Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Voluntary Simplicity Reconsidered

My ideas about voluntary simplicity have evolved in the past year.

Over a year ago, I think it was largely couched in terms of "Freedom from..." Freedom from stress, being in an unhappy job, chronic back pain, not being where I wanted to be, being in a built up busy city. It was largely hinged upon negatives

Now the picture is different. Voluntary simplicity for me has a changed meaning and is about all this:

• The most efficient means of being happy in any given situation. 80/20 thinking - taking the least effort to produce the greatest personal happiness.
• Regulating desire - by deliberately wanting less and questioning consumerism as a culture I've found myself more easily satisfied with less. I have to work less hard to be happy.
• Being mindful - meditation and studying buddhism has taught me (intellectually at least) that there is only one place that exists. And that's here and now. So I don't bank all my hopes on a future that may never arrive. I try my best as often as I can to be present, here and now, experiencing this. Although I'm only at the beginning of discovering this, I have found that somehow I have more 'moments', like this famous quote:

“If I had my life to live over, I’d try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I’d be sillier than I have been on this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets. I would burn more gasoline. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.

 

You see, I’m one of those people who lives sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had my life to live over, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead each day. I’ve been one of those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a rain coat and a parachute. If I had my life to live over, I’d go places and do things and travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over I would start barefoot earlier in the spring & stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I wouldn’t make such good grades, except by accident. I’d ride more merry-go-rounds. I’d pick more daisies.”

-Nadine Starr

I can't say that I've made all the best decisions, or that life is perfect or anything like that. I'm not always happy and far from being permanently serene and zen about life. But somehow, and it's not even to do with where I am, there's been a big change.

Fundamentally, I think it's simply that I have learnt how to be more here and now. The moments have always been happening but I've just been too embroiled in my thoughts and delving into the mud of past memories and the spectres of futures to come, that I never really paid enough attention to here.

And rather than living frugally, or downshifting, or working on the land (all of which I am doing) it's this particular thing, this training, that has given a different surface, texture, quality to my experience of life.

It's crazy, really. Because all I do is sit in front of my light box with a cup of tea and try to follow my breath. And my mind runs off like a puppy. I acknowledge that, then come back.

That's all I do.

But for me, now, it's become the basis of a simplicity that I had never imagined.

I've spent so much of my life zoning out when I've been unhappy, or getting drunk, or going to sleep as an escape, or reading books, or immersing myself in dreams about what I want to happen in the future, or putting shovelfuls of hope into dreams and schemes. I was numbing out, avoiding.

But now I am learning to be here. And it's remarkable.

Sometimes when I get here, it's all so ordinary yet all completely transformed and miraculous.

In 2008, I plan to be 'here' more often.

It's the only place to be.

Golden [something] Hen

Spent most of the day helping get the hen houses ready and wired up to mains light for the winter.

The new hens are lovely and are Golden something or other.

For simplicity I have opted for calling them Golden Delicious.

We have to keep them in for 4 days so they get their HPS (Hen Positioning System) aligned. Otherwise they'd be roosting everywhere and we'd lose them all to foxes.

After that, we have to wait until they start laying.

I am reliably told by an expert with some 50 years of hen keeping experience that there are three ways to tell when hens are about to lay:

1. You can feel 2 bones at the back, if you can only fit one finger between the bones, they're not ready. When you can fit 2 fingers between, they're ready to lay. However, I am not that interested in finding out that I would want to feel 100 chickens.
2. The dangly bits (I have no idea what the name is for them, let me know if you know) which start off pink, start to turn red.
3. They start 'singing'. I'm not sure what they sing, but that's apparently what they do.

So there you go, that's what I've learnt about hens today, even if I don't know what breed they are...

Just a Quickie...

Gosh, so much has happened, I don't know where to start.

So for the moment, I just want you to know we're fine and all's well in Exeter.

