Lifestyle Support

A few years ago, on a hot summer day outside a cafe in Los Angeles, California, I met Lynn Fang1 in person for the first time and, after a stream of increasingly existential questions and cautious probes into each others thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrials (a stream dotted with moments of awkward silence), we found ourselves coining the term, and discussing the concept of, lifestyle support, the idea that people should be so transparent in their lives (online and offline) that their lifestyle would be an incentive for others to support their work.

By being honest and open about how we live, we can give the people who gravitate towards us (or who work with us by matter of happenstance) the ability to make a conscious decision about whether or not they want to support our lifestyle by paying for our work and doing business with us.

I had mostly forgotten about this discussion with Lynn until a few weeks ago when my friend Ali Dark2 recommended that I read Breaking the Time Barrier3, a free ebook for anyone recognizing that selling your time--one hour for X dollars--eventually creates a barrier to earning more income.

I’m not a collection of hours,” Karen said. “I’m the accumulation of all my skills and talents. I’m wisdom and creativity. I’ve stopped seeing myself as a punch card. My clients don’t see me that way either. Yes, sometimes, I’ve had to change my client’s mind-set. But it starts with me, first, just as it starts with you. You have to forget selling time. The best thing you could do for yourself is to get the concept of time out of your head.”

[...]

a value-based approach to pricing your services is a powerful way to break through the time barrier.

The book shares an empowering perspective and I highly recommend it. It's a quick and fun read that uses storytelling to convey knowledge.

While I found myself nodding in agreement to most the book, there was something on page 27 that caught my attention and reminded me of the meeting with Lynn a few years earlier:

"Should a client be asked which lifestyle they want to support?”

“No.”

I believe the answer should be 'yes'. I believe that people should ask themselves what kinds of lifestyles they want to support. They should buy products and work with people who are in alignment with the values that lead to the lifestyles they agree with.

I don't believe in the lifestyles of "the rich and famous", the owning of multiple mansions, yachts, and private airplanes. I wouldn't want to work with people who follow those lifestyles or even seek them out. I wouldn't want to pay them money or buy products or services from them because doing so would be a vote for their lifestyle, a vote that says I agree to help support such a lifestyle (or the pursuit of such a lifestyle).

I realize, as I type this on my MacBook Air, that in today's world of monolithic corporations it's hard to know what lifestyles you may be supporting by buying certain products or services.

But corporations are nothing more than a big collection of people, so we can start there. If we start with the people first, then we have to start with ourselves.

Is the lifestyle of the people you do business with important? Absolutely.

Your act of doing business with someone else helps to support whatever lifestyle they lead. If they're not leading a lifestyle that you agree with--if your values and their values are not at least somewhat in alignment--then supporting their lifestyle will violate your own values by supporting opposing ones.

If someone else believes in the lifestyle you lead--if someone believes in the values that drive your lifestyle and the values that influence the choices you make both personally and professionally--then they will want to see more of those choices made in the world and that will be a big incentive for them to support you.

**

The more I think about this, the more I realize that lifestyle support goes way beyond business transactions. The emotional support you give others--spending time with them, meeting them for lunch, agreeing to attend parties, etc.--supports their lifestyle too. And perhaps that's why I'm so selective with my time and so careful about who I relate with.

The term "guilty by association" is usually used in the context of a criminal act, but when it comes to your lifestyle, you really are guilty by association. Your actions say a lot about your lifestyle and that in turn says a lot about what you believe and what you value, which in turn says a lot about you.

I met up with Lynn Fang after connecting with her online because I felt that we held a lot of the same values. I stayed with my friend Ali in Australia for a few weeks last year for the same reason.

The Internet opens the world up to us and lets us find people with similar values and similar belief systems, but we need to be transparent and open about who we really are for them to find us. Connecting with such people and openly sharing ideas and thoughts leads to discussions like the one I had with Lynn, which in turn leads to the development and sharing of more ideas and more discussions, thereby making the world a better place.

If you believe something--if you hold certain values close to your heart--then ask yourself if you're associating with and supporting people who hold similar beliefs. Ask yourself if you're leading a lifestyle that reflects what you truly believe.

