—

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.

There. Empty again. I’m not happy that it took me 15 years to get to this state, but I’m thrilled to finally be here. For most of that time, dealing with my inbox has felt like trying to stop a waterfall with my hands. But, even more problematically, it had become my taskmaster–serving as the main place I’d look to see what I should be doing next. And that’s not what an email inbox is for. (A fact that only truly becomes clear once your inbox is completely empty.)

I’ve been in an unhealthy co-dependent relationship with my inbox for so long that I really don’t know what life will be like now that that’s over with. But I’m really looking forward to finding out.

Papers & Stuff

I still have a considerable backlog of papers, and several boxes of annoyingly-disorganized stuff, but I did have a genuine breakthrough on that right around a year ago.

Switching my perspective on all that stuff—from “ever-looming overdue dark cloud from the past” to “just a regular current/future to-do item” made a huge difference. If I hadn’t spent half of the year since then moving from place to place, I’d probably have it all winnowed down to ideal levels by now. But even without reaching that nirvana, I have found a certain level of peace just by taking away the power I had granted to those dumb inanimate objects.

The task of “taming the dreaded Backlog” is neither as awful nor as big nor as important as I had been making myself believe, and just recognizing that fact has been one of the biggest stress relievers of my whole life.

Another giant turn-around in the stuff department has been in the acquisition side of things. I had been a “pack rat” since I could remember, and until just a couple years ago, every place I had lived by myself had become packed wall-to-wall with, to use the scientific term, crapola.

I can honestly report that those days are over, at least as far as I can see. I’ve developed a much more stringent approach toward taking on new things—and this is probably the 5th year in a row that has shown a net decrease in my number of possessions. Very little new comes in—and only after it has firmly justified itself.

I can picture four different places I’ve lived that you had to be careful walking through because parts of them were so crowded with stuff. (I wasn’t kidding when I said at the outset of this journey that I would’ve almost qualified to be on Hoarders.)

In contrast, the place I’m living at now could legitimately be called “Spartan”. Every hallway is clear, two rooms are essentially empty, the majority of closet space is unused, and I barely have any furniture. And I couldn’t care less.

Whatever it was that had me thinking stuff could solve things somehow is gone, or at least deeply dormant. This is probably my greatest victory so far.

Getting Things Done / To-Do List & Mind Map / Getting Help

I must confess I never ended up turning my life into a TV schedule, as I discussed doing in late 2010. As regular readers know, I had a tree disaster early in the year, and spent much of my time and energy in 2011 on moving and re-establishing myself.

As a result, my grand plan to mind-map the year into submission never really took off. And “mastering the to-do list” is still on my (world’s largest) to-do list.

But one major thing has turned around since back in the old days: tasks and to-do items are no longer my main controlling force. Which is pretty huge.

If you make your to-do list your top priority, and then you make a to-do list so huge that you only have .01% of the resources needed to get it done…well then, you’re very likely to burn yourself out from stress and over-commitment, like I did.

Out of necessity and, let’s call it “wisdom”, I’ve changed my whole approach to life, so that my to-do list is not my dominant priority. Happiness, and feeling good about the actual moments that I’m living in is instead.

Feeling a certain way—a good, healthy, simplified, in-control way—is now my top priority. And it turns out it’s much easier to focus on that than constantly trying to conquer a to-do list that can’t be conquered.

Or I should say, a to-do list that can’t be conquered without a lot of help. My quest for an assistant who can survive in my alien atmosphere continues, but I still count a victory on that front, just in my fundamental recognition that I do need help to get where I want to go. Lance of the Early 2000’s had not accepted that fact. (Which is why that Lance unceremoniously crashed and burned.)

Spawning New Projects / Voice Recordings

Purchasing a digital voice recorder and working it into my daily routine has been a blessing and a curse for sure. On the one hand, I’ve been blessed with a means to draw more than 9,000 recorded notes out of my crowded head—everything from song lyrics to grand plans to product ideas that will never come to light (and shouldn’t). Not to mention hundreds of jokes for my comedy routine, hundreds of story and screenplay ideas…and hundreds of dizzying folders and subfolders in an ever-growing area of my computer’s hard drive.

Which is to say, I haven’t entirely solved the voice recorder problem. But I have made leaps and bounds in the right direction—and I can report here that in the time since this column started 2 years ago, I have turned the tide on organizing my massive archive of recorded notes. The bulk of them are sorted out to some extent, and the top task of sorting through my “Creative” folders so I can get at all the notes that have been holding up my writing projects will be done by the end of this month. That is HUGE.

