Ode to Love

With today being Valentines Day I thought I’d write an ode to my beautiful, young wife of nearly 24 years, Linda. As I have contemplated many times lately, a minimalist journey such as the one I am traveling requires a truly special companion, and that describes my wife in spades, or hearts, as the case is.

While Linda and I have always strived to live a simple life together, the latest iteration of what that looks like for us could easily frighten others more faint of heart. Suffice to say that I would not have dared to try selling our house in a down market without my wife’s consent, yet she was not only on board but also in total agreement with the details of the move, resulting in a timely and profitable sale.

It was nine months ago today that we moved from the house we had built and called home for twelve years in order to enjoy our present lifestyle of liquidity and mobility. And I am pleased and proud to say that Linda has been as supportive and participative in making our moves successful as one could possibly hope.

During our time of sabbatical here on Nantucket, Linda is volunteering at the local shelter for abused women and continuing her daily practice of making a difference in the lives of people she comes in contact with. On the home front, she lovingly strives to keep our lives here in close quarters growing together rather than apart and we are experiencing just that.

As I try to remind her regularly, Linda is even more beautiful to me than the day we married and I truly love her more with each passing day. Yet the highest compliment I can bestow upon her is to quote the wise proverbial saying: “There are many good women, but you are the best!”

Winter Wonderland

I am happy to report that since my last post Nantucket received the snowfall my wife and I had hoped for, with about five inches of fabulous white flakes covering the ground and creating a winter wonderland of serene scenery. According to our best recollections, it had been more than two decades since my wife and I last saw that much snow and we learned that it is relatively uncommon for here also.

And it could not have been more picture perfect. We awoke on a Saturday morning to a steady stream of snowflakes and it continued to gather virtually all day as wooly blankets of white fleece. We got dressed in our winter gear, headed down Main Street to the island wharf and photographed the breathtaking beauty of it all before heading home to share our excitement with Florida friends and family.

There is something special about the simple beauty of a winter snowfall that blends manmade structures like buildings and boats with the natural presence of flora and fauna to create a landscape that is theatre for the senses. And we loved our front row seats to the spectacular show that the picturesque snow presented our fellow residents and us on this dreamsicle of an island thirty miles out to sea.

Celebrating the Seasons

As I write this, I am sitting at the Atheneum, Nantucket’s public library, listening to my favorite classical music, Antonio Vivaldi’s "Four Seasons." And I am reminded that the metaphor of seasons has served as the soundtrack of my life since we sold our house and stuff last year to move to this remote, romantic island.

I mentioned in an earlier post that my wife and I visited Concord, Massachusetts, the home of Henry David Thoreau, on our way here to Nantucket, and it was there that I jotted down a couple of quotes from Thoreau that captured my seasonal sentiments: “My friends ask what I will do when I get there. Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons?” and “While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.”

Upon hearing from our Florida friends of another 80-degree Christmas Day, my wife and I congratulated each other on our migration to the northern climes of New England. I am a native Virginian and so am used to experiencing seasonal weather, especially during the holidays, and while my wife is a native Floridian we used to live in Georgia and Oklahoma, where we had some semblance of seasonality.

Since moving to Nantucket we’ve been regularly reminded by the locals what unseasonably warm weather we’ve enjoyed, which has made for a particularly nice transition for my wife, but we are looking forward to some snow accumulation and not just the flurries we’ve gotten so far. All in all, we are very much enjoying ourselves here, so much so that we are considering moving here longer term. But in the meantime, we are celebrating this season of our lives.

The Gift of Simplicity

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is the 23rd Psalm. Early in my faith journey I had trouble understanding the concept espoused in the opening verse: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” For the life of me, I couldn’t grasp how anyone could say that they didn’t want anything. But of course, I eventually realized that what the psalmist was saying is that because the Lord is our source we needn’t lack any good thing.

And it is that concept that has become a hallmark of my faith ever since I comprehended its meaning. As we trust God to provide for our needs, we can rest in the gift of simplicity that comes with the faithfulness of God. I was reminded of this as I walked the streets of Nantucket during the holidays and realized that I didn’t need or even want anything that was for sale. It was a liberating feeling to say the least.

When a friend of mine heard of our radical downscaling this year she wrote to share similar news: “We continue to scale back. It’s so freeing. (Christmas is such a joy when you have absolutely no shopping to do!) We live quietly and simply, but our lives are still full—full of the things we love and not excess stuff we have to maintain.”

Along such lines, I love a quote from Socrates: “How many things are there which I do not want.” And a line from a Quaker hymn perhaps captures it best: “‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free.” Amen to that! And while the holidays are history, the present is a good time to unwrap the gift of simplicity. It is the gift that keeps on giving!

Nantucket Noel

My wife and I agree that this Christmas has been our favorite one together, which is rather ironic given that we are several hundred miles from family and friends on an island thirty miles out to sea. One contributing factor is that winter here strips away the distractions of life and helps us to focus on the reason for the season: the incarnation of Christ. Another factor is that we are living in one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, particularly during the holidays.

For its part, Nantucket has several hundred colonial-era buildings, more than anywhere else in America, a fact made all the more astonishing when you consider that many more were lost in an epic fire. Add to the historic buildings the cobblestone streets, old-fashioned lampposts, and traditional decorations of evergreen trees and wreaths with white lights and candles, and you experience a holiday dreamscape capable of soothing even the most jaded of holiday shoppers.

And speaking of shopping, its absence in our lives was another major contributor to our holiday bliss this year. With our yearlong downscaling of possessions, whereby we gave most of our stuff to friends and family before moving here, shopping wasn’t a big deal. As for us, we had bought each other several gifts before the holidays as the need arose so we simply exchanged a couple of gifts on the day of Christmas. The only thing missing was the snow that was forecast but failed to fall.

Washashores

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the first thing you see as you enter Nantucket Harbor is the Brant Point lighthouse, which dates to 1746 and is the second oldest lighthouse in America. One of the neat things about living here during the winter is seeing it nautically decorated for Christmas with the Coast Guard’s crossing of oars in the center of a festooned wreath, reminding one and all of this faraway isle’s maritime heritage.

As we soon learned upon our arrival here nearly two months ago, “washashores” is the official term used to describe folks like us who move here from “America,” as off-island is referred to by locals. And while we may be washashores we have enjoyed a very warm welcome. Indeed, one of the pleasant surprises about life here is how friendly the people generally are, an attribute I think results from braving winters together on a secluded island.

In Walden, Thoreau observed, “At length the winter set in good earnest ... and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then . . . I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast.” While we don’t have a fireplace here like we did in Florida [go figure] today is the warmest first day of winter on record here, at a balmy 55 degrees!

In closing, I leave you with the observation of Moby Dick author Herman Melville: “Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than a lighthouse. Look at it: a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.” And home to washashores.