Notes: How to engage in lifestyle design

Vic Phillips invited me to contribute to a post he was putting together called '20 Ways to Engage in DIY Health and Lifestyle Change – Advice from Digital Thinkers'. I'm including my contribution below, but please check out the full post for lots of other great advice.

If you desire lifestyle change, envision what your life would look like today if you were already living that change. Instead of working from the outside in — instead of thinking about how much your current lifestyle needs to change to get where you want to be — work from the inside out. What would the changed you do today? How would that person act, think, and behave?

Imagine your entire life instantly transformed, all your ambitions, goals, and dreams fully realized. What might you then consider important? How would that person look back at the you of today and what advice might you offer yourself? Now using that perspective, ask yourself what you can do today to step towards that lifestyle. You might discover that what previously felt like insurmountable challenges suddenly feels almost trivial.

Doing what feels undeniably true

"Where are you going next?"

"I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail. It's something I've wanted to do my whole life and I've decided that I will do it for my 30th birthday this year."

"When are you starting that? How long will it take you?"

"The trail is over two-thousand miles long, so it will probably take 4-5 months. I'm starting on the first day of spring this year, March 20th."

She put her hand on her stomach and gave me 'the eye', as only my sister knows how. "You're coming back in April for the birth of your niece, right?"

I hesitated in my response, not knowing how to express my desire to hike the AT without interruption (known as a "thru-hike") while also expressing that I loved my sister and respected whatever she considered important.

I mumbled something to blur my response. "Maybe. We'll see."

Over the next few days I thought a lot about my response. There was something about it that really bothered me and I couldn't figure out what it was.

I tried to listen carefully to what my heart was telling me. Should I go? Should I stay? Should I go and then come back for a week, letting go of the perfectionist in me that wants to complete a thru-hike?

I've always wanted to hike the AT without stopping, to complete a true thru-hike on my first attempt. (Out of the 3,000+ people who start the trail each year, only about 200-300 actually finish; it's a challenge I've dreamed of facing.)

Towards the end of 2011 I decided that 2012 would be the year I finally hiked the AT. I verbally mentioned the intention to several people, further cementing it into reality (I rarely talk verbally about doing things unless I'm serious about doing them).

I've been thinking about this adventure for nearly six months and every day now I look forward to being fully immersed in nature, waking up each day on the trail knowing that I will spend the rest of the day outside. 

I've even been going on daily walks in the local state forest for the past few weeks, spending several hours each day looking up at the trees and imagining myself hiking on the AT.

While I was letting these thoughts sit with me, I received an email from a friends' paid subscription letter.

In the letter, the author shared something that happened to her recently: While in India, she received an email from her dad telling her that grandma was ill and probably wouldn't be with them much longer; he wanted her to fly back to the United States to be with them.

She wrote, "What really got me was the fact that my first thought after reading the email was, should I go or should I stay?"

I immediately realized that's what had been bothering me so much: the fact that I wondered if I should stay or go when my sister asked me to be there for her.

What made her decision difficult was that she already made plans in India: Someone she cared about was going out of their way to meet her there and suddenly leaving would affect that relationship. She felt that India was the place she should be. 

But she had to decide: Should she leave India, the place where she truly felt she should be, or should she go back to the United States to be there for the emotional support of her family?

As I read my friends letter, I couldn't help but relate her situation to my own and I found myself jumping ahead and thinking, "She's definitely going to choose to go back to the United States."

To my surprise, I arrived at the end of the letter to discover that she decided to stay in India.

Was her decision the wrong decision? That's not for me to say or decide. What's important was that she made the decision that felt true to her being. As she put it, "in the end, the love I have for my grandma does not decrease just because I am not by her side".

Reading my friends decision to stay in India immediately helped me realize what I needed to do.

I was going to stay for my sister and delay the AT hike.

While I may have felt unclear about what to do initially, my subconscious knew exactly what my heart wanted. It knew it so well that it was projecting itself into my friends situation: If I was in India and my sister asked me to be there for her, I would've come back. 

(Again, this doesn't mean my friends decision to stay was wrong: her life is not my life and she did what she felt was true and right for her in her life; I fully support that. The right thing to do is always that which feels undeniably true to you.)

I intended to start hiking in March because the trail, which starts in Georgia and ends in Maine, has sections that are closed during the winter. (It takes nearly six months to hike the entire trail, so you must start hiking in the early spring if you want to finish before winter.)

