literature encompasses a large portion of my favorite novels.

Most of my favorite works were written under iron-fisted bureaucracies (or shortly prior to their arrival), within systems that repressed and compressed the human soul. I find it interesting that from a system that mashes the individual spirit into flattened dough, some of the finest breads were baked.

Soviet writers and painters were forced to hone their crafts within the narrowest boundaries, and despite not capturing what they likely dreamed of capturing, they created something magnificent within the confines of what was allowed. It was a negotiation in some sense, but then almost all art is. Artists were given a litany of things they couldn’t do, and so they perfected what they could.

This reminds me of modern Hollywood film, in a sense. The best works are created with minimal money and resources because the artist must focus on the visual aesthetic and storytelling as a craft. The added skill compensates for a lack of money. Contrarily, when films are given a limitless budget, they often materialize into disaster.

The Master and Margarita, one of my favorite Soviet novels, was not published until well after the author’s death, and several censored version floated around prior.

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though written before Lenin, was a product of a rapidly changing time. The aura of the morally degenerating Marxist youths of the time are woven through the book’s pages.

It led me to think that great art requires limitation and perhaps even the total destruction of stability. Confines, therefore, are a precursor to great art, and art is always a negotiation between artist and society.

Yet in America, the best literature was often written in a much different system. I think back to Faulkner, Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot, and the Roaring 20s, and the crash that ensued.

It seems as though with affluence and fame and minimal limitations or censorships, great novels still arose, just with vastly different themes. There were still cultural criticisms to be found, but perhaps the artists themselves, with relatively less censorship, found ways to bring their own demons to the forefront. American authors had a propensity for gluttony and nihilism, and consequently a deep knowledge of the darkest parts of the human soul. Everything good, as shown both internally by the act of alcoholism and drug use, and externally by the Great Depression, will inevitably be destroyed.

Whereas Soviet artists constantly battled their system, the Americans battled their inner demons. Hemingway died of a shotgun wound to the head after decades of chronic alcoholism. Eliot and Faulkner were similarly fond of the bottle. All had ample turmoil within themselves, though of different types for each, which inevitably manifested in their pages.

Therefore it can be assumed that it is not necessarily a repressive system or set of limitations that sets the stage for great art, but rather the act of suffering itself, which can take many forms, both societally and internally.

It is suffering which gives art its meaning because to truly be sustainable, art must tell us something about ourselves that we did not otherwise know, or could not put into words. And to accomplish immortality, the artist must sink into the darkest nether regions of the human soul, and return sane enough to tell what’s down there.

Every artist, regardless of era or upbringing, is sacrificial in some sense because of this.

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.

The Need To Get Somewhere

When I ride my bicycle, the world in my immediate peripheral vision slows down. This slowdown allows my mind to imprint the local shops, the street potholes, the road crevices, and the pedestrians waiting at bus stops.

I also notice how anxious the drivers around me are. They fidget at stoplights and tensely grip their phones as they look for excuses to check the glowing screens. They scan text messages and fumble through apps, their minds constantly expecting something.

These drivers engage in an endless stop-and-go, from traffic light to traffic light. Like pinballs in a machine, they dart from spot to spot, at the disposal of blinking lights and street signs. They hate it, and they honk and curse, though they are part of an endless stream of gas guzzlers wanting to get from point A to point B. And so their eyes dart from app to text to clock to road, waiting for what’s next. They blast music to minimize the stress. But it’s stressful, and it’s daily.

They have to get somewhere, and this need to get somewhere renders the present moment unacceptable for them.

Society tells them that a hypothetical future place will assuage their problems. There are consequences to not getting somewhere. So they honk and curse and shove breakfast quickly down their throats and rush through the Starbucks drive-through so that they can swig a latte.

Where are they going that is worth the hustle, the damning of the present and the need to escape it?

To offices, where they will sit and pour through spreadsheet metrics and a new litany of emails asking for favors.

To school, where they will dread grades and the teachers who are the judges, juries, and executioners of their future potential high paying jobs. A future that could quite possibly involve an office and a screen with spreadsheets and metrics. A future of more hustle, because even when the job is landed, there are always potential consequences just around the corner that can destroy everything.