Nantucket Nomads

It is hard to believe that it has already been a month since my arrival here on the island of Nantucket with my wife and our stuff via ferry. Yet as hard as that is to believe it is even harder to fathom that in the six months or so since we sold our home we have downscaled our lifestyle from living in a 1400 square foot cottage to a 400 square foot studio.

And believe it or not, we fit virtually all our 400 or so possessions inside our Volvo convertible, [which rode with us half the way on Amtrak’s Auto Train before we drove it the other half of the way here]. Besides that, all we own is our Vespa scooter, [which we shipped to Cape Cod and brought over with us on the ferry from Hyannis], and a couple smallish storage bins with stuff at my mother’s in Florida.

And how do I know we own about 400 things? Because I counted them, of course! I compiled a detailed inventory of our stuff and even broke it into categories for simple tracking. To that end, my wife and I each own about 100 articles of clothing so that is half our stuff, with the other half coming from about 100 media evenly distributed between books and music and another 100 miscellaneous items ranging from toothbrushes to computers.

So in about seven months we have transitioned from a seven-room house to moving here with about seven bags stuffed with the favorite of our possessions left after selling our house, as well as most of its furnishings through a couple of garage sales. And the truly amazing part of it all is that my wife and I embarked upon this downscaling adventure voluntarily and in total agreement about how it was to transpire. Stay tuned for more updates from these Nantucket Nomads!

On Walden Pond

As I wrote about earlier, my wife and I have embarked on what we are calling a “radical sabbatical” to the island of Nantucket, where we are planning to read, research and write this winter and I am happy to report we are blissfully ensconced in our new digs here. On the writing front, the best way I know to describe my book when asked about it is to call it “an updated Waldenesque guidebook to simpler living.”

On our journey here and as part of my research for the book we visited Henry David Thoreau’s hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, including his cabin in the woods at Walden Pond, where he wrote Walden. On a picture perfect autumn day my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting not only Thoreau’s recreated cabin, complete with period furnishings, but also the original cabin site on the other side of Walden Pond.

It is no exaggeration to say it was a spiritual experience to walk in the footsteps of the author of my favorite book and to personally experience the environs that so inspired him. In addition to touring Walden Pond we also visited Thoreau’s gravesite at Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, located on Author’s Ridge with his fellow writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

iThankU

I was preparing to log off my iMac late last night when I pulled up the New York Times and sadly read of the passing of Steve Jobs, legendary co-founder of Apple and maker of the very device on which I was reading his obituary. As President Obama noted in a statement, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

One of the most poignant tributes to Jobs comes from Times technology columnist David Pogue, who writes: “Here’s a guy who never finished college, never went to business school, never worked for anyone else a day in his adult life. So how did he become the visionary who changed every business he touched?
The story of Steve Jobs boils down to this: Don’t go with the flow. Steve Jobs refused to go with the flow. If he saw something that could be made better, smarter or more beautiful, nothing else mattered. Not internal politics, not economic convention, not social graces.

In 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address to the graduating students at Stanford. He told them the secret that defined him in every action, every decision, every creation of his tragically unfinished life: ‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.’”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I must admit that the untimely death of Steve Jobs moved me to tears, not just for the loss of his genius but for how he and his work have profoundly changed the way I work and live. The tools he helped create have enabled me to live anywhere I want and to enjoy using that technology to make a living. I pray for the loved ones he left behind, and my eulogy to the man behind the magic is simply this: iThankU.

Two Pennies Overboard

After a summer visit to the island of Nantucket nearly 20 years ago my wife and I participated in the time-honored tradition of tossing two pennies overboard as our ferry rounded Nantucket’s Brant Point on our return to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The tradition suggests that doing so means you are bound to return to “the faraway island,” as it is called.

Native American for “place of peace,” Nantucket is 30 miles out to sea and suffice it to say that during the winter it becomes an even more remote place, albeit one that is kept from freezing by the gulf stream of the Atlantic Ocean. The winter population shrinks to about 10,000 from several times that during the summer and we are about to join that number.

Come the first of November, my wife and I will become winter residents of Nantucket to fulfill our quest for a radical sabbatical, with time and space to read, write and plan our next move. As Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

Another very motivational quote for us is attributed to Henry David Thoreau. When queried about why he was trading his “normal” life in Concord to live at Walden Pond, he simply replied, “Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and I could not spare any more time for that one.”

Finally, on a sign located at the mouth of the harbor in Mount Dora, the town we called home for several years and recently moved from, is a profound quote from Mark Twain: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” And so we are.

The Burning House

Earlier this week it was reported that Sir Richard Branson’s luxury hideaway on his private retreat of Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands burned to the ground after being struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. What was amazing to me was the attitude of the billionaire entrepreneur toward his massive loss, especially given that his personal office containing priceless photographs was destroyed in the fire.

According to reports Branson’s reaction to the fire was one of gratitude that his family and friends, totaling 20 people in all, escaped injury: “At the end of the day, what you realize is that all that matters is the people that you love. Everything else is just stuff. And none of that stuff matters.” I couldn’t agree more. However, assuming one’s loved ones are safe, it helps to think about what one would try to rescue in the event of a catastrophe.

There is even a website called The Burning House that presents readers with the thought-provoking statement: “If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It’s a conflict between what’s practical, valuable and sentimental. What you would take reflects your interests, background and priorities. Think of it as an interview condensed into one question.”

It is a question that my wife and I have considered during our process of whittling our possessions down to the essential. Rather than speak for her I’ll simply list a dozen things here that I’d try to take with me in case of such an emergency, which is not a hypothetical proposition given this week’s Virginia earthquake and hurricane Irene heading toward us as I write.

In no particular order, my stuff to save would likely include my NKJV Bible, Moleskine notebook, Rolf wallet, Nokia phone, Leica camera, Powerbook laptop, iPod Touch, passport, memento box, wedding video, grandmother's picture, and copy of Thoreau's Walden. Also, I wear my wedding band at all times so I didn’t include that in the overall count of items.

The Simple Lifestyle

Henry David Thoreau’s timeless tome Walden speaks to us today at least as much it did to the readers of Thoreau’s time. While some of its language could understandably use an update the book’s principles are as timely as ever. In fact, author Robert Sullivan writes in The Thoreau You Don’t Know that Thoreau’s message was written during a time very similar to our own.

“It’s important to think about the economic climate. As the country reeled from market forces, as the gap between rich and poor widened, as people strained to make a living and saw their social and family life begin to change as a result, Thoreau was about to give a very practical answer to the question that Emerson asked, the question that was not just on the mind of philosophers past and present but on the mind of the country: ‘How shall I live?’”

For readers past and present Thoreau answered the question himself in Walden. “My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles…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.”

Elsewhere Thoreau wrote of “sucking the marrow out of life” rather than having the life sucked out of him…or living a life that sucks! But he was quick to state he wasn’t necessarily suggesting that others copy his lifestyle by retreating to the woods as he had. Rather it was an overall philosophy of simple living that he espoused and encouraged others to emulate.