However, since my niece is due to be born towards the end of April, I've decided to start hiking the AT around the beginning of May. If that means I don't complete a thru-hike, or even if that means I decide to attempt the hike another year, that's fine.

This is something that's important to my sister and I care about what's important to her, even if I may not fully understand it. She never asks me for anything and what feels true and right to me is being there for her because she asked me to be.

I've built my lifestyle around the concept of freedom and I've created a life that allows for following my heart. But what's the point of all that freedom if I'm jailed by my own wants and desires, too selfish to share the fruits of my own freedom with those I love? 

The Appalachian Trail will always be there but my niece is only born once.

***

This series of events led me to make several other decisions, including something that affects the AT hike altogether. It also affects the USA road trip that I had planned for the two months prior to starting the AT. I will share both of those decisions in my next journal entry.

Notes: How do you show yourself kindness?

Sui Solitaire recently released Kindness Sprouts, a collaborative ebook of kindness and self-care. (She's generously giving all proceeds directly to charity.)

Sui invited me to contribute to the project and asked me to answer the following question, How do you show yourself kindness? This was my response:

I show myself kindness by having the courage to eliminate things from my life that are causing me distress and dissatisfaction. I spent many years feeling caged by my job and caged by my lifestyle. I pushed off doing what I knew needed to be done and sacrificed my own happiness, and for what? For the satisfaction and comfort of everyone else? To conform to what others thought was the best thing for me?

I began showing myself kindness when I started listening to and caring about what my heart and soul were telling me. I began showing myself kindness when I found the courage to be brave and challenge what others expected of me.

When I gained the confidence to believe in my own dreams and stand up to the expectations of others, I discovered that I also needed to learn how to stand up to my own self-imposed expectations. I love technology and I spend many hours of the day working at the computer. When I find myself getting agitated with how much time I've spent in front of the screen, I don't let myself justify the discomfort by saying “that's just what I do.” Instead of being unkind to myself, I walk outside, put my hand on the trunk of a big tree, look up at its outstretched arms, and allow myself to reconnect with mother nature; I allow myself to really feel one with the universe. I'm immediately reminded that being kind to myself is being kind to the world.

Interestingly, ever since writing this for Sui's project I've been going out of my way each morning to spend time in the forest. I drive about twenty minutes to the local state forest and just walk, usually for at least an hour, with my phone turned off and my mind open. My day feels more complete when I start it walking in the forest.

Notes: Living in the Land of Enough

Courtney Carver sent me a complimentary copy of her latest ebook, Living in the Land of Enough. It contains a wealth of knowledge and ideas for living more consciously and rewiring how we live in a world of plenty. Here's a sample:

Seven Ways to Live in the Land of Enough

1. Save Your Money. There is no need for credit cards or therapeutic shopping in the land of enough. There are also no overdraft fees or ATM charges. Just put your cards away for 10 days. Then, keep a list of purchases you would have made if you were using your credit card, or if you were shopping for sport, and take note of the money that you didn't spend.

2. Take Your Time. In the land of enough, you have time to breathe. Stop trying to squeeze so much in. If you are always running late, falling behind, or trying to catch up, try slowing down. Cancel a few unnecessary appointments and don't schedule any new ones if you can help it. Then, make a little time everyday for solitude.

3. Disconnect. Set a specific time to disconnect each day. In the land of enough, there is less need to be plugged in. If you can, commit to not using a computer after dinner or before lunch time. Be mindful of how much time you spend online and are virtually available. Protect your time and your mind.

4. Eat Real Food. Only eat food that you prepare. Now is the perfect time to eat fresh, seasonal. Do not eat anything from a box, restaurant or drive-thru. While you may choose to eat less when eliminating processed foods, you may find that you naturally eat just enough.

5. Make Space. Clear out some space in your home. You don't need to take on big purging projects during this time to make space. Simplify one room (or even just the corner of one room) and keep it as clean and clutter free as possible. Even if the rest of your house is cluttered, this area can be a great reminder of how you might feel living with less.

6. Entertain Yourself. Unplug your TV and plan to enjoy your friends, family, the great outdoors, or a book you have been meaning to read. Do not spend time and money on expensive shows, travel or recreational activities. While the land of plenty calls you to spend more money for entertainment, you already have enough right where you are.