Perhaps even more importantly, I’ve gotten a handle(-ish) on my tendency to constantly spawn whole new projects. I have a natural tendency toward workaholism, in the form of a never-ending desire to be creating, producing, learning, and growing. I don’t think that’s going away. And until I finish finding the way to truly serve that desire in the best possible way, I need to make sure it doesn’t drown me in new responsibilities. I now have a sort of “idea triage” system that only lets truly critical ideas through, and keeps the others sitting out in the proverbial lobby until I have the staff available to deal with them.

The system still needs improvement, in order to better serve my ideas and help me manifest them. But the most important thing is protecting me from the onslaught of new potential projects, and I’m having real success there. That’s not a problem anymore. Mostly.

Do I still have a long way to go to achieve “the simple life”? Is that a real question? Of course I do! I may very well end up chasing after simplicity for the rest of my life, as I said in my previous column. But as I also said there, and in the related podcast discussion with Shawn Tuttle, the important thing is trying, and doing good work, and making whatever progress you can toward your goals. And when it comes to the goal of simplicity, I’ve made so much progress since I began my quest in 2005 that I barely recognize myself as compared to the guy from back then.

While it’s always easy to judge myself harshly, and find elements of my quest for simplicity that seem too daunting to overcome (I’m looking at you, procrastination, and you self-sabotage—you big jerk), it’s also easier and easier to find victories and ways that I have been able to turn things around completely. Change hasn’t come easily, or quickly, but it has most definitely come about, in dramatic and very satisfying ways.

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title). His podcast Estranged can be found on iTunes or at http://estranged.me.

—

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.

See how that works? No, I don’t mean breathing—I mean accomplishing things. There are two ways to look at it. On the one hand, depending on your age, you have somewhere between 400 and 600 million more breaths to get through in your lifetime. Ugh, right? What a pain in the butt!

But on the other hand, you’ve knocked out a good hundred or so just sitting here reading this—and you probably didn’t even have to think about most of them. But I did—I thought about them, and let me be the first one (and probably the only one) to congratulate you on a job well done. You knocked out a solid hundred of those badboys, and you didn’t even complain. Every single time, you were keeping billions of cells alive, providing fuel for your brain, and generally maintaining your body’s health. That’s a lot that you got done, especially considering how far you are from finishing the job.

Do I have a point here? I sure hope so. I’d hate to think that I’m just writing this for my enjoyment, and for the enjoyment of a select percentage of you folks. After all, we’re here—here at The Not-So-Simple Life column—to get something done, right? We’re going to simplify our not-so-simple lives, starting with mine! Isn’t that the idea? To work doggedly toward that goal, which will someday be accomplished? So that at some point, in this world of ever-expanding complexity, you and I, with our constantly-evolving minds, will achieve the much-ballyhooed state of “simplicity”—and then be able to cross that goal off our list?

Hang on a second. I think I just realized something. (Breathe in, and then out. In, and then out.) Maybe you picked up on it too.

Simplicity is one of those tasks that can never be truly “achieved”. It’s a goal that can’t be crossed off the list. Like breathing, it’s something you have to re-do in every new moment. And like learning, it’s a process of constantly building upon what has come before, to create something new—and hopefully a little better, and a little wiser. Because like washing dishes, simplicity is a task whose challenges that are ongoing and recurring (and which sometimes can only be resolved with a nice long soak in some hot water).

Not all of my The Not-So-Simple Life columns reach useful conclusions or end in a convenient resolution of a particular problem. And the column as a whole often seems to almost grab simplicity by the tail, only to have it zip off under the door at the last second. (How does it even fit under there?)

Obviously, resolution is one of the goals behind this endeavor—as it is the goal behind many endeavors. I do hope to find simplicity through these textual journeys, and with luck, to do so in a way that brings some of you to that “destination” with me.

But just keep in mind, even if we do get there together…there’s still going to be the next step after that. And then the next, and the next…

It’s OK though. Just breathe in, and then out. In, then out.

Good job! You did it again!

–

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title). His podcast Estranged can be found on iTunes or at http://estranged.me.

: : : : : : : : : :

Photo credit:
This is how we do the washing up by EraPhernalia Vintage

—

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!)

