Taking Simplifying to the Next Level

Taking Simplifying to the Next Level

Some minimalism bloggers go beyond the superficial, and I so appreciate their writing. Some published authors really satisfy, such as Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez (Your Money or Your Life) and Duane Elgin (Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich). I’ve also found myself looking to religious texts for another level of simplifying.

But I’ve been simplifying, really, for most of my adult life. Now I’m wondering, what’s next? How do I level-up, go beyond “things” and dive deeper?

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A Bookworm Bucket List: Meeting Your Favorite Author

A Bookworm Bucket List: Meeting Your Favorite Author

This post was previously published on the BucketList.org blog in January 2015.

Authors are like rock stars to bookworms. So any bookworm bucket list will include meeting your favorite author, poet or essayist.

Who would be on your list? The author of your favorite book from childhood? The poet whose words were your first true love in a high school English class? Or the journalist who wrote the book that opened a whole new world to you?

At the top of my list are Wendell Berry, Thomas Moore, David Whyte, and Vicki Robin. Some of my favorite authors are no longer living, but I fantasize about asking Rumi, Alice Miller, Tee Corinne, or Flannery O’Connor to sign a book for me.

Luckily, I’ve met David Whyte and Thomas Moore and they were definitely bucket list experiences.

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Debt milestone: less than $10,000 left

Debt milestone: less than $10,000 left

I hit another milestone today: my total debt is under $10,000! I’m heading toward a seven-year low mark and I’m just doing full-on battle with the beast.

Since studying abroad in college, I’ve carried credit card debt. It ballooned when my income increased, a typical example of lifestyle inflation. Two years after graduating from college, I bought a brand new car and my student loans came due, all within the same summer.

See that big spike in the chart below?  Yeah, I’ve been recovering from that since 2005.

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New Year’s Reflections

New Year’s Reflections

I don’t like New Year’s resolutions, but I do like reflecting at the end of the year. And while I’ve tried some of the standard reflection questions (what worked well? what didn’t work so well?), I get pretty bored with them. So this year I came up with my own list.  It’s a bit quirky, but it works for me.

New Year’s Reflection Questions:

  • When did I last laugh so hard that I cried, (almost) peed my pants or hurt the muscles in my stomach?  What were the circumstances and can I replicate them at least twice as often in the new year?

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