As Sullivan reminds us: “Walden takes the long way around on purpose, making it in itself representative of Thoreau’s life. With the book, he was not suggesting everyone live as he did at the pond, or as he ever did at Concord: ‘I would not have any one adopt MY mode of living on any account.’” As with so much of life, simplicity is as much caught as taught. And what Thoreau was trying to communicate was the need for all of us to consider simplifying our lives, whatever that looks like for each of us.

The Day the Music Died

I am mourning. No, not the death of a loved one, thankfully. The demise of a radio station. One week ago today, my all-time favorite station, WLOQ 103.1, quit broadcasting its smooth jazz tunes over the FM airwaves after more than three decades in business. It is no exaggeration to say that it was one of my very favorite things about living here in Central Florida and I already miss it.

It was the last independently owned and operated commercial radio station in the Orlando market and won numerous accolades, including jazz station of the year by the National Association of Broadcasters. Fortunately for us long-time listeners the station isn’t disappearing completely, as it continues streaming live online at www.wloq.com.

Even as I listen to it while typing this at my favorite Starbucks I am reminded of when I was introduced to WLOQ in the autumn of 1985 upon first moving here. I’ve moved in and out of the area a couple of times through the years and each time one of the first things I did upon my return was program 103.1 into my radio station rotation.

I also have fond memories of attending various concerts sponsored by the station, including one by Kirk Whalum, pictured in the adjacent photo. Looking forward, I guess one benefit of the station’s migration to the internet is that I can listen to it whenever I am online so for that I am thankful. Thanks for the memories, WLOQ!

Simpler Is Better

I remember hearing someone suggest that people should craft a personal philosophy of life if they desired to live wisely and since it made sense to me I thought about it and came up with one of my own. My philosophy of life is: “Simpler is better.”

If that sounds too simple to be a life philosophy, then so be it. But over the course of my forty-something years of living I’ve come to experience the beauty of simplicity in too many ways to think otherwise. I am convinced that simple living beats the alternative.

Fortunately for me, my wife and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to designing how to live our lives. Whenever we are faced with competing demands on our time, much more often than not the simpler alternative is the one we opt to adopt.

Both of us have suffered the consequences of not listening to that still, small voice inside of us reminding us to simplify. In my case, it was a life-threatening illness that caused me to trade stressful practices for simpler ones that enhance the overall quality of my life.

We have learned to live our lives at a sustainable pace rather than succumb to the pressures of daily living that threaten to overwhelm us if allowed. And we purposely concentrate more on celebrating experiences than collecting possessions that clutter.

The Quest Continues

Why two people, namely my wife and I, ever thought a collection of several DOZEN dishes was necessary for such a small family is beyond comprehension. We never planned on having a large family so that wasn’t the reason, and while we have hosted parties for as many as 50 people at our home they were a rarity and didn’t involve dishes. Suffice it to say that the quest for a simpler lifestyle calls for the purging of such culinary clutter.

And purge we have. From that unwieldy collection, including TEN each of matching large plates, small plates, bowls, cups, saucers, etc., we’ve cut our cupboard down to size by getting rid of all but a couple plates, bowls and glasses for my wife and I. So what about dinner guests? The place we are presently leasing is furnished so there are extra dishes if needed and we can simply meet friends at a restaurant to dine together if not as guests at their homes.

The lesson we are gleaning from the continuing quest to simplify our lives is to radically rethink what is necessary to live simply yet satisfyingly, with the measuring stick of mobility as our guide. As I posted here earlier, our family motto has become “minimize to mobilize.” Every item we possess has to pass the mobility test. And we draw inspiration from the life of Christ.

It was said of Jesus, who was no less than the very Son of God, that he had “nowhere to lay his head.” Not that he was homeless, but he chose no permanent place to call his own. In other words, he adopted a mobile lifestyle in order to reach as many people as possible. As for us, we aren’t here to save the world, but our lifestyle does enable us to touch people we’d never meet otherwise. And that is good news.

Our Media Diet

Over the course of the last several months my wife and I have been on a personal quest to pare down our possessions, including our relatively extensive media collections of books, music, movies and magazines. We started by getting rid of our back issues of all the magazines we had subscribed to through the years and unsubscribed from the one print magazine we still got mailed to our home.

Maybe even more radically, we quit reading print newspapers in favor of electronic ones, quit buying print books in favor of electronic ones and quit buying music albums in favor of electronic ones. Besides digital media being cheaper to own, between my Kindle and iTouch I can carry my book and music libraries with me wherever I go, and my local library is a convenient resource for much free media, including books, music and movies.

Each year I chronicle what I call my Media Menu and halfway through this year I have read 16 books, attended two concerts, listened to four new albums, watched two movies at the theatre and viewed 12 videos online or via disc, all of which only cost me about $70 given my frequent visits to the public library. And about half that total is due to the couple of matinees my wife and I saw together.

Our efforts at simplifying our media lives extend to our use of social media as well. For example, we favor emailing to chatting, instant messaging or texting, we don’t activate comments on our blogs, and while we are professional members of LinkedIn we are not on any other social media sites, preferring instead to interact with real friends in real life.

A New Lease on Life

By virtue of selling our home and the resulting debt-free lifestyle it has afforded us, my wife and I feel as if we have a new lease on life itself. Now that we have gotten untethered from a long-term mortgage we are now free to “move about the country,” as one airline’s commercial says. And it is not just leasing that allows us that luxury but also the downsizing we have done in anticipation of us getting to this point in our lives.

As I reflect upon the many changes we have experienced during the last several months perhaps none is greater than the fact that we have whittled our rather large library of books from more than 1,500 volumes to just 150! And for a couple that has worked in the publishing industry for more than a decade, that is no small feat. As a professional editor, it was not uncommon for me to receive hundreds of books a year for several years.

Besides taming our book collection, we have limited ourselves to our favorite dozen or so DVD’s and are winnowing our CD collection down to a manageable size by ripping copies digitally. With our lease of a friend’s place we opted to cut the cable television completely as well as the landline telephone. Our prepaid cell phones continue to suffice and we enjoy simply watching videos on our friend’s flat screen television.

High-speed Internet connectivity is a necessity since I work from home and the service here is lightening fast so I am loving it. But once the day is done I have no trouble shutting it off to walk around the neighborhood lake with my wife or to take a spin together on our scooter. As a result of our healthier lifestyle, I am happy to report that both my wife and I have lost weight since moving here, and we don’t miss the television whatsoever!

Our Unframed Journey

As I alluded to in my last post, about a month ago my wife and I cashed in one version of the American dream and traded it for another, one more closely aligned with our renewed vision for simplicity, liquidity and mobility. I am happy to report that the transition has gone very smoothly and we are blissfully ensconced in our new digs at the master planned community of Celebration, originally created by the Walt Disney Company.