I do actually have a balancing mechanism or two (we’ve discussed my walking therapy, for example), but I think the central problem—the core difference between me and Weebles—is that they carry all their weight down in their big round butts, and I carry all mine on my shoulders, and in my overloaded noggin.

I’m not trying to say I have a big heavy brain. (I do, but that’s not what I’m trying to say.) I’m more talking about how my head is stuffed with thoughts and ideas, and every other manner of head-filling material. Weebles, they got no thoughts—they’re empty as a balloon up there. That’s part of how they work. (And they don’t even have shoulders.)

Me, I’m carrying a giant warehouse up top everywhere I go, with trucks coming by on a daily basis to drop more stuff off. That would be a Weeble’s worst nightmare—if it even had a brain to have nightmares with.

So sure, Weebles can stand up if they aren’t holding anything, but I guarantee that if you put a boulder on top of a Weeble, it’s going lay down on its side, and stay that way until you take the boulder off. Those Weebles are steady when unladen, but they’re not real strong.

Any person would be the same way, of course. One person can’t carry a boulder—at least not with some pretty serious wobbling. And even if they can keep it up there for a while, they can’t do it forever. No human could.

I do have to begrudgingly admit that I am human, and probably bound by those same rules. However…ten people, standing together in a tightly-packed group, would be very hard to knock over. And as long as they were wearing proper protective gear, carrying a boulder wouldn’t be that difficult either.

For that matter, one person with a crane could do a pretty good job of carrying a boulder—and then it wouldn’t have to be on anyone’s shoulders. (Hmmm…I wonder how many cranes it would take to lift a warehouse containing the World’s Largest To-Do List?)

So maybe I don’t need to have Weeble-power to stay upright and steady. If I can just find enough “peoble” to help me out, and save up so I can afford the Crane & Tractor to go with my existing Warehouse Play Set…maybe, just maybe, I can achieve stability without having to develop a perfectly-molded plastic shell and a huge sand-filled ass.

Not to mention that creepy wild-eyed perma-smile. I’d definitely like to avoid that if possible.

I guess I don’t want to be a Weeble after all.

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title). His podcast Estranged can be found on iTunes or at http://estranged.me.

: : : : : : : : : :

Photo credit:
weebles by killrbeez

—

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!

Sorry—that was the old pre-hideout me. Obnoxious, loud, and aggressive. The new, humbled me does his comeback quietly and gradually.

Buuuuut…I’mmmm…baaaaaack…baaaabyyyy……!

That really is the more accurate way to put it, because this “comeback” has been happening slowly but surely for a while now. But in some very real ways, my going public and reconnecting with the other 7 billion folks out there is moving to a new level. I can’t say for certain that I’m ready for it, but I’m making it happen nonetheless. 10 years of Rip van Winkling is more than enough.

I’ve been ratcheting up my in-person game for the past year or so—and while moving 400 miles from everyone I know recently didn’t help, my social circle is growing again, rather than returning to the “circle of one” that it used to be.

Even more significantly—at least in terms of threatening my simplicity—I’m also taking some big steps back into “public life”.

At the beginning of this month, I launched a podcast (an audio show on the Internet) called Estranged. Estranged owes a lot to this column; it follows a similar model—i.e., me blabbing about me—but on the subjects of isolation, disconnection, and so on. It’s largely about those 10 years I was just describing, and trying to work out an agreement between the “connected” me and the isolated me over who I am and how I want to fit in with everyone else.

In other words, it’s a one-sided discussion where I talk to the world about why I ran away from it, and how we can work together again. Half of that proposed merger is about simplicity, and you and I have been having that discussion here for over a year now. The other half is about connection, and I’m taking that bull by both horns as 2011 rounds its final corner.

Actually, all three horns. The podcast is one horn: “open up a conversation about my isolation so as to finally put it to bed”. Horns 2 and 3 are equally daunting. Horn #2? Performing stand-up comedy before year’s end—in possibly the most high-visibility comedy city in the world, Los Angeles. And #3? Finding a business partner and/or manager, and growing my one-man freelance business into a group effort, with all the collaboration, marketing, networking, and public interfacing that that implies.

Connecting, collaborating, partnering. Public commitments, public exposure, and public pressure.

Yikes—I knew there was a reason I had that bull corralled for so long! Just you watch—he’ll have more horns before you know it. It’s all coming back to me now. I remember this game.

For the longest time, I’ve been cultivating simplicity the easy way: by keeping things simple. But we all know my ambitions won’t allow me to keep things super-simple forever (even if the world would let me, which is far from a given).

