Things...

It often seems as if our whole purpose in life is to consume, to get bigger and better jobs so we can buy bigger and better things. But things just aren’t that important to me. I value experiences.

One desirable side effect of my decision to pack up and be a semi-vagrant for a while is the need to get rid of some things and do without other things. Our culturally-ingrained need to acquire is a strong force that sometimes requires conscious effort on our part to resist. As Thoreau once wrote, "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify." I am looking forward to seeing just how much I can simplify.

After I store my furniture and other stuff at my brother’s house, I will climb into my car and head toward Washington D.C. with the following things: my mountain bike, my TV (yes, it relieves boredom), my laptop, my camera, some clothes, and probably my pillow.

Don’t get me wrong, I still hope to get a bigger and better job. But I think my definition of “bigger and better” is different. I am looking for a gateway to accumulate more experiences, not more things.

The French have an old saying that strikes me as being fundamentally and profoundly true; Ne pas posséder, être. Not to possess. To be.


On a lighter, and at least somewhat relevant note, you can always count on the folks from The Onion for a good chuckle. The video below is a (very profane!) commentary on our desire to get the newest, latest, greatest, biggest thing. How many things do we really need?

A word of caution; it is totally not safe for work, children, sober Southern Baptists or sensitive ears.

The Beginning...

Over the years, I have frequently considered the words of transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau, but it has been only recently that I decided to act on them. His most-often quoted passage describes his decision to live alone beside Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

For reasons that I suppose shall be explained as I go, I too have decided to move away from friends and family, and find out what life can teach me. Admittedly, I will not live in isolation – quite the opposite actually – but this experience will be My Walden Pond.Thoreau also wrote, “I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit?” I can say, with great certainty, that my enterprise will require new clothes, but I embark on it with the sincere hope that the result, nonetheless, will be a new man.

If you follow along on this journey, it is likely that I know you well, and, thus, have invited you to read this blog. It is also possible that you stumbled upon it by accident. Either way, as I add to this public record of my New Clothing Enterprise, I hope to be open and honest, even if painfully so. I also hope to be at least somewhat entertaining, perhaps even funny. And if all goes according to plan, I might even provoke thought along the way. I certainly hope the ending will be a happy one.

Soon, I'll be buying a new pair of jeans. And the odyssey shall begin...