7. Say Thank You. As you go through these steps, you will find enough time and space to be grateful. Through prayer, thank you cards, or a kind gesture, share your gratitude every day.

I love how she explains there's no risk involved in exploring living with enough:

There is no risk involved by visiting the land of enough. Bring your family with you and talk about what you like and don’t like about the changes you’ve made. Based on these discussions, you can decide what changes become a permanent part of your life. If you don’t enjoy living without TV, plug it back in. If saving money makes you miserable, go on a spending spree at the mall after your experiment.

Notes: Owning Yourself and Stripping Away False Identity

In an article featured in Your Money, Your Life, Adam King writes about how after failing several times to make a living online, he discovered his real problem: he wasn't owning anything of himself.

The concept he shares towards the end, that of uncovering layers of false identity through testing our assumptions, ideas, and beliefs, is incredibly powerful and it's something I intend to actively practice.

I met a successful entrepreneur for brunch in Chicago and she proceeded to fillet the problem wide open for me. "You're not owning anything of yourself," she said. "Own your words, own your vision, own your life."

It didn't take long after that talk for me to uncover the root of all the exhaustion, overwork, stress, and physical breakdown over the past ten years. Simply put, I was pursuing pre-conceived visions of an ideal lifestyle.

Each of my offline businesses was aimed at producing particular experiences tied to a lifestyle vision that I had adopted from other people or from the expectation of the crowd associated with that type of business. The same thing happened when I moved things online. I was pursuing what I was told was the ideal internet lifestyle but, again, it was someone else's ideal rather than my own.

Chasing lifestyles is exhausting because it drains your knowledge, abilities, emotions, and time into bottomless pits. There's no way to achieve the ideal lifestyle of someone else without massive sacrifice of your own truth and happiness.

It's taken time to remove the layers of what I thought I was supposed to pursue so that I can tap into the raw and powerful realizations of what I've actually wanted all along.

One of those layers is identity. In the past, everything I pursued in business and in life was all tied to what is assumed I should obtain due to that identity. If I eliminate the idea of being a writer, artist, designer, or whatever I might call myself, and just focus on mastering that craft, then I grant myself the freedom to achieve the lifestyle I desire outside of the realms of identity and in spite of the social expectations that come from that particular genre or crowd.

It's difficult, being honest with myself about my desired lifestyle. Guilt was a huge factor in holding myself hostage to the work and life I thought I was supposed to have. But the reality was, adhering to that guilt was keeping me from bigger and better things.

In reconstructing my own vision for my ideal lifestyle, I've been learning about the path of people like Derek Sivers, Richard Branson, and even Abraham Lincoln. Doing this has revealed their paths have piles and piles of failed businesses, elections, pursuits, ideas, and dreams behind them.

But in the end, it's those failures that were necessary for success. Each one was another layer of false identity being stripped away to reveal their core truth.

And that's really the key to stopping the pursuit of other people's lifestyles. Be willing to test each idea and inspiration as far as it needs to go in order to learn what you need to learn. Then repeat, often and always. This will quickly peel away the superficial that's hiding the truth about where you want to go and what you want to do.

Notes: Running a Lifestyle Business

Thom Chambers' latest magazine, How to Run a Lifestyle Business, is a goldmine of motivational and thought-provoking ideas from many different leaders. I've highlighted my favorite parts below:

As Simon Sinek explains, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. It's not the new features or the best-in-class that gets us, it's the story we tell ourselves when we buy or use a product or service. Sinek uses the launch of the iPod by way of example; while other mp3 players were there sooner and cheaper, they were focused on 'what' the product was: a 5GB mp3 player. Apple, meanwhile, sold the 'why': 1,000 songs in your pocket.

'What' is all about reason, about rationale. It's the classic nice-guy-finishes-last syndrome: he can display to the girl all the logical reasons that she should date him, from his good job to his nice house, but nobody ever fell in love based on a list of features and benefits. Rather than coming from this place of practicality, 'why' connects to emotion.

Starting with why means saying, "I believe this", then creating products and services that make that belief a reality. Those products and services are the 'what' of your business. They're the physical manifestations of your beliefs, nothing more.