While the unincorporated town was originally a tad too “Mickey Mouse” for our liking when we first visited it at its founding almost 15 years ago, it has since grown up and thus grown on us. We ended up here via the good graces of a friend who heads north for the latter half of the year and needed someone to house sit in his absence, thus resulting in a win-win all around.

Our move has allowed us to continue enjoying the Florida lifestyle with our convertible and scooter while getting us closer to such signs of civilization as the mall and the airport. On our very first night in town we ate at a local restaurant that featured a map on its menu of an “unframed journey,” which I thought perfectly captured the essence of what we’ve embarked upon.

White Picket Fences

After more than a dozen years of home ownership my wife and I decided that the white picket fence version of the American dream didn’t necessarily suit us anymore so we finally sold our beloved Lakewood Cottage in the quaint lakeside town of Mount Dora, Florida, which was itself a miracle given the relatively depressed local housing market.

Only four days before our listing was to expire our buyer made an offer and four days after the listing expired we had a signed contract for the figure my wife and I had agreed we needed to make the move worthwhile. Fortunately for us, we had substantial equity in our home so we left with a good-sized nest egg in exchange for our nest.

The bottom line for us is that we are able to retire all our debt and move whenever the mood strikes us. What has helped make such a drastic transition doable is that we started the process of downsizing our possessions more than a year ago when we first thought of selling our home after a neighbor’s tree fell on it [see “Celebrating Life” post].

One irony in all of this is that we didn’t actually have a white picket fence at our old property and yet we do at the new place we are living, which I will write more about next time. Suffice it to say we are loving our new lifestyle and looking forward to adventurous times ahead.

RIP the Flip

It was about three years ago today that I shared a post titled “Trying the Flip” about one of my favorite tech toys, the Flip Ultra Camcorder. It was, and is, a fun, user-friendly camcorder like no other, which is why it grieves me to report that it is being discontinued by its maker, a move that is roundly being criticized by the technorati, and rightly so.

A couple of years ago, the original owners of the Flip, Pure Digital, sold out to the giant conglomerate called Cisco, better known as the makers of Linksys routers, to the tune of $590 million. While you can’t fault entrepreneurs for striking it rich, it is a shame that a huge corporation sees the need to kill a successful product with a whopping 35% of the market because it no longer fits its portfolio, laying off 550 people in the process!

The least Cisco could have done was to sell the business rather than shutter it but speculation has it that they wanted the proprietary technology behind the camcorder rather than the device itself, which doesn’t make much sense to me, but whatever. If there is a silver lining it is that the company is at least planning to sell, service and support the Flip through 12/31/13. So I guess the 150 or so videos I’ve captured [about one per week] are salvaged for the time being, but I did get rid of my Linksys router…

Life Is Good

I am sitting here typing on my laptop at my favorite cafe counting my blessings as I realize how good I’ve got it. I came here this morning with my lovely wife on a scenic drive through fog-laden countryside and cool, crisp weather. After she gets off work this afternoon we are cruising in our convertible to get a bite to eat at our favorite restaurant before heading to an outdoor jazz concert.

Tomorrow we are planning to sleep late and eat our favorite breakfast at home before heading on our scooter to a classic car festival in our quaint lakeside community. On Sunday, we are planning to picnic at a local park with friends of ours whom we haven’t gotten together with for more than a year. All in all, a dream weekend by any account.

As I reflect about my good life, I am reminded of the “Life is Good” lifestyle brand, whose motto is, “Do what you love, love what you do.” To me that is one of the keys to living a life you love. I may not love everything about my life, but I am enjoying the overall journey and that is what counts in my book.

Poke the Box

Best-selling author Seth Godin has earned a reputation as an out-of-the-box thinker and his latest book called Poke the Box is no exception. The book is the first title from The Domino Project, his paradigm-shifting attempt to revolutionize publishing by simplifying the process of connecting books and readers.

Powered by Amazon, Godin’s electronic book venture is designed to be a game-changer, and while it may be too early to comment on that, Poke the Box is indeed a provocative “manifesto about starting,” as he calls it.

Godin’s mantra is start it and ship it, suggesting that he who hesitates is lost. In his own words, “soon is not as good as now.” He points out that not all flux is necessarily risky and insists that not flowing with flux may be the riskiest move of all.

“It’s easy to fall so in love with the idea of starting that we never actually start,” writes Godin in a line that hits all too close to home. According to him, when the cost of poking the box is less than the cost of doing nothing, then you should poke. And I could not agree more!

Pull the Plug

It's time to pull the plug. No, not on granny…on your electronics. Tomorrow is the second iteration of the National Day of Unplugging, which I first blogged about last year under my post titled “Sabbath Manifesto,” and my wife and I are planning to participate yet again this year. It isn’t extraordinarily challenging for us since we generally at least stay offline on the weekends but it’ll be good to extend the unplugging to our other electronics also.

To that point, judging by most people’s placement of televisions at the center of their homes (myself included) you’d think life literally revolved around them (mine doesn’t) but it is possible to live without them. As a matter of fact, I’ve gone without television for extended periods of time, including the month or so a few years ago when my present one had to be repaired. At any rate, whether it’s the computer, television, phone, stereo, or other electronic device, I think we’ll all be better off unplugging them for at least a day.

Creation Versus Consumption

Lately I’ve been thinking about the amount of information I’ve been processing versus what I’ve been producing. As a communications consultant information processing comes with the territory so I have to be extra vigilant to ensure it doesn’t get out of hand. To that end, I subscribe to just one print magazine, get only basic cable, scan the online version of the New York Times each morning, and don’t own a smart phone (yet).

However, there are ebbs and flows to my sea of information and adding to my typical consumption pattern is the fact that I am currently enrolled in an online course involving several pages of paperwork each week, I am editing what started out as a 400 page book for a client, I am continuing the research of material for a book of my own, and I am reading no less than four books simultaneously, three on my Kindle and one from my local library.

All of which has served to largely stifle my own creative output, save for the periodic blog post such as this one. Speaking of blogs, I came across one the other day that captured my conundrum exactly. With a post titled “The Creative Equilibrium” at www.jamesshelley.net blogger James Shelley aptly describes my experience: “The more content I am consuming the less margin I have for creating.”

Quality Control Issues

As I sit here typing on my laptop at the Barnes and Noble I just got word from the Apple Store that a new part they installed on our desktop to fix another issue itself needs a component replaced. The good news is that the original repair was for a known issue and so it was covered under Apple’s recall policy. And the technician confirmed that the cost of the component will also be covered to help compensate for my inconvenience.

