Imagine ending homelessness for a fraction of the cost
I would also frame it “as most of the global north fails.”
Stuff is your finite hours on this planet
“…[I] looked around my room and saw how dull everything was, not because it was lacking but because of how full it was of stuff.
Stuff I didn’t particularly love. Stuff with no serious meaning to it. Stuff I didn’t care about. Stuff that, if you had secretly tossed, I wouldn’t even realize went missing. Stuff I bought because it was trendy at the time, because my friend had it, because I had seen attractive influencers my age brag about it on Instagram, and it made me think that I could be her.
So, I did a bit of Marie Kondo-ing and produced a few large bags of clothes and trinkets and stuff for donation. Standing in front of all my stuff, it hit me that all of it used to be money, and all of that used to be time. I was standing in front of the metabolic waste of my existence, materialized. I was looking at the amount of my time, therefore my life, that had been turned into garbage. ”
Rest in peace, Norm
I have been following Norm and Tina for about 3 years now. This charming couple moved to Canada from the UK in the early 90s, raised a family and then sold their home and retired early. They then travelled and started a youtube channel: This is Our Retirement.
I came across this video when it started circulating on other channels by Financial Advisors where they broke down how to retire on just $300000, which got them a big following:
They always seemed so active and healthy: they walked every day, tried to watch their diet and they lived a generally low-stress lifestyle doing the things they enjoyed. So it was an absolute shock to me when Tina announced recently that Norm had passed away a day after his 70th birthday party, following a triple bypass surgery. I actually screamed and cried, “NOOOOO!” when I saw it, which just speaks to the power of parasocial relationships. I am devastated for Tina and their family.
But also: how great is it that Norm retired at 55 instead of 65? He had 15 years of retirement with Tina as opposed to 5 (or maybe even 0 for some folks). It just speaks to the idea that you never quite know what the future holds so you may as well take giant leaps of faith when you can.
To make it a bit about me, when I retired I was 42. I announced it to a small audience on social media. When reading all of the kind comments from friends, family and old colleagues I had the darkest thought: some of these folks who are concerned about me today may actually be diagnosed with worse things or pass away before me. This, of course, has happened in the past 8 years. I’m not trying to be edgy or goth about the entire thing so much as reiterate that there is no knowing about the future. We have to take things as they come and live our lives in the best way that we can.
In the end, I am glad Tina is carrying on with the channel and it is my heartfelt wish that she is surrounded with love and support both by friends and family. It’s also good to take a moment when these things happen and reflect on whether or not you are living your best life (given your circumstances). I wish you all, a very merry reflection on “…what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Enjoy your weekend, friends.
Simple Living: wherever you go, there you are
If you didn’t live through the mid-90s, early aughts you have no idea the ABSOLUTE chokehold the “Idiot’s” and “Dummies” guides had on the culture
I gave up most social media with never ending scroll news feeds and instead I focus on a few YouTube channels and Reddit feeds. It’s about an hour a day of entertainment for me and I ruthlessly remove any subs/channels that get too bogged down or repetitive. Recently, that was r/simpleliving.
Truthfully, it is because there were too many posts asking for advice. I realized that “simple living” content was trending a bit on tiktok, thus driving people to Reddit for advice on how to slow down. Cue myriad posts along the themes of: how do I get off of social media apps? How do I live a minimalist lifestyle? How do I stop shopping so much? I want to slow down but I have debt, help! How do I move to the country and start a homestead?
To summarize: these folks think simple living is moving to the country and having an *~aesthetic~* beige farmhouse where they own very few things, choose analog vs. Digital (except for, you know, their instagram reels), and instead of a job, they garden and feed their chickens in perfect makeup and unsoiled linen dresses. It’s basically what is being sold on carefully curated social media accounts (“Use my coupon code for 20% off a linen dress for the farmyard!”) and while it looks great, it’s completely unrealistic and most of these videos are unrelated to actually living a simpler life.
Can these things be part of a simple life? Yes, of course. Is it the only path to a simple life? Absolutely not.
I was writing about simplicity on livejournal in the late 90s/early 00s and I completely get the dream that lines up with the *~aesthetic~*. From my urban 500sq ft box in the sky, I dreamed of buying a farm that had a heritage farmhouse, sprawling gardens and farm animals. Centred around my bucoloic dreams was quiet – so much quiet! When we visited The Pharm[1] a few times a year I would soak in every moment in nature surrounded by rolling fields and a chorus of birdsong. The beauty! The nature! The quiet! Oh my!