When you start with why, suddenly everything changes. It's no longer about trying to pack more features into your product or to offer your services at a lower price than your competition. It's about stating your beliefs loudly and proudly, then acting on them. Do this well enough for long enough, and people who believe the same things will align themselves with you and your business by becoming customers and fans.

Simon's TED talk, How great leaders inspire action, is a must-watch.

Professionals, as Steven Pressfield notes in The War of Art, are those who turn up every day, no matter what. They do the work, relentlessly, knowing that each day is a battle against the Resistance that tries to get you to procrastinate, avoid the hard work, and settle for less than you desire.

When things gets tough, it's easy to look for excuses not to work. Isn't this meant to be my lifestyle business, my utopia? Surely it should always be fun?

As Pressfield explains, "the more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it". Building a successful lifestyle business is one of the biggest evolutions you can undertake, so you can be damn sure that you'll encounter plenty of Resistance along the way. Fight it. Do the work.

Or as Julien Smith would say, don't flinch.

In the following section, Thom is talking about Seth Godin's concept of finding just ten people to share your idea/message/product with and how those ten people will be enough to determine if what you have will succeed.

Perhaps the best way to look at it is this: you're replacing promotion with creation. Leo Babauta has written about this on Google+, calling for a less in-your-face approach to selling work. Make it, make it available, and let the fans decide if it's worth spreading. Then get on with creating what's next.

The idea of 'first, ten' means that, in Seth's words, "the idea of a 'launch' and press releases and the big unveiling is nuts. Instead, plan on the gradual build that turns into a tidal wave". He also acknowledges that this might mean your growth ends up being "not as fast as you want". But if you're in this for the long run rather than just the big show that tries to make-it-big-quickly, then you'll certainly grow fast enough to succeed.

What I got out of this is the need for focus. I seem to have a hard time focusing on something long enough to turn it "into a tidal wave". But that just tells me I need to decide what's worth focusing on and then make a commitment to seeing it through.

It's about having the attitude of an artisan instead of an amateur, as Thom explains in the next bit.

When it doesn't require a huge financial or time investment to get started, it's easy to be less committed to a project - "this website only cost me a few bucks, so it's not the end of the world if it goes wrong. I'll give it a shot and see how things turn out".

This is where your attitude comes into play. You can have this attitude, the attitude of the amateur - or you can have the attitude of the artisan.

The artisan doesn't have much money, but is still relentless about quality. The artisan sees her small size as a phase, a stepping stone towards success, and acts accordingly. Even when she's starting out, she's conducting herself as she would if this were a fully-grown business.

You're always told to dress for the job you want, not the one you have. In the same way, you need to write and create for the business you want one day, rather than the business you have today.

When you hear about a startup that sold for a hundred million after six months, remember: you're not playing that game. When you have the chance to spam your list to make a few affiliate sales from someone else's new product, remember: you're not playing that game.

Which leads us to a simple question: what game are you playing? The answer is found in one of the great overlooked conflicts in every lifestyle business: the conflict between the artisan and the accountant. The artisan creates work that brings satisfaction and pleasure, with no concern for money. The accountant creates work that brings money, with no concern for satisfaction or pleasure.

In most traditional businesses, to a greater or lesser extent, the accountant is king. Money matters most. When you choose to start a lifestyle business, though, you embrace your inner artisan. You see that money isn't everything, that lifestyle, happiness, and satisfaction are just as important.

For some, starting a lifestyle business is the start and end of their inner artisan. They focus entirely on building their business in a way that best pleases the market, or brings the owner the easiest life. The extreme of this are niche site owners, who find profitable markets and run affiliate or AdSense campaigns. They 'set it and forget it'.

For others, the artisan takes over and they focus on doing work they love without worrying about the market. The extreme of this is the blogger who gives everything away without any business model in place, hoping to make money somehow, someday.

The artisan refuses to compromise; the accountant will do anything for the sale. The artisan wants a headline that reflects the mood of the work; the accountant wants a headline that goes viral.

Both are valid in their own way; it's up to you to choose the point at which you're happiest between the extremes of pure integrity and pure income.

Reaching Out to Mother Nature

Baby Bananas in Moodabidri, Karnataka, India

Last week my nephew celebrated his first birthday and over the weekend I attended two birthday parties for him. I watched as he opened numerous presents and found himself surrounded with more toys than he could possibly know what to do with.