This latest quality control issue comes on the heels of my wife and I getting our twenty-odd year-old VHS wedding video transferred to DVD at a local duplicating shop. After stressing to the tech the need to get the date on the label correct since the original videographer mislabeled the video, the duplicator proceeded to print the wrong year instead of merely the wrong day. Yes, we know our wedding date but that’s not the point.

What makes all of this particularly poignant is that I am reading a book titled The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time. The book decries the current state of language usage as the authors cross the country on a mission to fix literary faux pas. As a fellow editor, it is a mission close to my head and heart.

The Amazon Kindle

Before flying to visit family for the holidays my wife and I got an Amazon Kindle e-book reader and we’ve since thought about getting another one. We own the Wi-Fi-only edition but the 3G edition’s expanded capability is tempting, especially when the other one of us is using ours. It is not exaggerating to say that the Kindle has changed our lives, or at least our reading lives.

For starters, it has motivated us to limit ourselves to e-book purchases only. Since getting the Kindle, we’ve downloaded about a dozen sample chapters from books we considered buying and have bought four of them, largely based on our ability to sample them first. And the cost savings has been amazing. For softcover books whose retail prices each average about $15, we only spent about half that.

Another big benefit of the Kindle has been the ability to order books whenever the mood strikes us [within distance of a hotspot], including at Starbucks, our office, the bedroom, and yes, even the bathroom! It is awesome to be able to download a full-length book in less than a minute and start reading it immediately, no matter where you are.

And with our move to digital reading, we are maintaining the mobile lifestyle by donating hundreds of little-used books left over from my days as a book review editor. With fewer books comes less need for bookshelves, so we sold most of them, downsizing from a total of 30 to 13. Even before getting the Kindle we cut back on traditional book buying, but if you’ll pardon the pun, it is “fuel for the fire.”

Radical Sabbatical

As we enter the New Year, my wife and I are preparing to embark on what we are calling a “radical sabbatical.” What that means for us is a move toward concentrating on what feeds our souls as we strive to make a life and not merely a living. For example, we are conscientiously trying to say “no” to the good in order to say “yes” to the best, both personally and professionally.

For my part, I mean to gradually quit doing the type of work I don’t enjoy and more actively pursue work that adds meaning to my life and not merely money. Part of my plan includes creating a “life list” of activities to do before I die, including visiting places I’ve dreamt of.

Also on the agenda is quitting things that no longer make sense for us or that we’ve done simply out of a sense of obligation. For far too long we’ve both found ourselves guilty of doing stuff just to be doing it, usually because it was a pattern of behavior proscribed “by the book.”

The older we get the more we realize that life is too short to live according to other people’s prescriptions for living. We are each given one life to live and it is a shame when we squander ours trying to squeeze into a mold that doesn’t fit. Tragically, many of us are born originals but die copies instead.

A year from now I hope to be able to report that my life has radically changed to the point that I barely recognize the person I am today. To quote the immortal words of T.S. Eliot, “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Inventory Time

As this year draws to a close the time has come to conduct an inventory of my life and stuff. For my wife and I this year has been one of purging and paring not only possessions but also relationships and other parts of our lives that didn’t seem to fit or suit our sensibilities anymore.

Early in the year, we unloaded several electronic gadgets that had just been collecting dust and from there we proceeded to get rid of hundreds of books, pieces of furniture, my wife’s bicycle, assorted lawn equipment, extraneous clothing items, and sundry household paraphernalia.

Propelling us to action was the landing of a neighbor’s tree on the roof of our house, which resulted in our getting the house fixed and placed on the market. Once we embraced the thought of moving, the idea of a more mobile lifestyle motivated us to quit what wasn’t working and to get rid of the unnecessary possessions weighing us down literally and figuratively.

We have made exceptional progress but are not yet at the place where we can move on a whim. For example, as much as we’ve whittled down our media library, we still own about 500 books, 100 compact discs, 20 digital video discs, and miscellaneous other media, not to mention our fair share of related electronic gadgetry.

One of the added benefits of downsizing the detritus of life is processing what you possess and getting to the point where you need what you own and own what you need. After a year of winnowing our possessions, it feels good to possess our stuff rather than it possessing us.

Places to Spaces

According to respected technology guru Kevin Kelly, “The network economy shifts places to spaces.” As he further points out in his writing, while a place is bounded by the dimensions of height, width, depth, and time, “a space, unlike a place, is an electronically created environment.”

What that means is that technology assists us to connect with one another without regard to the limitations of time and place, which is an incredible gift if used properly. For example, while emails, texts, and instant messages can help keep people close, unless each party practices proper “netiquette,” all the technology is for naught.

A byproduct of moving from places to spaces is the movement from atoms to bits, in other words, from the tangible to the intangible. The upside of this for me is that digitizing my stuff, including books, music, photos, and videos, enables me to fulfill my dream of traveling lightly through life.

However, there is a downside also. Despite all the optimistic talk about “cloud computing” there is the possibility of “technological difficulty,” such as the time my complimentary click-and-build website vanished from the ether one day. While it can be argued that I got what I paid for, it was nonetheless an unwelcome reminder of technology’s shortcomings.

The bottom line of all this is that technology as a tool is one of the most revolutionary innovations ever devised by man, but it must be used wisely and with integrity if we are to reap its vast rewards and realize its promise of keeping us all in touch with each other, wherever we are.

Making Sweet Music

One of my very favorite quotes is from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Don’t die with the music still in you.” It speaks to me of the need to live life in such a way as to allow the creative gift that lies within each of us to find its voice. Whether it is through the actual playing of music or not, we are each gifted with creative ability meant to be shared with others and designed to enrich our own lives.

On that note, if you’ll pardon the pun, today I came across another musical quote attributed to William Henry Channing: “To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common–this is my symphony.”

To give credit where it’s due, I discovered Channing’s quote at a minimalist blog I’ve been reading lately called Miss Minimalist. And lest readers assume it is simply another “decluttering” site, while it does cover personal organization it is much more than that. It is an excellent resource for anyone desiring to live a life less encumbered with STUFF and movingly portrays minimalism as the meaningful lifestyle that it is.

Affluence Without Abundance

I came across a provocative phrase this weekend while reading a sample chapter from tech titan Kevin Kelly’s new book, What Technology Wants: “affluence without abundance.” As I got to thinking about it, I realized that it describes what I want also. It is technology that enables me to enjoy “the good life,” including being able to live and work from anywhere with a laptop and cellphone. And I love the liberty it affords me.

Consequently, my wife and I have been radically rethinking what “the American dream” means for us and we have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t necessarily include the stereotypical “white picket fence” concept of home ownership anymore. While we built our dream home, a cozy cottage, here in a quaint community, lately we’ve grown less in love with “owning” than with “roaming.”

The last dozen years of home ownership have been rewarding for us but the call of adventure is beckoning us to live more lightly and capitalize on our ability to live the mobile lifestyle, personally and professionally. This month alone, we’ve parted with our lawnmower and yard equipment in anticipation of moving and traveling. And we are trying to sell our bicycles and some other stuff also.

