All this stuff.

I wouldn’t class myself as being a materialistic person. I do like films, I do like music, I do like books, I do like gadgetry but I’m not one for designer clothes and fads and things of that ilk which is why the last twenty-four hours has been a real surprise to me.
I decided to take the first step towards a minimalistic lifestyle, my reasons for this are as follows;
– I feel cluttered and loaded constantly.
– I needed to give myself more direction.
– It would help me avoid working on my short stories for yet another day.
So I read up on minimalism and the minimalistic lifestyle, and decided that I could only ever follow it to a point. They would put this down to my fear but I don’t think that is the case. I just wouldn’t be comfortable in a room that was just my desk and a laptop, I need a little something else.

I started by writing out what I wanted, how I wanted to be and where my focus should be directed. I then started working through the piles of everything I have collected in the last quarter of a century. With two bags of clothes, two bags of rubbish, a box of books, a box of DVDs and CDs to send off and a big pile of documents for shredding you would think I were typing this post from a stark Kubrickian landscape but my room still looks exactly the same, I’ve barely skimmed the top layer of stuff but already I can see where I could develop from there.
We all own a lot of things that serve no purpose whatsoever. That’s one of the few things that annoys me about Christmas, I enjoy giving people presents a lot more than I enjoy receiving them but I often wonder what becomes of the things I give to people, if they ever get any real use out of them or if it just becomes another thing to sit on their shelves or line their drawers. I’m going to try really hard this year to think about what happens beyond the time of giving, when the tinsel comes down and we are left with a stark January. I would like to hope that I can give people something that they will look after and cherish, rather than just assign a space and disregard for months at a time.