Five questions with Everett Bogue
1. What does living simply mean to you?
Simple living, for me, is a way to free my time and my resources to pursue what is important. My goal is to wake up in the morning and be able to do what I feel is important, and not be forced to do what someone else does. So far, so good. I’ve established a blog with an amazing audience that just keeps growing. I released an e-book, The Art of Being Minimalist. Both of these were really important to me, and living a minimalist life helped me achieve them.
2. Why is it important to you? (budget, politics, faith, etc)
The reason I’m living simply is for freedom. I made the decision to opt out of the 9-5 in order to pursue a life that was build around my fundamental interest: creating work that matters to people.
3. What steps have you taken to live simply in your day to day life?
Last August I quit my job, limited myself to 100 things, and booked a 1-way ticket to Portland Oregon. I had no plan, and very little resources. I ended up proving to myself, and hopefully to more people with my writing The Art of Being Minimalist, that living a sustainable minimalist life is a really good idea.
Anyone who is sitting at their desk at this moment, frustrated by the grind, should really take a look at their spending habits and see how they can get that under control. Living with less is one very powerful answer to a lot of frustrations that people have in the modern age.
4. What’s been the hardest part of your simple journey?
Starting. There was a brief moment in time around a year ago when I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. I would come home from work every day absolutely miserable, wondering what the future was like. I honestly spent a lot of time whining to people, I did this for probably a month or two. I wish I could take all of that time I spent complaining and put it towards figuring out solutions. Once I sought the answers, everything else just started to fall into place.
5. What advice would you give others who are on the living simple journey?
Figure out what your true priorities are. I believe this is the most important step when embarking on a simple living journey. You need to have a bigger reason to turn off the consumerist instinct that is so prevalent in our society — you can’t fight millions of advertising dollars with an indefinite goal. Whether this reason is ‘saving the planet’ or ‘so I can use my resources to create something that gives back’, it’s going to change for everyone depending on the situation.
Everett Bogue writes about living a simple minimalist life at Far Beyond The Stars. He is the author of The Art of Being Minimalist (of which we are a proud affiliate for). You can find him on Twitter at: @evbogue.
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