It was none other than Jesus Christ who said, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And for my wife and I, liquidity has become the new luxury. So, we are in the process of getting out of debt by selling our home and most of our possessions, giving away much of what we don’t sell, and preparing to pack as little as we can live with in pursuit of our dream, wherever it leads.

My Simple Desk

A photo I submitted of my writing desk is featured today on a cool site called Simple Desks. The site is billed as “A Collection of Minimal Workspaces” curated by Pat Dryburgh and it features some other cool spaces also. The common denominator for most of the postings seems to be a Mac computer, whether a desktop or a laptop like mine. Click on the site to check it out for yourself and feel free to post that you like my minimalist setup.

Curb Your Materialism

My wife and I have never subscribed to the consumerist philosophy but lately we have been even more vigilant than usual in guarding against materialism. Aside from the obvious financial benefits of living within our means, it has also freed us from the pressures of possessions. We’ve discovered that the less we possess the less we stress.

From the start of our marriage, a scriptural principle from Matthew 6:33 has guided us: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” What it means to us is that as we place the things of God first in our lives then the things of this world stay in their proper place. In other words, we possess our things instead of them possessing us.

Throughout this year, we have intentionally gone through our house paring down our possessions in anticipation of living a more mobile lifestyle. In fact, our mantra has become, “Minimize to mobilize.” Instead of materialism we’ve embraced the tenets of minimalism. Less IS more and we are reaping the benefits of it daily. We’ve never strived to own tons of stuff, but we’ve even whittled down what we had.

As part of our move toward minimalism, I’ve followed several minimalist blogs, including one by Dave Bruno at www.guynameddave.com, which advocates what has come to be known as the 100 Thing Challenge. It simply suggests trying to downscale one’s possessions to 100 things. While I am not there yet, and may never be, it got me to thinking about how much extraneous stuff I own and has motivated me to donate hundreds of books and countless spare household items to my local library and thrift store, respectively.

Outlive Your Life

Bestselling author Max Lucado has another blockbuster hit on his hands with his latest book titled Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference. With his finger firmly on the pulse of today’s reading public, Lucado stresses the value of living for more than the next paycheck or pleasure cruise by using the biblical book of Acts as the roadmap for living a life of dynamic faith.

Lucado reminds readers that Acts is the one book of the Bible still being written today in the sense that believers are commissioned to continue doing the works of Jesus and His contemporaries. His signature conversational style makes his latest title a pleasure to read also and its meaningful message of living with eternity in mind makes one think of how to better live the one life each of us has been given.

With poignancy and passion Lucado challenges readers to look beyond themselves and their circumstances toward a selfless life filled with good deeds done in the name of Christ and His cause: “Here’s a salute to a long life. Goodness that outlives the grave, love that outlasts the final breath. May you live in such a way that your death is just the beginning of your life.”

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Hamlet's Blackberry

Hamlet’s Blackberry is a quirky title for a compelling book that causes readers to think of today’s technology in light of timeless principles such as personal distance, space, inwardness, and others. It is an elegant and eloquent treatise on tech tools and how we as humans can better navigate and negotiate their usage in daily life, both personally and professionally.

Written by former Washington Post technology writer William Powers, the book’s title is an allusion to the erasable writing tablet—the Blackberry of its time—used by Shakespeare’s character Hamlet. The underlying theme of the book is that we are more capable of coping with our digital devices than we give ourselves credit for but we must exercise self-restraint with them, including declaring “Internet Sabbaths,” as Powers and his wife do each weekend.

Alluding to the book’s subtitle, “A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age,” Powers writes: “Technology and philosophy are both tools for living, and the best tools endure and remain useful over long periods of time.” To that end, the author explores the lives of luminaries like Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Franklin, and Thoreau to uncover their respective philosophies for coping with the technology of their times.

Speaking of philosophy, Powers explains in his introduction that “We’ve effectively been living by a philosophy, albeit an unconscious one. It holds that (1) connecting via screens is good, and (2) the more you connect, the better. I call it Digital Maximalism, because the goal is maximum screen time.” As readers of Hamlet’s Blackberry are reminded, more is not necessarily better, and minimalism is quickly becoming the method for keeping tech in check.

Growing Green

Another often-overlooked way to simplify life is to grow green in our daily living. For years my wife and I allowed the conventional wisdom of the conservative movement, of which we were proudly a part, to convince us that being environmentally responsible meant being a “tree-hugger” or some such nonsense.

Over time, however, we found ourselves gradually embracing a philosophy of less is more as it relates to our daily consumption practices, particularly at the grocer. For example, due to a friend’s simple blog posting, we opted out of the “paper versus plastic” debate by buying a few reusable fiber bags for our grocery purchases.

Next, my wife and I decided to radically reduce the amount of incoming mail we received by opting out of direct mail lists and canceling our receipt of several catalogs that we used to order from regularly, whether we needed the stuff or not. Not only did we help save forests in the process, we also eliminated one of the chief enticements to our consumptive lifestyle.

Our latest move toward a smaller carbon footprint—words I never thought I’d use to describe my life—involves filtering our tap water instead of purchasing countless quantities of bottled water, which may or may not be of better quality than unfiltered tap water. The tipping point for us was an ad we saw featuring a bottle of water on an exercise machine with the caption [paraphrased]: “An evening at the gym…an eternity in a landfill.”

So what do these relatively minor actions all have in common? For starters, they add up to make a profound difference and each one started with us making a conscious decision to change our personal habits on a practical level after diverse promptings. One or the other may not make a global difference on its own, but taken together such simple changes can do a world of good.

The Productivity Myth

One of my favorite observations about the human race is that all too often we strive to live up to our name and so it is important to remind ourselves that God created us as human beings not human doings. The trouble with interpreting our lives merely in light of how much we achieve is that we pressure ourselves into thinking that our value lies solely in what we do rather than in who we are. Indeed, some people go so far as to commit suicide once convinced that they simply don’t measure up to society’s standards, however arbitrary and capricious.

Fueling the fire of disillusionment is the prevailing philosophy that more is better or what I call “the productivity myth.” Along with the Industrial Revolution came the era of intrusive time management studies and other methods for extracting maximum output from workers in an effort to increase the overall productivity of mass machinery and manufacturers. The only problem with that, of course, is that man was never meant to function as a machine, and when he does his soul shrivels up in the process.

I recently read an excellent summary of this very phenomenon in the book The Lonely American by Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz: “The cult of busyness may be fueled by current customs and technology, but it rests on three sturdy pillars of American life: Calvinism, capitalism, and competitiveness. From Calvinism comes faith that God is smiling on those who achieve material success. From capitalism comes a perpetual hope (realized often enough) that hard work and new ideas will be rewarded. From a reverence for the competitive spirit comes a genuine admiration for winners. These three intertwined ideas have helped create previously unimagined prosperity. They also invite us to try harder, to work longer, to give back (collectively) hundreds of millions of vacation hours each year, to treat each and every day as another day to succeed.”