So I’m working my way back into the mix. Reactivating my membership in the world club. To say it feels daunting would only start to scratch the surface.

Am I a different person than the one that burned out from over-connection and over-commitment lo those many years ago? My hair is thinner—does that count?

I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past 10 years—and I’ve learned a lot about finding simplicity and happiness over the past five.

Have I learned enough?

There’s only one way to find out.

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title). His podcast Estranged can be found on iTunes or at http://estranged.me.

—

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

What I really want is control, but I understand that I have to settle for the next best thing, which is organization. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” (At least until the cat pukes on it.)

That desire for organization is the big driver behind my hopefully-not-endless quest to take out my backlogs, both physical and digital. Having so many things (and ideas) that are unknown, unaccounted for, and hard or impossible to find creates a constant unnerving itch in the back of my mind. And the closer I get to having all that stuff “under control”, the better I feel when I wake up in the morning and go to bed at night.

So there’s no doubt that one goal of simplicity for me would be total organization. I want to know where everything is, and be able to get to it easily. (I may actually reach this goal before year’s end. I know—crazy, right?)

Simplicity = Ease

One half of the “organization imperative” is control; the other half is ease or efficiency. Time is money, as we all know, but a lesser known fact is that it’s also time. And there’s only so much of that to go around. So I want things to be as easy and smooth as they can be.

That’s why I want a handle on all my stuff. It’s also why my mouth waters when I see one of those awesome wrap-around desks. And it’s why I didn’t mind so much living in a one-room cabin, where nothing was more than 5 steps away.

I think it’s everyone’s dream for things to go smoothly and easily. Or maybe I should say it’s everyone’s fantasy. Whether dream or fantasy, count me in.

Simplicity = Getting Things Done

It’s not just random things that I want to go smoothly and easily—it’s my things. I’ve got a list of things to do that’s so big it’s got its own lists, and those lists have grandchildren. (Which are now grown and having children of their own.)

It seems a little strange to say that simplicity means the ability to get thousands of tasks accomplished, and launch a hundred projects, but there it is. Luckily I’ve finally come to accept—not just to know in an academic sense, but really accept in my heart—that I can’t do it alone, and don’t have to.

There can be simplicity in the midst of complexity. Say it with me now: There can be simplicity in the midst of complexity. There can be simplicity in the midst of complexity.

Like any good mantra, that’s just opening a door in the mind, allowing a little truth to sneak in and have a seat on the couch. And that truth is that there can be simplicity in almost any moment, if you manage the moment right.

Believe it. Live it. Wait, am I talking to you, or me now? Anyway, moving on…

Simplicity = Freedom

Mmmm…now we’re getting into the good stuff. The payoff.

“What do I want to get done right now?” POW! Done.

“You know what would be great? If I…” Say no more—DONE.

“I kinda wish I had a little more-“ YOU GOT IT. Right there—boom! Anything else?

Check it out – it’s like The Secret or something! (The Simplicity Secret?)

Far enough down the Road of Simplicity, where things are organized, and easy, and getting done, there’s the Meadow of Freedom, where the Unicorns of Satisf-

OK, let’s ditch that metaphor, but you get the idea. One day all this simplicity is going to mean I can do what I want, when I want to do it. Beyond the To-Do List Forest, if you get my meaning. And no unicorns will be required.

Because at that stage, like, everything will be a unicorn, man. Get it? It’ll all be just groovy gravy. Dig.

Simplicity = Peace of Mind

How do you top that, right? What’s beyond the land of infinite unicorns?

Nothing.

(Yeah, we’re getting deep now.)

Isn’t that true, though? After all the fuss and muster, beyond the smoothing out and getting things done, and after the fun and freedom…then what?

One word: chillin’.

Just chillin’.

Simplicity = Happiness

This isn’t really a process of climbing a mountain or pyramid of simplicity up to some pinnacle just so me and my oxygen-tank-carrying sherpa can have a peaceful lunch up at the top.

And it’s not about finding a meadow where I get to hang out with unicorns all the time.

It’s not even about getting things done.

Wait—yes it is about getting things done. (My inner nihilist was getting carried away.) My point is that just because these are laid out in an order, doesn’t mean that they’re going to happen in some long sequential arc, with an end point of me just blissing out in a sensory deprivation tank on my private island somewhere.