He played with each toy for a few moments until he seemed to become so overwhelmed by everything around him that he reached up for his mother (my sister) with open arms. The abundance was too much. He just wanted simplicity.

It was easier to return to the familiar comfort of his mothers' arms than it was to indulge in the excess of toys surrounding him.

I realized that like my nephew being surrounded with toys, we often surround ourselves with more than we know what to do with and, as a result, we become physically and psychologically overloaded.

Stress, feelings of isolation, boredom, a missing sense of purpose and direction, confusion, self-doubt, a lack of enthusiasm -- all of these are evidence of living with more than we can handle. Continue reading

Taking Initiative and Instigating Change

Flower amongst chaos on a wall in Hue, Vietnam

After reading my last blog post, Pemala, a Nepali friend and a regular reader, left the following note on my Facebook Wall:

Reading "The Revolution Starts Here" was very insightful. It gave me the moral support that is lacking in our community.

I have had enough with the Nepali community leaders in Boston who were fighting among each other for position. I took a stand and voiced my opinion in front of everybody. I thought, I could go home and talk about it or I could take a stand and let everybody in the community know what was happening.

I am planning to gather [the] younger generation for suggestions to improve the organization and have more youth involvement. And, I am going to propose that they help organizations like Nepal FREED who is doing something worthwhile for Nepal.

It was incredible to see how writing a blog post could help someone feel motivated to take action and possibly translate into things that would help the children I visited in a remote part of the world several months earlier.

Pemala's message caused me to really dig deep and consider the far reaching effects of our actions. It made me analyze the reasons for my own inaction and gave me the missing piece to the puzzle of why I've been feeling stagnation in my life since returning from my trip overseas.

Her message allowed me to see the role initiative plays in instigating change. Continue reading

Possessions: The Closing of a Chapter

A chapter of my life is coming to a close. It's been a chapter of personal discovery and new awareness, of material possessions and excessiveness; it's been a chapter of alternate paths and of decision making, of introspection and stepping out of comfort zones.

In the past decade, I've gone through living in over a dozen different places, including tiny attics, basements, offices, studios, and entire floors of houses. I've spent outrageous money for rent ($950/mo for a 450sqft studio), utilities ($500 heat bills), and other bills (cable, broadband, etc), all in the name of independence.

I've owned lots of stuff. For the first seven years of having a drivers license, I had a different car each year. For six years I was a landlord with three multi-family houses. I took care of all the property maintenance myself which meant owning lots of different tools. I had several TVs, various computers, gym equipment, a kayak, mountain bike, and the list goes on. To make things worse, the plentiful storage space provided by the properties easily masked the volume of "stuff" I owned. I feel as though I've had nearly everything material that I could have wanted. Oh, and I slaved away to afford the stuff, sometimes working 60 - 80 hours a week, sometimes working three jobs.

But why? The lifestyle I've always wanted to live can best be described as that of a nomad; someone who travels from place to place with no permanent residence (or at least can travel). Such a person wouldn't own very much. They wouldn't own a house, a car, a desktop computer, or a TV. They would only own what they can carry with them. Living such a lifestyle would allow me to freely move around and spend more time exploring and learning things of interest. Less time would be spent trying to pay expenses and care for material possessions (storage, maintenance, etc.).

I've always wondered what the purpose of life was and the reason for my existence. If you asked my dad, he would tell you that I was asking those questions when I was five years old. While my dad always seemed to have answers to my questions, they never satisfied me (which my dad agrees is a good thing). I believe we each need to find our own purpose and blaze our own trail through life. No one can give us a map or an instruction manual (and if they try, beware!).

Earlier this year I came to the conclusion that finding my purpose would be much easier if I had less material stuff cluttering and clouding my world. At the very least, having less stuff would give me more freedom and less to worry about (a feeling I got a taste of when my three houses were foreclosed on and I no longer had to worry about maintaining them).

So I've decided to change my lifestyle and transition to a more nomadic one. I've begun selling or giving away all my remaining possessions, a process that will continue for the next few months. I've found a cheap room to rent that's close to work and I'm living with roommates for the first time in my life, something my highly individualistic personality has always been opposed to. My end-of-the-year goal is to be living with only the stuff I can carry on my back. Even my pickup truck will eventually go (that will be the last page in this closing chapter).

