Guest post by Lance Brown

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When I started this column two years ago, I had no idea if it would work.

I knew we were heading off together toward the elusive goal of “simplicity”, but beyond that, I had no idea where it would take us. Or, more to the point, me. (No offense.)

I certainly didn’t expect to achieve total simplicity in two short years. Which is good, because I certainly did not. But I have made progress, and often as a direct result of having this opportunity to shine a light on the main problem areas in my quest for a simple life.

Here’s a look at my progress on some of the primary anti-simplicity demons that I’ve been trying to tame since I began searching for a simpler life, many years ago…

Procrastination & Self-Sabotage

Let’s get the ugly beast out of the way first. The two-headed monstrosity made up of self-sabotage and procrastination.

Just last week someone said to me, “I think things could happen easier for you if you could get out of your own way.  I’m certain you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

And I was like, (paraphrasing) “Oh YEAH? Shows what you know, because look, I wrote three different columns about being in my own way. So there!”

Yeah, person who tried to reach out and help, so there! I know so much about how I’m interfering with my own progress that I can write three columns about it and STILL have no idea how to stop doing it. Ha! In your face!

Wait—what?

Still got some work to do on this one. I’ll get around to it eventually.

Email Inbox

On January 1st of this year, at 7 minutes before midnight (a.k.a. Procrastinator’s New Year’s Eve), I got my email inbox down to zero items—for the first time since I’ve had an email inbox, in 1996. And just to show it wasn’t a fluke, I’m going to get it back down to zero right now. Hang on.

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Guest post by Lance Brown

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She said, “It’s all about the moment,”
But I got one eye on the clock
It’s all about the moment
I got one eye on the clock
She said, “Open up a little,
You might see what you have got.”

                  -Doug Hoekstra, “Everywhere is Somewhere”

It is a fact of existence: most of our time is not spent achieving our goals.

It sounds sad when stated like that, but really, there are plenty of activities that we engage in with no hope of completion at all, and we don’t get sad about those.

Take breathing, for example. Have you finished oxygenating your body yet? You haven’t? What’s wrong with you? Get to work! Hurry up—breathe in! Now do it again! And again! Faster! You have important things to do, and you can’t spend all your time hung up trying to get this breathing thing done.

After all, you still have to finish washing your dishes once and for all. And raising your children. And learning. You’ve got to get those things done so that you can get to all that important stuff on your to-do list!

Hmmm…so maybe the “completion” model doesn’t always work. Some things just don’t get “done”. Some things do, of course—you can actually finish washing a dish…but, like breathing, the only time you’ll truly be finished washing your dishes is when you’re dead. (On the bright side, your to-do list will shrink radically at that time too!)

So, whether we realize it or not, we’re all accustomed to engaging in efforts that will never quite bring a final sense of accomplishment. They’ll have mini-victories along the way—an empty sink, a high school graduation, another successful round of in-breath/out-breath—but then the task will immediately present itself again. You can try all you want, but you won’t ever truly get to cross it off your list.

Discouraged yet? Don’t be. Just take a moment to breathe. Ready?

Breathe in, and then out.

You did it! Good job! Another successful breath. Have you been practicing? Because you really are excellent at that.

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by Lance Brown

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Oh, to be a Weeble®!

Remember them? Those little round-bottomed plastic figurines?

If you know Weebles, you probably remember their core philosophy: “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.”

On top of that, of course, Weebles don’t have jobs or responsibilities. They have no bills to pay, no passions driving them to overwork themselves, and no email inboxes. No concerns at all, in fact.

Though, truth be told, I wouldn’t want to live the empty, plastic existence of a Weeble. But I do still envy their ability to stay balanced. It’s something I haven’t yet been able to master myself.

Unlike a Weeble, whose default position is a perfectly-balanced vertical stance, my default position seems to be wobbling—or more specifically, canting wildly from left to right, front to back—and sometimes even diagonally. I’m about as steady and stable as a compass on a record player at the North Pole. (Warning: that metaphor may not be supported by actual science. But you get the idea.)

In a way, some of that instability is representative of the kind of life I want to lead. As I mentioned, I’m not interested in being a perfect plastic Weeble, with a perfectly smooth outer shell, and precisely the right amount of sand in my weighted base. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to have that EZ-balancing mechanism available to me.

In other words, I would like the ability to achieve a stable, vertical bearing every now and then. It doesn’t have to kick in every time you flick me in the head with your finger, but it sure would be great if it happened more often than not. (Also, you could stop flicking me in the head. I’m nobody’s toy, pal!)

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by Lance Brown

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We’ve already talked about how I basically shut down or dropped all of my way-too-many commitments to projects and organizations around 5 years ago. When I discussed that time (in my column “Flashback: Shutting It All Down”), it was mostly in terms of minimizing my “to-do” load, so that I could focus on the most basic to-do item: being happy and healthy.

It was an act of extreme simplicity, in the name of sanity and well-being. And it worked!

It also cut me off from almost everybody that knew me.

Oops!