I've worked at an organic farm called Shillingford Organics for three weeks, which  has been fantastic, and also a lot of hard  work (honestly, make the best of your veg box because it's hard work to grow it). That ended, because it was just for the harvest, but now I've found a new job.

Or rather, sort of helped create it. In short, through a series of talks with a local farmer, talking about my interests and background, I now have a job to create a sustainable kitchen garden (with lots of nifty permaculture) which grows produce for their farm shop, as well as being open to visitors to explain how organic food is grown, food miles and seasonality. The veg patch alone is just under an acre, and there will be all sorts to come: orchards, beehives, more chickens, some rare breed sheep.

Truly, I have landed slap bang in the middle of my good life dream...

I'm going to be working very hard, and I'm going to have to learn a lot, and there is so much to plan, and it's not going to be easy going, but what an adventure!

I'm going to do my best to keep you posted on everything that I am doing, as far as possible, but my posts will be more infrequent - there will be more micro-posts now.

That's it for right now, but I'll be back soon.

Rob

A Green Teaser for you...

I got a really interesting question through from Lint yesterday.

He asked which is greener - a 1 litre plastic bottle of Amstel beer, or a 1 litre glass bottle of Amstel beer.

Here is what I reckon:

I reckon the plastic bottle because of the following factors:

• How far it has been transported (glass is a fair bit heavier so takes more energy to move distances)
• If the plastic bottle can (and will be) be recycled (if not, will end up in landfill)
• What energy it takes to recycle (plastic needs lower temperatures to be recycled) or if it is dumped, how much energy it costs to take away (again glass is heavier adding to transport costs)
• Whether the glass bottle is on deposit (re-using is better than melting down and making into something else)
• -How much energy it takes in the first place to make the bottle and what kind of pollution it creates (plastics though made from oil need lower temperatures to make than smelting glass)

I reckon the plastic bottle wins by far because glass is heavier than plastic and takes more energy to recycle. Given the distance it would have travelled to Spain, I reckon this mounts up.

Have you tried weighing the difference between a full average glass bottle and the amstel bottles and working out what distance it might have travelled? Whatever % it is heavier, that might work as an estimate of the increase in transportation costs very roughly.

The really hard one is whether a plastic bottle from Holland would beat a similar glass bottle from Spain.

Any ideas?

LETS (Local Exchange Trading System)

Yes, Exeter does indeed have a LETS organisation.

http://www.exeterlets.org/

I love the way LETS is so subtle. It creates an economy where money is not used, essentially allowing people an agreed way of sharing skills and services as well as receiving them.

It's subtly radical and decentralist, just like the philosophy and practise of permaculture...

Asking the universe for what you want

Last night I was thinking about the kind of life we wanted in Exeter.

I'd already signed up for an allotment but I was told that the waiting lists we really quite long.

I also thought about the situation with having a dog. Since we will be in rented accommodation for a year, we wouldn't be able to have a dog.

So I posted the following advert on Exeter Freecycle:

Hello everyone,

I'm moving to Exeter in August with my partner. We're starting a new life, and we want to start getting to know people and the local community and get involved with some different things that interest us.

ALLOTMENT HELP OFFERED
Do you need help on your allotment? Is it just a bit too much for you to cultivate the whole thing?

I can offer a pair of hands to help with the bigger allotment jobs and help you get it under control, maybe for a bit of produce, or a bit of knowledge about vegetable growing, or even ideally the use of a scrap of ground you don't need to grow a few herbs myself.

DOG WALKING
We could help you out if your dog needs more exercise than you can give them.

We're looking for a friendly, well behaved dog to borrow occasionally for outings in the country and on the coast.

We're responsible people, and obviously you'd want to meet us first, but if it sounds like this arrangement could help you out, then drop me an email.

All the best and looking forward to moving in to Exeter and meeting you all.

Rob

The response so far has been fantastic. I've had kind offers from a whole bunch of people for bits of plot, and we've had offers of dogs we can borrow for country walks. How cool is that?

Just goes to show that maybe the universe does, after all, try to fit everything into its best place, and it helps if you make that intention known in one way or another.