The direction I'm headed in the next chapter is almost exactly where I envisioned myself being in ten years nearly a decade ago (perhaps even longer). But none of it was planned. Everything just sort of fell into place, the same way the tires on your car propel you forward without you fully understanding exactly how pressure from your foot translates into moving several tons of metal. It's a strange feeling; to know you always had an idea of where you wanted to be and somehow, through all the possible things that could have happened, you're ending up there.

There were so many decisions I made that ended up not working out for one reason or another (investments, relationships, business plans, etc.), and those unexpectedly resulted in my life being pushed closer and closer to the path I'm now on. Even though I never knew how it would happen, I also never lost sight of the direction I wanted my life to go. Now I can clearly see myself headed there. 🙂

The Pursuit of Knowledge

I started writing this as a comment in reply to Adam Bossy's post The Paradox of Self-Education. The comment became so long that I decided to turn it into a post here on my blog.

I grew up wanting to "be everything", from astronomer, to musician, to entomologist, to geneticist, to Navy SEAL, to writer, to geologist, to computer scientist. Hell, even meteorology (the study of weather, i.e., what the weather man does) fascinated me! I was home schooled through high school and never spent a single day in public or private school. (I actually ended up teaching myself through high school because my parents were busy teaching my younger brother and sister.) This gave me great freedom to study anything that happened to interest me. Over the course of a year, I probably switched between being totally engrossed in a dozen different fields. But in my teens, I realized that "being everything" wasn't a career path and just knowing a little bit about many different fields wasn't going to pay the bills. So I picked the most developed of my skills and went into IT.

Now at 26 and no college degree, I'm working for a software start-up doing a whole variety of things (programming, sysadmin, tech support, editor, you name it) and I run my own small but successful web hosting company. My interest in many other fields has not changed or decreased in any way. The only thing that has changed is my ability to spend ANY amount of time exploring them.

While pondering many of the same points as Adam does in his post, I came to the conclusion that it's our bills and our standards of living that are holding us down. By living paycheck to paycheck we make it impossible to take six months or a year off from work to explore some new thing that has peaked our interest. Socially, we're expected to follow the same routine advancement in our current field from one position to another, making a bigger paycheck and being able to raise our standard of living that much higher (thereby putting us back to where we started and resulting in yet another desire for a raise and advancement).

I went from spending upwards of $2,500 a month down to $800 a month by making lifestyle adjustments. "Do I need cable TV?" No, I have the Internet. "Do I need this two-bedroom, 1,500 sqft apartment?" No, I'm a single guy and the rent is a huge part of my paycheck -- 400 sqft will do. "Do I need to drive into work?" No, I can take public transportation. "Do I need this $5 coffee every day?" No, a $.50 green tea will suffice and it will be healthier.

My goal now is to continue living frugally so I can set aside a big enough bucket of money to get me through one year without work. Then, when the time is right, I'll spend a year learning something of interest, possibly making small amounts of money on the side. When needed, I'll start working and hopefully keep repeating this process. If something I do makes me tons of money, great. If not... well it's not about the money.

The pursuit of knowledge is to me more important than all the money in the world. Sure, money would make that pursuit easier, but life isn't easy. This is where I feel society gets it wrong. We put money and status first and education and knowledge second, using the latter to obtain the former. Imagine a society where the pursuit of knowledge defined our standards of living. (Oh no, what would happen to all the ads?!)

If we're willing to sacrifice our high-strung lifestyle for the ability to spend time learning and increasing knowledge, then we can accomplish amazing things, both individually and as a society. A world pursuing money and status has all the reason to fight amongst themselves and start wars, but a world pursuing knowledge and advancement has all the reason to maintain peace.

My Naked Body and Money

We all need it. Some of us need more than others because we refuse to live a lifestyle less than what we've already become accustomed to -- usually a lifestyle we were born into. What does it take to change your lifestyle to one that requires less? You'd think it would be rather simple, right? It should be simple -- how many different "things" do you actually use on a daily basis? Take a minute to think about it and add them up in your head: everything you use during an average day.

OK, now think about everything you own; down to the pen on your desk, toothbrush in your bathroom, even the clothes you're wearing, stuff in your closet and that shoe box under your table. Imagine your body stripped naked and piled next to you is all the stuff that belongs to you; clothes, electronics, cars, houses, tools, food, everything.

