Turtles-Paradise

If you’re reading this blog – and kudos to you if you are, and you’re not my Mum – you may be wondering what the point of it is. There is, after all, an entire literature on the importance of targeting a blog at a specific niche. Surely by staggering from Blenheim Palace to my back-garden to tiny living I am sabotaging myself from any kind of success in the competitive blogosphere?

In truth, I find it a little worrying that so many blogs are arranged around neat little articles with a common theme. It’s not so much that I dislike them as they sometimes end up feeling a little hollow and forced.

I think there is a focus to this blog, but it’s more about connecting the dots between a number of different movements and ideas. Whilst the digital age has ushered in one set of techno-wizards and location-independent businesses and freelancers, the kick-back against capitalism has existed almost since capitalism became the arbiter of society, and minimalism and simplicity extends all the way back to the ancient ‘wise men’ and forms the centre of a lot of religions.

In short, the inspiration for these things come from various times, places, people and cultures. And every individual decodes and interprets them in their own way.

Never before has the divide between the wealthy and the poverty stricken been so great though. Never has the flood of Stuff been so cheap, plastic and disposable.

I work in the waste and recycling industry. That we have a problem at one end – the raw materials and destruction of resources – I take on faith. That we have a problem on the other end - hazardous waste, piles of long-lived garbage, growing landfill sites and increasingly expensive disposal charges – I see first hand.

We cannot keep throwing stuff away. There is nowhere for it to go.

It worries me that so many minimalist bloggers tout the importance of jumping on planes to travel the world. Getting rid of your car means nothing if you’re taking frequent flights. Minimalism and sustainability are often considered partners, but there is some disconnect between the ideals of these different movements.

Travelling does not have to be by plane. Slow travel is good travel.

I worry that many bloggers out there are skimming the surface of these movements, reducing substantial ideas to a handful of bullet-points, and not analysing their own contradictions.

I contradict myself too, I’m not perfect and my ideas evolve and change.

We – the wealthy – have simply unprecedented freedom these days. We can choose almost everything about how we live and experience our lives. We can choose what we do, where we work, what we eat, who we spend time with.

But how we choose, and why we choose – we have to think a little deeper than just ‘lifestyle design’.