Moreover, it goes to show how Freecyle is actually bringing us closer as communities, and thinking actively about how we can help each other out and contribute and give to our communities, as well as working out what we need and would like ourselves.

Does Exeter have a LETS (Local Exchnage Trading System) organisation I wonder?

It's not long until we move to Exeter, just another couple of weeks...

The Cosmic Boomerang.

I've now taken the step of shutting down my business, and god do I feel happy about it. Thanks to everybody online and offline for their support

I got some great comment from Mike, and I'd like to paste his comments here:

"I spent most of last year doing the same thing, only to discover that I'm at my best/happiest/wholest in the garden, occasionally writing (words and software).  So, now wrapping up the loose ends of what remains of my business "interests", and just going with the flow for a while.  It's bliss."

I also had dinner with a friend last night who also told me about someone a lot more successful than myself. This person writes bestselling novels and has just given up, to the consternation of their publishers, a project that doesn't feel right, that just doesn't inspire them.

I feel I have learnt something of a lesson about letting go. About having the courage to give something up that doesn't feel right, to follow your heart regardless of its own peculiar, often frustrating logic.

The files are being archived as we speak, and I have left in its place, a picture of a buddha. There is something wonderful and refreshing and freeing about letting it all go.

I worry sometimes that it may be yet another instance of me flitting from one thing to another. But something tells me that although there is a risk of that with my personality, there is also a greater force carving out a certain, almost inevitable path.

The path is massage.

I started training with Clare Maxwell Hudson a couple of years ago. I had just come out of a turbulent period of my life with a need to escape my life in London and get some time out. The escape I found was going round Europe in a campervan. That turned out to be a bizarre and not altogether wonderful experience, and after a minibus crash in Sorrento in Italy. But I still needed somewhere to chill out so I went to Thailand for two months, and wrote constantly in my journal. When the Tsunami hit on Boxing Day, and my family was frantically trying to get in contact with me not knowing if I was alive or dead, I was on the other side of the country sheltered from the devastation and unaware of it.

I came back home and started the massage course again. This was all down to Clare's kindness as she did not  make me pay to do the course again. Later that year redundancy threatened, and a new job loomed and I gave up once again, stupidly.

I can tell how this is looking. Bad.

But I find myself here and now, knowing that I have to complete my training as a massage therapist. There seems to be something inevitable about it, rather like a vast karmic/cosmic boomerang. Whatever I try to do, however I try to escape (university, corporate careers, far flung escapes and bizarre travel adventures) I am brought back to the same thing again.

I don't believe in destiny. It's an absolute construct. There's no such thing. It's generally something we map onto history with hindsight in order to confer it with some sort of narrative inevitability that serves our own purposes. And that's a whole load of rubbish.

But I do believe in following your own heart. In fact, the older I get, I believe that is the only way. Knowing yourself and following your heart. Because life is short and at the end we die. I believe my various bits and pieces will simply become part of the universe again. That's it.

Massage and aromatherapy is something that I have harboured in my heart since I was 17.

And I believe it's time to stop playing around and start following my heart well and truly. Because that's the only way there is.

Doesn't matter that it doesn't create fortunes. It does matter that what I do in life has to feel right to me, and only me.

Clare Maxwell Hudson has closed her school I was shocked to find a couple of weeks ago. And it sparked something in me.

So, Clare, if you ever happen to come across this, I'm back. And this time the cosmic boomerang is coming home to stay, because I can no longer run away from what I need to do.

Welcome to the weekend

We've got some stuff to do down in Exeter.

But we thought, why not make it into a weekend? Starting on Tuesday.

So we're going to the massive 145 square mile New Forest and camping overnight.

The New Forest is a great place. It's just massive and you can see its spread from this satellite image on Google.

So, wild horses, rustling trees, and sleeping bags and a few bottles of west country cider tonight.

Who says the weekend needs to start on Friday? Just one more reason for living voluntary simplicity...