It means that on my private island, when I’m getting things done, it will be with ease and organization, and guided by freedom. And because of that, peace of mind will never be far away.

In the meantime, my pursuit of simplicity, and my now years-long allegiance to that pursuit, provides me with little samplings of the treasures that await me. A little peace of mind here, a little freedom there, and a slowly increasing sense of organization.

And every now and then, I see a unicorn. So I know they’re out there.

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title).

—

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.

The bottom line may just be that I’m a “country boy”, as Mr. Denver used to say. Or maybe I’m just so hooked on simplification in my environs that I have shields up against many of the accoutrements of modern life that city folk take for granted (or at least grin and bear). Luckily, I’m independent enough in my work that if the highways bug me, I can just go where they aren’t. Which is exactly what I did. (I know where to find them if I really need them.)

For the dogs, living in the country—specifically, the high desert outside Los Angeles—mostly means that they don’t have to be on a leash when we go for our walks. (Which is pretty huge.) And there are a lot fewer noises to cringe about. Though there is a lot more dog barking…but I don’t think they really see that as a problem.

For me…I’m “off-leash” no matter where I am, both literally and figuratively. So for me the differences start with the quiet and go from there. Open space, visible sky, a place where other living things outnumber people (and where plants outnumber buildings). A big yard. A place where people wave to you when you drive by or walk down the street.

You know—a simple life.

I suppose you could definitely call that a “country boy” mentality. And if you’ve got to put me in one camp or the other, then hand me my overalls and tune up the banjo, Pappy…because when push came to shove, I opted out of city life and instead moved me and the pets right back out to the edge of civilization. (See the picture above if you don’t believe me.)

It’s not that I have a problem with cities per se. I just haven’t found one where my dogs and I can walk out the front door and proceed to wander around freely for hours in the country, with not many people around and minimal noise.

You find me a city like that, and I’d be happy to live there.

At least until it got crowded.

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Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title).

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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!

The little whispering voice does have some good points, I can’t deny that. But what can I say? In my rental search, the place that ended up being perfect in many ways just happened to have 4 bedrooms…and 2 baths, a kitchen, a living room, the aforementioned cavernous garage, a patio…

You get the idea. I have a lot of space. After 8 years of trimming down from a full household worth of stuff to just a one-room cabin full, and then paring that down to a single truckload for my cross-state relocation, I now have room upon room upon room to fill with who-knows-what. And that’s most likely exactly what I’m going to do.

I can hear you moaning from here. You’re thinking, “You don’t need to fill the rooms, Lance! Bla bla bla yada yada bla bla!”

I may have tuned you out a little at the end there, because honestly, I’ve been sitting in this house for almost three weeks now, and I don’t believe there’s anyone out there who would be able to let all these rooms just sit completely empty. It’s downright weird.

Plus, since I have the big house, I really can have stay-over family members and guests and stuff, which hasn’t really been an option for the past decade or so. But those folks aren’t going to sleep on the floor in their choice of weird barren bedroom. Nor are they going to be able to share the one chair in the house.

So it’s accumulation time. So be it. I’ll have couches, and chairs, and beds, and a hobby room, and all that good stuff. I wouldn’t even rule out a dining room table. And a night table, a coffee table, end tables…I’ll run the whole table gamut!

But I don’t think we need to worry too much. I’m not likely to forget the lessons I’ve learned in my journey condensing my “necessaries” down to the minimum. I really did get it down pretty close to a pickup-truck-full.

I know what I need now, and it’s not much. The possessions that I feel real attachment to could all fit easily into any of the smallest rooms in this big house. And I’ve already got my “Everything for Free” yard sale penciled in for 6 months from now if I’m not feeling the whole “household” vibe when my lease runs out. I’ll say goodbye to all that new stuff as quickly as I said hello.

If I’ve learned nothing else during this whole long journey, I’ve learned that there is much to be gained from not owning things, and there is great joy to be had in letting go of the stuff you’ve accumulated.

So I guess that’s the actual real good news: I’ve stumbled upon a terrific opportunity to give away almost everything I own—again.

Here’s hoping it’s as fun and rewarding as it was the first time!

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title).

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We’ve all seen this scene:

There is a jungle path, down which strolls a naïve protagonist—probably wearing a pith helmet or safari hat, and definitely wearing khaki.