Yet these drivers rush to meetings with colleagues they generally don’t like, over subjects they care about insofar as caring will pay the bills.

Is the present moment really worth sacrificing for such a future?

We tell ourselves we have no choice, that the need to get somewhere is imperative.

So we can buy a bigger house.

So we can get the job that impresses those that we know.

So we can pay off loans.

So we can have a higher salary.

So we can buy more presentable clothes.

So we can be more, because if we can be more we can be enough.

But what if our current state of being is already enough?

What if being in this world is enough, and being ourselves is enough?

The reason I took on cycling is because when I’m on a bicycle, I lose my sense of urgency. I’m not timing anything, or chasing anything, or trying to prove anything. I don’t give a damn about my heart rate or my calorie count or my mileage. The future be damned, the present is enough. The only thing that matters is my pedaling, my breathing, my immediate surroundings. The air feels crisp and I can appreciate it. My sweat wicks away in a breeze and it all feels more authentic.

When the impatient racers around me feel the need to roar forward, to check their myriad distractions in the mirror at stoplights, to honk, to hurry for a drive-through latte that costs them a portion of their work day…

I accept that this was once me, and sometimes still is me, and I hope they buy a bike one day.

Filling the Void

There is a void in our lives. If we continue living with this void, it will lead to unprecedented misery and corporeal decay.

Companies brilliantly convince us this is so. It’s how they convince us to buy their things.

I’ve been paying more attention to car commercials lately. The typical car commercial portrays a happy couple or family driving across a natural landscape, over terrain they never could have otherwise accessed. Text implies that to purchase this vehicle would be a steal. Video hints that this vehicle is a key that can unlock unprecedented freedom. A corporation is practically giving it away.

Buy me and you unshackle the chains that render you inert.

Drive me and leave behind the misery of a life stuck in one place.

But what is the reality?

Car registration at the DMV.

Thousands of dollars in car insurance, an expense not ending for as long as the vehicle is “yours.”

Thousands of dollars in gas, an expense not ending for as long as the vehicle is “yours.”

Thousands of dollars in maintenance, accumulating like a snowball rolling downhill for as long as the vehicle is “yours.”

We want it shiny. We want it new. Yet a steady degradation and rusting inflicts all shiny new things unless one is willing to spend a fortune to fight Father Time and slow down the inevitable destruction that all things come to. Botox for the face and for the car. Injections for the lips and for the tires.

The drain is unending unless one finds another shiny new object to replace the current one.

And yet the voices in our heads whisper: Buy me. You need me. I’m the last thing you’ll ever need.

“The things you own end up owning you.” -Tyler Durden

The lack oozes and burns into every pore of our existence.

Your frizzy hair makes you unattractive, but this special shampoo will save you.

Your male pattern baldness makes you look as pathetic as Gollum, but this Rogaine will save you.

Your pectoral muscles are flat and flimsy and your bench press sucks, but this protein powder will make your pecs adequate.

This tethers the puchaser to the shampoo bottle, the rogaine, and the protein shake. If a product depletes, the void, a disgusting tumor that will twist and contort all things beautiful, will grow. And if the void grows, what then? Death?

I want to embrace my aging rather than rely on a product to fight it. I want to jump into my own void.

I want to climb out of the consumerist rabbit hole that leads to a red queen I cannot reconcile with.

I do get value out of my material things and ironically, this blog will detail a lot of the material things I get value from. But I aim to only use what I find legitimate value in, and to find the best material possible to suit that need. That is why I consider myself a “maximalist.” I strive to maximize my output, but to do so efficiently. I have to be honest with myself. I am not necessarily a minimalist.

I am not perfect. I have bought things I don’t need and will do so again in the future. But I aim to separate my own intention from the intention imposed on me by external forces. I aim to embrace my materials while avoiding an emotional attachment to them. It’s not an easy balance. I don’t yet know if it’s even possible, but I will explore it.

I am incomplete. Therefore I am complete.