Time Isn't Money

I have always valued time more than money. Even as a teenager growing up in rural Virginia, where my needs were few and my wants fewer, I often opted to work odd jobs rather than punch time clocks so I could spend spare time with family and friends or curl up with a good book at my local library. Call me a dreamer but I am most comfortable living life untethered to chronological contraptions.

My dream has always been to function as autonomously as possible, both personally and professionally. Perhaps that is why after more than two decades of wedded bliss my wife and I don’t have any kids or pets, and I’ve operated my own consulting business from home for the past decade or so. There is something alluring about being able to live and work from anywhere with a cell phone and a laptop that appeals to the nomad in me.

As Judith Shulevitz writes in The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, “When time is money, speed equals more of it.” Contrary to popular belief, however, time isn’t money. It is more valuable than that. Nowadays, the ultimate luxury is the ability to structure your time however you see fit. And one way to achieve that lifestyle is to realize that the “good life” isn’t necessarily the “goods life.” The simple truth is that you don’t have to work as much if you aren’t striving to get more stuff.

Publish or Perish

I recently read the online edition of an insightful article by media maven Ken Auletta from the April 26, 2010 issue of The New Yorker titled “Publish or Perish: Can the iPad Topple the Kindle and Save the Book Business?” and highly recommend reading it at www.newyorker.com. It is invaluable material for anyone involved in publishing today.

To get a comprehensive perspective of publishing’s challenges Auletta interviews several industry insiders for the article, including Amazon vice president of Kindle content Russ Grandinetti, who personally thinks that publishers are asking the wrong questions about the future.

According to Grandinetti, the real competition is not between traditional books and e-books. “TV, movies, Web browsing, video games are all competing for people’s valuable time. And if the book doesn’t compete we think that over time the industry will suffer,” Auletta quotes Grandinetti as saying. Consequently, Grandinetti suggests that to thrive publishers have to reimagine the book as multimedia entertainment.

Auletta reports that, along with others, David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, is actively embedding audio and video and other value-added features in e-books. According to Auletta, Rosenthal says that the iPad “has opened up the possibility that we are no longer dealing with a static book. You have tremendous possibilities.”

Whoever wins the e-book sweepstakes, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: readers want what they want when they want it and the publishers who are ready, willing, and able to accommodate them will profit by meeting the need for convenient, cost-effective delivery of compelling content.

Power to the People

According to an article in today’s New York Times titled “Aiming at Rivals, Starbucks Will Offer Free Wi-Fi,” the ubiquitous coffee chain will finally do the right thing and serve up complimentary hotspots with its hot coffee starting July the 1st. Apparently the move is an effort to reach the newly unemployed and mobile clientele who were heading to the local library or other neighborhood hotspots for their daily fix.

As I blogged about in my 07/30/09 posting titled “Join the Revolution,” Starbucks has offered a couple free hours with an active customer card for the last year or so but it is high time it joined the likes of Panera Bread, Barnes & Noble and even McDonald’s in offering unlimited online access.

Through a partnership with Yahoo, Starbucks is offering patrons free online articles, music, videos and other content, including free access to paid Web sites like those of The Wall Street Journal and Zagat and free iTunes downloads. And perhaps best of all, patrons will no longer need to endure the cumbersome log-in process that Starbucks used to require.

Personally, I am thrilled about the announcement since I’ve had my share of frustrating log-on experiences at various Starbucks, particularly during a holiday visit to New York City, where I never was able to get online at any of the several Starbucks we frequented. As I’ve grown fond of saying, “power to the people!”

Total Recall

I just finished reading a thought-provoking book entitled Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, fellow researchers at Microsoft. I first became acquainted with Gordon Bell several years ago when I heard about his project called MyLifeBits, in which he digitizes his entire life.

He writes about how he embarked on his journey in 1998 when a friend asked him to digitize the books he had written and once Bell saw the benefits of going paperless he committed to it, scanning articles, letters, pictures, receipts, and all the other detritus of life. One year later, the task became so overwhelming that he had to hire an assistant to help with the scanning.

Bell stresses the difference between the private digitization that he does, which he calls lifelogging, and the public practice of today’s Twitterers, which he calls life blogging. One of the special devices he employs to help him capture the events of his life is called a SenseCam, which snaps intermittent pictures throughout his daily comings and goings.

As Bell states, three technologies are converging to make the world of total recall a reality: ubiquitous digital recording and sensing devices, relatively inexpensive storage space, and expansive search and analysis capabilities. The tools he prescribes for digitizing life include a smartphone, a GPS unit, a digital camera, a personal computer, an Internet connection, and a scanner.

Regarding the payoff of total recall, Bell suggests: “I got started in this by wanting to get rid of all the paper in my life. Then I wanted better recall; then a better story to leave to my grandchildren. Soon I became aware of potential benefits for my health, my studies, and even a sense of psychological well-being from decluttering both my physical space and my brain.”

Celebrating Life

This is my 100th posting so I thought I would write about something profound, like the need to celebrate life. A couple of recent incidents have conspired to make this top of mind for me. One Sunday morning earlier this month, as my wife and I were preparing to go speak at a local church, a neighbor’s oak tree fell onto our house, narrowly missing my wife. And on the Friday of that week she was laid off from her job.

The good news is that our insurance is replacing the entire roof and my business has picked up the slack from my wife’s job loss. It suffices to say my wife and I have been reminded of the fragility of life and the resulting need to handle it with prayer. Despite what might ordinarily threaten our tranquility we have been supernaturally sustained by peace that surpasses our understanding. As the saying goes, “life’s a gift, that is why it’s called the present,” and my wife and I are very aware of how much we have to celebrate.

Content is King

In his book ©ontent: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, author Cory Doctorow argues that digital rights management (DRM) is bad for artists, not the least of which are writers.

He feels that such measures meant to liberate artistic creativity instead manage to limit it. In the age of the iPad and similar devices designed to facilitate the digital reading experience, his commentary is made all the more compelling.

According to Doctorow, “New media don’t succeed because they’re like the old media, only better: they succeed because they’re worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at.”

The point he makes is that content is king and thus made to morph: “Books are good at being paperwhite, high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb it.”

I don’t know that I’m on the exact same page as Doctorow but I do find myself agreeing with his overall thesis: “New technology always gives us more art with a wider reach: that’s what tech is for. Tech gives us bigger pies that more artists can get a bite out of.”

Mobile Office

Since I work from my home office most days, I like to try to get out of the house at least one day a week to get some fresh air and socialize with other human beings. Lately I’ve been venturing out to my favorite Panera Bread, which is near my wife’s workplace and which I blogged about in my 06/15/09 entry titled “Mobile Avenue.”