Since that time, my main form of connecting with the outside world (aside from a small cluster of friends) has actually been right here in the pages of The Simplifier. First, anonymously writing the sections at the end, then writing a couple of feature articles and opening Notes, and eventually bringing my identity and more of my voice into my writing of the In the News, Featured at Project Simplify, and Keep Smiling sections. When The Simplifier re-shuffled after 4 years or so, I took a much bigger leap into re-introducing myself and connecting to the world: this column, The Not-So-Simple Life.

As a result, while anyone who has stuck around through the past 5 years of this newsletter would probably—nay, have to—consider me a blabbermouth, the other 99.99999% of the world hasn’t heard much from me for quite some time. (Unless you’re one of the 20 or so Twitter followers of mine who seem to be actually listening.)

On an in-person level, things have been even more muted. In any given chunk over the past 5 (or 10) years, there were maybe 2 or 3 people with whom I had enough contact that they had any real idea what was going on in my life. Beyond that there has been a gradually-growing (but still small) universe of freelance clients, but their peeks into my real world have been obviously limited.

Until this year, I hadn’t advertised, or marketed, or done outreach, or networked, for a very long time. Nor had I substantially dated, partied, “gone out”, or the like, for the better part of a decade.

Folks who met me during that time period have naturally concluded that I’m reclusive, a “hermit”, etc. But for the most part, I was just working some stuff out. (Very slowly, apparently.) After about 30 years of hubbub, I took 10 years or so of quiet time.

But I’M BACK, BABY!

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by Lance Brown

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It’s funny – I’ve written 36 columns about seeking simplicity over the course of a year and a half, and I have yet to define what simplicity means to me, and why I seek it.

Obviously, the issue has come up indirectly more than once. Just in my last column, I talked about aspects of country living that to me represent simplicity. And many of my other past columns have touched upon the various components of simple living that I strive for: organization, control, peace of mind…but what is the real goal here? How do I define it?

Because obviously—this isn’t the first time I’ve said this—my goal is not to simplify so that I have nothing to do. While that would be a simple life, it would also be an unbearably boring life for someone like me, who has literally thousands of things that I want to do.

I enjoy having a lot of irons in the fire. It’s what I prefer. And I enjoy having a lot of work to do. I don’t know any other way. I’m constantly seeking to take more in, and constantly seeking to put more out, and there’s much about that that is just fine and dandy as far as I’m concerned.

So then what is it that I’m looking for? In this hyper-connected world of pervasively invasive technology, where everything and everyone is moving at an unprecedented pace, just what does an information-saturated workaholic mean when he says he’s seeking simplicity?

Good question.

Simplicity = Organization

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by Lance Brown

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The official story is that I did it for the dogs. “Leash freedom!” was our rallying cry.

I tend to emphasize the official story, because the real story evokes John Denver, and banjos, and maybe a pair of overalls.

When we (my pets and I) moved to Southern California two months ago, definitely the biggest change in our daily lives—besides pure geography—was that of our 2 hours of walking each day, 100% of that time was spent on-leash, and in civilization. And by “civilization”, I mean traffic and noise, sidewalks and fences and yards, highways, traffic lights, crosswalks…each of which presented challenges to my dogs, with very few accordant benefits.

But to say that it was just the dogs that ultimately got us to move back out to the country would definitely only be half of the story.

About two weeks into our new life in the city—some might call where I was a town within L.A., or maybe a suburb, but it was a city by my count—I realized that I was getting particularly agitated, even on our walks. (Perhaps especially on our walks.)

While part of that was the fact that I was living in a garage at the time and perpetually looking for a new place, another big part of it was that it had been two weeks since I had taken any sort of long meditative walk in the woods—which long-time readers know is a key part of my formula for continued mental health.

For some reason, going on walks where I had to negotiate two or three dogs on leashes down noisy streets, through frequent intersections, past manicured flower gardens and yards, often while toting around a nice swinging bag of poop or two, just wasn’t bringing me the quietude and peace of mind I was used to. Go figure.

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by Lance Brown

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Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news?

OK, the good news. I made it out of the storage trap, and in record time!

Thank you, thank you…you’re too kind. (I assume you’re applauding. If not, my bad—I’ll wait ‘til your hands are free.)

What’s that you say? Oh right, the bad news. Well, good news, because even the bad news has good news. That good news is that I now have plenty of room for houseguests!

Alright, fine…I told myself I wasn’t going to be coy again this time.

The bad news is this: I’m now renting a 4-bedroom house with a 2-car garage and a huge yard.

What’s that you say? That doesn’t sound so bad? You may not be hearing what I’m hearing. You’ve kinda got to lean in close…there’s another voice behind that main headline one, kinda sneaky and whispering. Wait—shh-shh-shh—you can hear it…listen:

I’m going to take on tons of new stuff over the next 6 months.

There it is! It’s a wily one, that little truth. Oh, shh…I think there’s more…

I’m keeping a lot of the things from storage that I had planned to give away.

Ouch, that one stung a little. Though to be fair, I fi-

I’m spending 600 bucks to truck the rest of my shit across the state.

Geez, OK, we get it! No need to get rude, little whispering voice! (more…)