I don't know about you, but wow, that’s a pretty big pile next to me! Holy crap. How much of that stuff do I really use? I mean, if I were to actually use each thing for 1 minute, it would probably take me a couple of weeks, if not months, to use them all! There are several things, namely services, I couldn't even include in that pile: my cable TV service, Internet service, propane gas, auto gas, cell phone service, email and web hosting services -- the list goes on! If I were to take all of the physical infrastructure required for my services to exist and add them to that pile, the size of the pile would grow exponentially!

So I think I've made my point: there's a lot of stuff we own, and clutter our life with, that we don't actually need. OK, so that's not going to change overnight. I justify a lot of what I own by telling myself it would be stupid to sell it all at a loss, when the smarter choice would be to reduce what's unnecessary and maintain the rest. My three investment properties are a good example. As much of a struggle as it is to keep them, I know that in the long run they will solidify my financial future. Selling them now would cause me to loose money and I'd gain nothing in the long run (besides maybe some peace of mind, but that's a whole other post in and of itself).

My recent (or rather continuing) financial troubles have made me rethink a lot about what I own and what I need to live. I have observed how habits are what cause much of the unnecessary spending (Starbucks) and discovered that breaking those habits can be incredibly difficult. Instead of breaking them, simply reducing their frequency seems to be the best solution. I feel that my spending habits have reached a turning point, a roller coaster resting at the crest of a track, inching towards the long drop into the trough.

When I'm in a tight spot and I don't have enough money to pay bills, I'm constantly thinking about what I can do make more money. I've been brainstorming for the past few months about what could be done in my spare time to bring in extra cash. I ask myself, what makes a successful person and what have they done to become successful? I know for a fact that hard work makes people successful. But in this world of changing technologies and "work" that doesn't require any physical labor, there is something to be said about those who simply outsmart the masses -- who use their brains and figure out how to make money by using the tools technology has created; namely the Internet.

A friend of mine, who is several years younger than I, has come up with a business model that works very well. He's making 2x - 3x as much money as I, working only a few hours a week. Compare that to my 75+ hour work weeks and you'll probably be dying to know what he's doing. Without going too much into detail, I can say that his business model works on a simple principle: bridging the technological generation gap between those who grew up without the Internet and those who use it for almost every aspect of their lives. There's a generation of people whose only source of news comes from the daily newspaper. And then there's the generation who uses the Internet on a daily basis and has possibly never bought a newspaper. The latter being a generation whose lives move at the speed of light, with information in many different forms, pouring in from every direction.

At the end of the day, I don't take any money with me to bed. I don't go to sleep with my car, computer, food, auto gas, or for that matter my house. I sleep in my house, but might I might as well be sleeping in a cardboard box. When I wake up, I wake up with nothing but the skin on my bones. I need a safe shelter to sleep in, yes, but even shelter is a lifestyle item we've grown accustomed to having. I know many people who could not live in a basement -- I do, and I have no problem with it. For the past 6 years I have lived in either a basement or an attic, mainly because I don't see the point in wasting money on a full size apartment when I can save money in something smaller (living at my parents house would simply be taking advantage of those to whom I already owe my very existence, so that's out of the question).

When I was sitting in the 2 bedroom apartment of one of my rental units, I felt for a moment a sense of luxury. There was nothing luxurious about the place (luxurious, that is, to the average person living in the USA), but I felt as if that small 2 bedroom apartment was so beautiful, with all the light coming through the full size windows, high ceilings that I wasn't able to reach up and touch, and a full size living room with separate, closed off bedrooms. I then realized it felt so luxurious to me because I've been living a lifestyle which doesn't have those luxuries. Instead, I have learned to live with the open style basement or attic apartments, with low ceilings and few windows. I finally understood how grateful the people who actually have to live in cardboard boxes feel about simply having a solid roof above their heads.

The more I understand the driving force behind money, the more disgusted I become with myself and all that is wasted. If a human life is the standard with which we measure the value of material things, where does that leave the person who consumes the equivalent of 100 humans? Does that make the person morally obligated to support the very existence of that number of people? And if he doesn't directly support them does that mean he is committing, on a daily basis, one of the worst crimes known to man -- murder?