The attached picture features my mobile office, including my Targus Sport backpack, Apple Powerbook laptop, Nokia cell phone, Moleskine reporter notebook and Cross mechanical pencil. Not pictured is my Touch iPod, which I was listening to at the time and my Leica digital camera, with which I took the picture.

What I particularly like about Panera Bread—besides their free Wi-Fi, which I mention in the above entry—is that they play classical music throughout the day and serve hazelnut cream cheese to go with my blueberry bagel and hazelnut coffee. And the fact that my favorite location features a gas fireplace doesn’t hurt either.

Sabbath Manifesto

There is a growing movement among people toward a more sustainable mode of living and one way it is taking shape is in the form of Sabbath celebration. While originally a scriptural concept, the trend of throttling back one day a week has been gaining more and more momentum as the pace of life has moved to mach speed.

There is even a non-profit group, called Reboot and comprised mostly of both practicing and non-practicing Jews, which has established a National Day of Unplugging. Set to last from sunset today, March 19, through sunset tomorrow, March 20, guidelines for participating are outlined at the group’s website at www.sabbathmanifesto.org.

The group suggests ten principles for commemorating Sabbath: avoid technology, connect with loved ones, nurture your health, get outside, avoid commerce, light candles, drink wine [or non-alcoholic beverage], eat bread, find silence and give back. For purposes of unplugging, it is suggested to avoid all technology as much as possible.

My wife and I typically try to stay off our computers and cell phones on the weekends as it is, but we are planning to turn off our televisions, telephones and other technological gadgetry tomorrow also. There is a classic car show coming to our hometown tomorrow and I think that will be a welcome interlude for us to enjoy sans electronic intrusions.

Creative Corner

While online the other day I came across a picture of the actual desk where my wife’s favorite author, Jane Austen, is reported to have created her bestselling novels. What struck me about it was its diminutive size. No larger than a tea table, it looked barely large enough to eat scones at, much less create the literary masterpieces for which Austen is known.

What I can’t help thinking is whether Austen didn’t need as much exterior space because she had adequate interior space as a result of the time and place she lived. She not only lived during a kinder, gentler period, but she also wrote from a place more attuned to the reflective pace necessary to think and create.

One of the highlights during my and my wife’s holiday vacation to New York City was our visit to the Morgan Library, where there happened to be an exhibit of Jane Austen’s original writings. It was inspiring to see firsthand the handwriting of a genius and to witness the fruits of her creative labor.

And here at home, my wife and I recently sampled several movies via Netflix that adapt Austen’s trademark wit to the big screen. Nearly two hundred years later, it is readily apparent that she had an innate understanding of the human condition. What’s more, it is amazing how much creativity she was able to conjure up in her creative corner of the world.

Free Book

As if the book’s bright orange cover and it’s eye-catching title of Free Book written by a pastor named Brian Tome don’t call for your attention, the author’s compelling in-your-face cover admonition captures it: “I am a fanatic about freedom. And I’m fanatical about coming at you hard in this book. I’m tired of seeing people beaten down by the world’s systems and by religion. I’m sick of seeing people live safe, predictable lives while their God-given passions die. I hate the assumption that getting close to God means more rules and restrictions. No more. God’s offering real freedom. Get yours.”

The book is written in a simple, easy-to-read style and unpacks profound truth in a thought-provoking manner that challenges readers to rethink what it means to become a follower of Christ. Calling Christianity a relationship rather than a religion, the author suggests it is the love of God that sets people free to live life fully.

Sharing stories from his own life and ministry, the pastor gives real-world examples of the radical freedom to be found in the grace of God. People of all types can benefit from the straightforward message presented here, but particularly those needing a reminder of how much God loves them.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Less is More Too

For several years I have practiced many of the principles of the voluntary simplicity movement, including living within my means by limiting personal debt, etc. I don’t personally believe that life is a “zero-sum” proposition, meaning that if one succeeds others must suffer, so I never totally bought into the mantra of “live simply so others may simply live,” but I do get the spirit behind the sentiment.

On the other hand, when I used to hear the term minimalism I conjured up images of spare spaces devoid of warmth or welcome. However, over the course of this past month I have come across several blogs dealing with more of a minimalist message and must admit that I find myself embracing the “less is more” philosophy very much as my own.

One of the more revolutionary exercises in my newly invigorated move toward an ever simpler lifestyle has involved me going through our house room by room and excising everything according to the words of William Morris: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Consequently, my wife and I have methodically gone through our stuff together, gotten rid of much of it, and given more that remained to a local charity. For example, our small household of two does not need four telephones so we eliminated one and we downsized our Christmas decorations to fit into one large box instead of our attic.

As we did this, I identified some helpful principles that enabled us to move through the process of paring our possessions. First, choose quality over quantity by selecting the best and scuttling the rest. Second, challenge your assumptions by imagining a different space and structuring it accordingly. Third, leave no stone unturned by thoroughly going through things regardless of their sentimental value and such. If you don’t use it regularly, consider getting rid of it or giving it a better home. After all, simpler is better.

State of Reflection

If it’s December, ’tis the season to remember. I can’t help it, but this time of year tends to lull me into a state of reflection. And for the past couple of years, it’s helped me to compile a list of highlights from the last year, reminding me of several reasons to be thankful.

As I reflect upon the year’s highlights, I am reminded of how I’ve grown in my life, including the journeys I’ve traveled, books I’ve read, relationships I’ve cultivated and yes, gadgets I’ve gotten, among other things. I am not sure what it says about me but I have realized upon closer introspection that when my life needs rejuvenating, I tend to read a book, buy a gadget or go on a trip.

For example, when I craved a breakthrough recently, my reaction was to order some books off Amazon for a creative jumpstart, buy an iPod Touch for connectivity on the fly and experience a shared dream by celebrating the holidays in New York City with my beloved wife.

While in New York, I was inspired by the sketching of an art student at a museum to finally get a Moleskine notebook myself. And it was while snapping pictures there that I decided to spring for a Leica camera to develop my interest in photography. With my latest creative cache in mind, I collated a photo album of my favorite things for perusal at my gallery.

Pocket Computer

While I didn’t “need” another iPod, I took the plunge the other day and got an iPod Touch. Its capability as a pocket computer is what moved me to get it. The Touch has all the functionality of the iPhone less the phone. Its 5 ounce footprint saves me from toting my 5 pound laptop around much of the time and it is a ton of fun. I visit the New York Times for news on my porch and check the TV Guide for programs on my couch.

With Apple’s ample App Store, there is no shortage of free applications to download to the Touch, including one that allows me to read electronic books on it. My wife and I are headed to New York City for the holidays and I am looking forward to surfing wirelessly at neighborhood cafes during our visit. And I got an email from Delta notifying me that eBay is even sponsoring free WiFi on our flights to and from the Big Apple!