As it turns out though, I never did move to the country. I ended up staying in the city, living in mid-century, quasi-urban suburbs. I was much happier being able to use public transportation and to live somewhere where I could walk or bike to the things I needed. When The Eldest was born, we didn’t even have a car. I walked to the grocery store, the library, the YMCA and playgroups. My kids grew up surrounded by friends and neighbours who would meet every day at the park for a few hours. In retrospect, that was a much more simple life for me than driving a half an hour to go anywhere. We now live even further from downtown than our old house was and I have what I really wanted all along: quiet & access to nature. We can walk to the river, the MUP/Trans-Canada trail and everything I need is within a 5 minute drive[2]. Both of the kids take public transportation to school and most of their friends live nearby. As it turns out, while the *~aesthetic~* of country living was appealing, I really do enjoy the amenities that come with living in a city. Of course, there is also the elephant in the room: being self-sufficient in the country is basically impossible if you are disabled. Had we even gone that route we would have absolutely have had to come back to the city in under less-than-ideal circumstances. But still, our life is generally pretty simple: we keep our formal activities to a minimum and focus on seeing our friends often but not in situations where we have to spend a ton of money. We may do takeout and a games night on the pricier end but we are also big fans of themed potluck get-togethers and homemade pizza and a movie.
Edward Carpenter popularized the term Simple Living in this essay
For most people, the turn to simple living is not actually about the bucolic ideal or minimalism but instead the dissatisfaction with their own lives. Simple living can be all or a few of these things:
1 – Minimalism – including digital minimalism.
2 – Frugality & watching your conspicuous consumption.
3 – Meditation/being present.
4 – Prioritizing relationships over things.
5 – Living your values, faith or spirituality.
6 – Homesteading/self-sufficiency.
7 – Environmentalism/social justice.
8 – Working less/reaching Financial Independence.
…and so on.
At its core though, Simple Living is a philosophy. It’s a way to structure your life so that you aren’t getting swayed by shiny things that sap your time, money and energy that don’t really add value to the quality of your life. It’s about drilling down to figure out what truly makes you happy and then aligning your life to focus on those things and letting the rest go. If you say you really want to spend more time with your best friend, why do you never make the plans? If you want to take a sabbatical from work and travel for 6 months, why are you spending so much money on Uber Eats? The point here is not to shame or judge people – we all have different wants, needs, and resources. It’s perfectly ok to move to a cabin in the woods but still own a fleet of classic cars that you work on and that bring you joy. The modern world is designed to separate you from your resources to line the pockets of others and simplicity is a process of unpacking where you want to spend your finite resources of time (including attention), energy and money. You are making a conscious effort to step off of the treadmill and figure out what really does serve you and focus on realigning yourself so that you are prioritizing those things.
But like everything else, there is only so many short form videos you can watch or influencers you can follow before the realization hits you: you need to do the work. That’s where the problem lies. Consuming content often feels like praxis but don’t let that confuse you; consuming content is just another way for tech companies to seize your most precious resource: your finite hours on this earth. The irony of consuming short form videos on how to lead a simple life via digital minimalism is not lost on any of us, for sure. But ya gotta start somewhere and if some random tiktok video encourages you to get your eyeballs off of social media, well great. There is a kind of justice in the universe if these social media companies lead you down the Simple Living path though, and I am here for it.
[1]Before everything went to hell, a good friend of mine lived an hour outside of the city on 200 acres. She would host amazing parties on the Solstices where we would decamp to the country for the weekend. Some of my best memories – and best friends – are from this time.
[2]Walking isn’t my forte these days but I do have a trike I can also take, but I rarely do.
Amusing ourselves to debt death
Monday night hot dates with dead intellectuals (from 1985)
Aurora borealis
Two nights ago the Northern Lights were out in full force. The Eldest and I headed outside (The Youngest wanted to sleep because she gets up early for Art School) and we OOOHed and AWWed in the dark of the backyard. It also helps that we are near the Greenbelt and we back onto a park. Mr. Tucker took these photos because my phone is an iPhone 8 which may as well be a rotary phone in 2025 (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is my motto!).
You can see the big dipper quite clearly here
Your Thrift Habits (1948)
The basics never change
Goodbye spendy summer, hello frugal fall
Morning of the last dragon boat festival of the year
We’re heading into Autumn and we kissed the summer goodbye at an End of Summer bonfire & BBQ party on the Mississippi River (no, not that one) this past weekend. It was a classic Canadian fall day where you leave the house bundled up in a sweater because of the chill and then by 2pm you’re boiling hot and the sun is beating down on you. Then as soon as dinnertime hits, it’s cold and dewy again. A friend from dragon boat hosted a lovely afternoon at her house and it was nice to be outside on what will probably be one of the last warm days of the season.
