failure

Since I posted my last entry about cleaning out and getting rid of the easy stuff, I feel like my life has—both literally and metaphorically—gotten messier.

Due to totally-foreseen-but-not-always-preventable circumstances, I have been having trouble getting up and going to class. It hasn't (for once) caused me to fall behind in terms of classwork and learning, but it's still a massive pain in the ass when you have a teacher that takes attendance. I think professors can be very understanding when you're sick, but when it is in regards to a mental illness, it's much trickier. I don't want to have to go into detail about it, I don't even want to tell them the general diagnosis, so it's hard to even let them know what's going on; also, there's always the chance that you get a prof who kind of just doesn't view mental illness in the same way as physical illness, and that can be stressful. The last thing you want when you're trying to get caught up and scrambling to put the semester back together is to have a teacher who thinks that you don't deserve whatever leeway a "regular" illness would give you.

This is really difficult, and having to impose structure in my life as opposed to it happening by outside means (like how it did in high school) has been especially difficult. College has felt like nine years of grinding my insides against a cheese grater, and not even because the academic material is out of grasp; it's because the whole situation is just so unnatural to me, I have to fight my instincts every single minute of every single day. Obviously, I fail, and often.

I'm sure there are tons of other college students who are experiencing this, but it seems like I'm the only one, and therefore it is not valid.

On a different note, I got my shredder and fed it about 5000 papers, and yet my apartment has managed to look even messier than before. I'm so confused.

Much love.

—A

clean up & clean out

I believe that minimalism is a individualized experience, and from my understanding, it's not about how little you can live with, but living without excess. What is and isn't essential varies from person to person. For example, some people live without a computer/table/etc at home, and as much as I'd love to be able to do that, it would make my life infinitely more arduous. Although I mostly use my laptop for leisure activities, it's fundamental purpose is for homework. I have near-unlimited access to computers in the engineering building on campus, but making that trek every single time I needed to do homework is unnecessarily burdensome. This is just one example.

The real question is, why do we have so much stuff? And why is it so hard for us to get rid of it??

I can answer that second question fairly easily. I would say 75% of the stuff I buy I end up using at least once, 20% of it gets returned, and 5% goes untouched. It is hard to get rid of things I already own because what if I finally manage to get rid of it (either by selling, donating, or—as a last resort—trashing), and soon after I end up needing it? Am I going to go out and buy another? Try to borrow one from somebody? By holding onto it, I avoid this possible-but-improbable conundrum.

Another reason it is hard to get rid of things is that I don't know what do with them. Some things I manage to sell, like clothes, but I definitely am not able to sell everything. I should donate them, but this takes me back to reason number one: what if I end up wanting to wear it again? (Rationally, I know that chance is below 1%.)  Even worse are the items that I can neither sell nor donate. I try to be lower my carbon footprint, and although I'm not the most eco-abiding person out there, throwing stuff out that isn't pure trash is really hard for me. For example: bras that have the underwire poking out. These are not fixable (I've tried) nor are they sellable. They aren't even worth donating (Even Goodwill has some standards.) But throwing them makes me feel guilty. The same goes for slightly-used makeup and anything broken that cannot be recycled. So it just sits here in my apartment, never again to be of use, making me feel guilty about the possibility of throwing it away and at the same time frustrated with having junk accumulate.

And what about the first question — Why do we have it in the first place? I could blame consumerism and peer pressure (have you seen the movie The Jones'?) or any of those kinds of big-world mildly-conspiracy-theory-sounding reasons. But a big part of it is because we like it, we want it, we buy it, and it makes us happy, at least for a little while. Certainly there are plenty of things that are continuously making me happy despite how long ago they were bought; For Christmas 2005, I got an acoustic guitar. I loved it then, and I still love it ten years later. Could I live without it? Yes, so I would not consider it a base necessity. Is it something I love, I use often, and I'd be less happy without it? Yes, so I consider it a base want, and base wants certainly fall into my definition of minimalism. My guitar stays with me.

You will probably recognize Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

Except for the bottom two, most of those needs are abstract. Self-esteem is not something you can buy, though it hasn't stopped people from trying.

I made a new hierarchy, this one consisting of physical objects (since that is the discussion of this post):

One of the whole points of minimalism is to go beyond all the "stuff", so I think creating a hierarchy of minimalism that solely deals with "stuff" is a bit of an oxymoron. Oh well.

What does each one mean?