Said protagonist is ever-busy gazing at the jungle wonders, checking his trail map, and being on alert for poisonous snakes and head-sized mosquitoes. As such, it’s a coin toss whether our would-be hero will be looking at the ground with enough attention to see what is obvious to all of us: there’s a spot in the trail coming up that doesn’t look right.

Too many branches with too many leaves are gathered in one area just a few steps ahead, and from what we all know of jungle trails, that can only mean one thing. Those branches are just providing rough cover for a pit-style trap—obvious to those paying full attention to where they’re going…but for those who aren’t…a one-way ticket to being a featured buffet item at a cannibal Quinceañera.

We can all see the trap, easily. We’re not caught up in the wonders of the jungle, and the trap is really pretty obvious if you just take a second to look at it. You can see the pit’s inescapable darkness right through the branches there. Honestly, you’d have to be either oblivious or really really distracted to miss something like that.

But then again, the jungle savages wouldn’t keep making those traps if there weren’t people who fell for them. (And into them.)

All of which has me wondering: should I rent a storage unit again?

I’m kidding, of course.

I already rented it.

Let me explain. (I’ll raise my voice so you can hear me from down here.)

OK, I guess I don’t have a good explanation. But I do have an escape plan.

Well, I’m working on a plan. I have an outline. A draft outline. Not written down, but…

Did I mention the first month is only one dollar? Well, twenty-one with the application fee, but still…

Is it cold up there? It’s kind of cold down here. And dark. But I’m pretty sure I can find a way out in time.

Not in time for the next month’s bill, no…but maybe before the one after that. Well, probably not, but almost definitely before the next one.

So I’ll probably only have to pay about 200 bucks to store all that stuff that I’m going to give away or throw out.

Wait a minute—that didn’t sound right. Let me try that again:

I’ll probably only have to pay about 200 bucks to store all that stuff I’ve been carrying around for the past decade or two.

That can’t be it. The cold and the dark down here might be getting to me. I can get it…hang on:

I’ll probably only have to pay about 200 bucks to store all that stuff I don’t really want anymore.

Hmmm…I’m starting to think I may have made a misstep somewhere along the way. Because none of those make much sense at all.

I feel like just a few minutes ago, our protagonist was innocently walking down a jungle path or something. (I’m not totally sure; I was kind of in a rush.) Now suddenly this is all about me, and I’m 21 bucks poorer, and in some cold, dark place, where it feels like a million things have come to die.

I’m carrying something down a concrete hallway, begrudgingly. I look down to see that it’s the big banker’s box of papers and effects from a one-time ground-breaking event I helped put on…12 years ago. I find myself struck by a sense of déjà vu, and then realize that it’s actually just memory. I carried this same box down this same hallway about 4 years ago, and slid it into an identical concrete-and-steel box about 80 feet away from here.

Next up, my crates of books—also all repeat visitors to the cold hallway. Next—two big boxes of clothes that I’m going to give away (but I didn’t get around to it before I left). Next—a bunch of other crap I’m going to give away. Next—a bunch of other crap I already stored and unstored 4 years ago. Next—a huge box of cassette tapes, which I’m totally going to sort through and digitize one of these days…

Hey, did somebody say something about a trap a little bit ago? I’ve been kinda jumbled and distracted, so maybe I’m wrong, but I could have sworn I heard something about a trap. And a buffet. Is there a buffet coming up?

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here (blog-style) and here (listed by title).

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Photo credit:

Aden Pattern Pith Helmet by Billy1847

— Long Version —

Does the universe actually send us signs?

I really don’t know. I’m a believer in science, and as far as I know, scientists haven’t discovered the universe actually communicating with individuals (aside from the occasional strike of lightning to the head, and that piece of toast that had Jay Leno’s face burnt into it).

So no, we haven’t found tangible evidence of the universe sending humans messages—yet. But when it comes to unexplained phenomena, I like to keep in mind that it was several thousand years of human civilization before we knew about radio waves and x-rays—two invisible forces in the universe that fly through the air and convey amazing things to humans.

Kind of like trees—which also on occasion fly through the air and do amazing things to humans. Like, if the human is lucky, giving his life a nice healthy shaking-up.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you must not have been reading my column for the past two months. In which case, may the universe fling a tree at you! But in a good way, of course.

Because as it turns out, that does happen: sometimes the universe flings a tree at you, in a good way.

I didn’t think it was so great when it happened to me in February, and I had to spend all of March in my “universe-messaged” house searching for a new place, which I moved into in April. But now that I have to leave that new place also and will be moving out this May and into another new place in June, I’m feeling pretty good about the whole situation.

