I did this because I was moving and I was a slob and didn't want to carry all that useless junk up three flights of stairs, instead I declared myself a minimalist and confronted my irrational attachment to clothes and books and all sorts of miscellany that defied definition. I started to write about it because it worked. My big empty house looked clean, the few things I kept were organized. Instead of spending hours sifting through piles for a tool to fix another thing in another pile that I didn't even really need, I had all this free time. I was inspired and sought out other ways to change, keeping all this goodness to myself seemed... rude.
Next came a hundred or so posts about biking and clothing and grocery bags that really weren't that interesting, in the last few years I really wasn't a minimalist at all, my place was crowded with junk as I settled into old habits, got fat and lazy and started grabbing things out of the trash again. The walkways and piles reappeared and I became hypocritical. To my credit, I did stop proselytizing minimalism to people when I discovered I had lost my way - but here I am again! Reborn!
This time there was no move, only a steady slow build of loathing. The retail shopping experience is a particular source of unpleasantness but to post the simple fact that I don't like something without some kind of viable alternative was really just a waste of everyones time. Who the fuck cares what I think, I don't care what you think, I even turned off the comments and never check my email. I wouldn't want to read about how much you hate the TV show you just saw or how you bought an iMac and it was not the quality product you'd expected. Its a matter of courtesy.
There is a need for minimalism now, that is what changed. The "new poor" are not adjusting well to their new financial status and the youth don't learn shit in school about the simple economics of the home. People need to know how to reconstitute dried beans and make soup, they need to know that biking is cheaper than driving to the gym to ... ride a fake bike. That things you buy in the store can be FIXED when they break and you don't need to buy a new one. Green blogs are mostly bullshit, selling bamboo novelties and solar knapsacks (GOD, how I hate those things....) and its really just the same model with different suppliers. A cellphone that gets buried in the ground and a plant grows out it? I'm sorry but that is stupid.
This is me getting back on the stick.
Moral: Don't say it if you're not going to do it.