—> vital needs: food, water, shelter

—> base needs: income, bed, shower/hygiene, phone/communication

—> base wants: things that aren't necessary for a comfortable life but are key to big-picture happiness (ex. my guitar)

—> yen: stuff that is not needed, wanted, or used as much as base wants; if removed, would cause little to no decrease in overall happiness

So what are the first steps I take to pare down? First I clean up, getting rid of everything that I immediately recognize as trash. Then I go more in-depth. I clean out. If you can't find a place for something, especially something that you can't remember the last time you used it, then it's probably good to get rid of.

But again, I'm looking for baby steps. So after I throw out trash—usually food or food-related items—and I recycle literally every possible thing that I can (cans, cardboard and paperboard, almost all plastics, paper that has no sensitive information on it, even paper towel cardboard rolls and plastic lids from gas station to-go cups), I look at what is left. I've noticed that I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of random papers lying around. Most of these are things that need to be shredded and receipts.

Although I feel like buying stuff when you're trying to downsize is somewhat counter-productive, there are times when it really is the smart choice. For example, I save everything that needs to be shredded, meaning to take it to my parents' house whenever I go over there (they have a shredder and they only live 30 minutes away), but I never remember to do so. Never. So today, I decided that it would be in my best interest to purchase a shredder so that I am able to take care of those documents immediately, thus eliminating the majority of my tons of paperstuff just laying around haphazardly. As for receipts...it always feels wrong just throwing them away, so I guess I will shred them too. I refuse to keep the majority of my receipts. I doubt I'll be audited at this point in my life, and if I happen to be, I'm pretty sure the IRS won't care if I threw out a credit card receipt for a $4 chicken sandwich.

I ordered the shredder from Amazon because I had Amazon credit from selling some of my textbooks back to them, so I didn't have to pay out-of-pocket (and it was only $30). Thus, I will have to wait (hopefully less than) a week for it to arrive. Seeing as I've managed to live in this paper-strewn environment for more than a year, I'm sure I'll survive four more days.

In the meantime, I will go through my clothes (yet again), take stuff to sell at a different place than where I usually go. Even that stuff that the stores won't buy...I feel like is still quality enough to get some money for, so I honestly hate to donate it. (I only say that because I'm broke; if I weren't scrounging more one dollar bills, I would gladly donate them right then and there.) This one will be difficult for me, and I know it's still one of the easiest things I'll have to do in the upcoming days/weeks/months. Here we go...

Much love. 

—A

pausation & evaluation

For the last few years, my life has not left me particularly happy or satisfied. It's actually been much more than a few years. I think I'm constantly trying to fix it with stuff. Not necessarily physical items (although there is that), but just unrealized thoughts and ideas, unfulfilled plans, have cluttered my life to the point that I can't see the metaphorical floor anymore. So I'm pressing pause and evaluating the entirety of my life. It's a big undertaking (as it would be for anyone under the age of two) so I'm logging everything here. Maybe this will help someone else with issues they are having; maybe someone will simply just find enjoyment in reading this; maybe no one will read this and I will be writing into the black void; however this blog is (or isn't) received, it doesn't matter. I'm here.

My favorite way of doing anything always involves lists and quantifying something that heretofore has only been qualified.

life by numbers

  I. surety in choice of academic final goal = 85%

 II. level of elf-efficacy in regards to meeting said goal = 45%

III. time spent thinking about money that primarily consists of worry/anxiety/general dread = 100%

IV. how my day is spent:

     A.  sleep = 30 %

     B.  travel = 10 % (walking to class, driving to work, etc)

     C.  class = 0—4 % (I am only taking 1 class this semester)

     D.  work = 0—16 %

     E.  homework = 0—8 % (probably the reason for the low self-efficacy number)

     F.   errands/appointments = 10 %

     G.  cleaning = 1 %

     H.  hygiene/getting ready = 5 %

      I.  leisure = 22—50 % (this includes eating because I usually read or watch TV while I eat)

Ladies, and gentlemen, we have a winner...of the answer to "Where am I going wrong?".

Thankfully, I just found another job, which should help decrease both III and G (and, obviously, raise D). Although there's nothing wrong with leisure time, I really do not need to regularly be contributing 50% of my time to it.

Included in my definition of leisure is: TV- and movie-watching; reading; perusing the internet; writing on my blogs (I have one other); working out (which I value more than regular leisure but don't do frequently enough for it to have it's own category); playing guitar; listening to music; and anything else that is non-essential and usually considered to be fun.

Now that I have examined how I spend my time, I'm going to start paring down, but physically with my stuff and abstractly with how I invest my time. To do this, though, I need to start believing that my time is a worthy investment, not a throwaway substance of little to no value.

Let The Minimalist Project commence!

Much love.

—A