That’s what’s known as the double shake-up—a natural phenomenon so complex and mysterious that some scientists believe it might only exist as temporary fictional creation for the purposes of me telling this story. (But let’s not forget, those bozos missed out on radio for 6,000 years.)

Since the scientists are too scared to touch it, I’ll be the one to explain how the double shake-up works. You should be fine as long as you stay behind that protective shield over there.

The double shake-up starts with an entrenched subject—a person who has gotten used to where they are, who has worked to establish a level of comfort and familiarity such that, should it be taken away, they would be pretty damn bummed and discombobulated. (Sorry for all the scientific jargon; try to bear with me.)

Then the universe drops a tree or something on him. Not hard enough to kill – just hard enough to do lots of damage and put a conclusive end to all that comfort, familiarity, and entrenchment.

This is the first shake-up.

The subject at this point becomes a big stinky whiner for a while. He or she may utter things like “Buuut I don’t wannnna leave!” or “I’ve spent so much time on this place!“ or “Waaaaaaa! Mommy!”

After the dust settles, the subject will most likely attempt to get back to the way things were—to reestablish the status quo. But the first shake-up has made that impossible. The status quo that was can not be recreated, and instead the subject must begin anew.

In 99% of cases, the subject will “begin anew” by trying to reenact or replicate as many aspects of his prior comfortable situation as possible. He may even begin to see the first shake-up as an opportunity to “upgrade” the old status quo by building some improvements into his new “status quo 2.0” situation. “It will be just like before – but better!” is a common utterance among subjects at this stage of the process.

During the rebuilding stage, the subject goes through an important transformation called “the demolecularization of stuff”, which in layman’s terms goes like this: he has to sort all his shit into boxes, and then lug it somewhere else and unpack it all again.

This fascinating process of breakdown and reunification can’t help but provoke a similar response within the subject himself, as he is forced to reevaluate all the material elements of his life, piece by piece.

As a result, when the subject begins again at a new place, all (or nearly all) of the physical and related emotional connectors that once held him in place have been disrupted.

New ties will begin forming right away however, and as mentioned before, most subjects will proceed immediately in trying to re-establish a version of the prior status quo—and to re-cement the familiar bonds and fixtures that help ground them in their new place.

That’s when it’s time for shake-up number two.

This is where things get interesting.

There is a period of time—around two weeks, though it varies—when the subject, whom we’ll call the “poor dude” at this point, is still trying to remolecularize all his boxes of crap, and un-disrupt his connectors and stuff. (I know, more science-talk, but bear with me, we’re almost through.)

What my colleagues and I have found, is that if the subjects finish that “re-assembly” process, then they do most often tend to go on to create a slightly-modified version of their prior status quo.

But if instead, the subject is hit with a second major shake-up during that time of loosened ties…like say, if the poor dude’s new rental home gets foreclosed on within days of him moving in…then all bets are off.

Actually, even in such a disassembled state, the subject will still instinctively seek to protect—and failing that, to recreate—the “status quo”. But due to shake-up #1, there simply is no status quo to reference or try to reproduce.

There’s no “normal” to replicate, because the old normal has been distilled down to its elements and poured into boxes—and the new normal is for all intents and purposes only “penciled in”. The previous whiny attachments to comfort and familiarity have long since been broken down, and while new attachments form quickly, they don’t have anywhere near the strength of the old established ties. As a result, the second shake-up is much more likely to produce a radical reshuffling of the subject’s life.

Since the full “double shake-up” only occurs in the wild, our clinical observations of this stage are limited. But based on anecdotal evidence, we know that some “poor dudes”—at least one that we know of, let’s put it that way—may experience the universe showing up at that very moment with a pretty fat buyout offer from the foreclosing bank, which wants to get all the pesky tenants out ASAP so it can do a scientific procedure called “The Old Flipperooni”.

Our studies have shown it’s highly probable that a dude placed in those circumstances might decide to do something fairly crazy and huge—not attempting to recreate the status quo, but instead taking a giant leap into something new, both physically and mentally. Like moving to Southern California, for example, to pursue the subject’s long-stated-but-little-pursued dream of becoming a screenwriter and filmmaker. (A leap he wasn’t quite ready for after the tree-based shake-up, though he did consider it. For example.)

Thus we see the full transformative power of the fabled “double shake-up”. It can be demonstrated in equation form as follows:

Shake-up #1    +    (Shake-up #2   +   Fat Bank Check)   =   Lance moving to L.A.!!!

— Short Version —

I’m moving to L.A.!!!

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here.

—

No one is a bigger supporter of myself than I am.

No one is a bigger saboteur of myself than I am.

Funny how those two statements almost sound the same if you say them fast.

Self-sabotage is a subject I’ve wanted to tackle in this column for a while now—but let’s face it, it’s kind of a downer of a topic. Who wants to read about someone (or even from someone) who drags himself down? What’s more, how can you take seriously self-improvement advice that’s coming from a guy who admits he systematically interferes with his own advancement?

That’s a very good question. And the answer, which eluded me until recently, is this: who ever said you should take me seriously?

I’m kidding—that’s not the answer I meant. (Though it has a point.)

The real answer to why my nearly life-long efforts at self-sabotage don’t completely undermine my credibility as a student of self-improvement is quite simple: I’m awesome.

Not kidding this time. I really am awesome, and my awesomeness—and my ability to acknowledge it, which is part of the awesomeness itself—is what has allowed me to make forward progress over the years. And I’m thankful that awesomeness-acknowledging part of me exists, because right next to it is this guy:

“Forward progress? What forward progress, Lance? You and I know better…and the facts speaks for themselves. You’re all talk, and bad habits, and big dreams that don’t amount to squat.”

Hard to believe, I know. But yes, there is a part of me that uses the word “squat” as a form of measurement. And, my awesomeness notwithstanding, that part of me is kind of a jerk. It seems to revel in my failures and setbacks, so much so that it has created all sorts of self-perpetuating ways for me to keep failing and being set back.

A goodly amount of these “Not-So-Simple Life” pages have been dedicated to exposing those very ways, whether it’s procrastination, intentional overwhelming, counter-productive multi-tasking, or fear of success…and the list could go on.

If you’ve read a handful or more of my columns, you’ve probably noticed yourself that no one’s more in my own way than I am. If I didn’t know that myself 31 columns ago, then I certainly should know it by now. I mean, I just said it, two sentences back. I can’t be that dense, right?

Luckily, the answer to that is “Right!” I am in fact not that dense. As you already know if you read about my list of resolutions from when I was 22, I’m actually surprisingly self-aware, especially when it comes to my faults. (Or at least I was when I was 22.)

Therein lies the delicate dance. Lance is self aware, but also oblivious. Lance pushes forward, and Lance pushes back. Lance is awesome, but Lance somehow manages to not get very much done. Lance refers to himself as “Lance” to illustrate a point, and Lance thinks he sounds like a jackass for doing so.

And on it goes—my biggest booster and my biggest detractor, my strongest supporter and my slyest saboteur. My two most well-developed muscles, competing daily for dominance in my thoughts and actions.

It’s funny—not “ha ha” funny, more like “What the &%@!?” funny—that I have known about this other self-destructive side of me for so long, and still have let it survive (or thrive, depending on who you ask).

I identified procrastination as a problem as early as middle school, some 25 years ago. Then when I was 22 I came up with a whole list of bad tendencies that needed squashing. More recently, I’ve been calling myself out on various flaws and foibles in this very column for over a year now. And still, the self-destructive jerkwad side of me rears its head every single day, and plays the same old tricks, which I somehow continue to fall for—sometimes consciously, sometimes not.

Then the strong and awesome side of me rallies the forces within, hopefully gaining some ground—and if I’m lucky, coming up with an inventive way to outwit the self-destructive jerkwad. (Who, to be honest, is pretty awesome in spite of himself. I don’t want to say I admire the guy, but you gotta give it up—he’s done a great job keeping me down. And I’m not an easy person to keep down.)

The battle between my supportive and destructive sides is a much closer match than I’d like it to be. I’m not worried that the destructive side is ultimately going to win—not usually, at least—but it would be nice if I could get the scales to tip a bit more decisively in favor of the booster side.

It’s just hard to outwit yourself, I guess. I mean, that dude is smart! It’s like he knows my every thought. Sometimes I’m not sure how to get ahead of him.

Wait—who said that? Was that booster side or destructive side? Who goes there?! Identify yourself!

Sorry…I get a little paranoid sometimes. But no worries—it’s just me. And if I can’t trust him, who can I trust?

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org. Archives of his column can be found here.

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Photo credit:
Frenemies by Bonnie Burton