Em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye
Dragon boat ended the last week of August, another season under my belt. It’s just as well: the kids were back in school the following Monday so over the long weekend we tried to get as many lingering “big” chores done as we could. Like many folks, this included cleaning out the garage and selling or giving away a few things that we no longer use. Since many people use this weekend to clean out their garages, enough folks were driving around scouring the neighbourhood for free stuff that we didn’t have to haul a lot to the dump. WIN/WIN.
Summers tend to be lackadaisical here at The Mullet. We don’t tend to eat together, we all have different activities, different schedules and different sleep patterns. The week before school starts we tend to tighten it back up slowly by meal prepping, organizing school supplies (and buying only what is needed), doing more baking for lunches, and getting to bed before midnight. The summer is also for random visits to the ice cream parlour, hot dates on patios, overspending at events, hitting the local microbreweries & food trucks, and hosting parties. It tends to be a very spendy time of year but I don’t think about it much. But the end of summer also marks the tightening of the budget.
These Ground Cherries went into into an amazing spice cake
This year we’ve been hit by a bunch of random expenses (which honestly, aren’t random at all). I have to pay quarterly taxes this year because it makes more sense for Mr. Tucker to claim most of the tax credits. The pool heater died 3 months after the warranty was up. We redid the floors in the condo, the car needed some work, we had to buy a new dishwasher (and pay a plumber to install it, we tried but the pipe needed to be cut down), and of course our car insurance doubled because The Eldest is now driving. When I say random, what I really mean is that I always have money tucked away for emergencies or for planned spending but a lot came at us at once so the accounts are on the low side. It happens.
But I also know I will feel better if I watch my spending for a bit. The kids have their own budgets to manage and I just will be a bit tighter with my discretionary spending for awhile. I have a trip planned with some girlfriends in November *and* I am throwing myself a 50th birthday bash a week later, so a lot of my discretionary spending over the next two months will go towards those two things. I find our spending ebbs and flows during the course of the year and I get more or less spendy depending on the weather.
A friend’s 50th birthday! There are a few of us this year
Now that fall has ushered itself in, so has my desire to stay close to home. It’s just as well, our garden is overflowing with peppers, tomatoes and herbs and it’s about to get busy with the processing for winter. Tonight I fire roasted some tomatoes, made a salsa and then I crushed & froze 2 litres of tomatoes for future meals. More tomatoes are ripening and I’d like to get some sun dried tomatoes done before the frost comes. We usually get bulk apples (does anything represent September more than the humble apple?) from a friend but it looks like her family is retiring from the apple biz, so I will have to hit the farm stand up the road to get some fresh apples. I like to chop a bunch up & dehydrate some for winter…and of course we eat a pile of them because they’re so good this time of year.
I am probably one of the few people who know their family eats 10lbs of fresh garlic in a year
Other than that, it’s helping the kids get organized for school & activities. The Youngest is doing her snowboard instructor training this year as well as volunteering at the library. She recently discovered that she can read books and write reviews on them in exchange for volunteer hours and so she’s over the moon! She came home from the last volunteer meeting with a giant pile so it looks like she will tackle that. The Eldest and I are still hammering out what courses she needs for university. It’s been a stressful and chaotic beginning to the school year because it feels so *dire* to be choosing what classes to take for her last year of high school in order to get into the programs/schools she wants. I’ve told the kids that nothing is set in stone and that life has many do-overs but it’s still stressful for a 17-year-old to try and figure out a path for a career she wants to spend 3-5 years in school for! She can always switch majors but I get it – it’s a lot.
The last BAC show of the season. Next year is MEH so we will be skipping
Labour day also marked one of the happiest changes of the season: it’s video game time again! I quit playing games from May to September because I like to be outside more. It’s just a good way to prevent myself from staying inside and being a mushroom with thumbs. I know that I am late to the party but I am still working on The Witcher 3. Will I finish before The Witcher 4 comes out? Stay tuned! I’d also like to play Cyberpunk this winter, it’s just sitting there on my Steam account taunting me. I don’t tend to watch a lot of tv & movies generally but in the summer it drops to zero. Still, I have a few shows to watch – like the last season of Taskmaster – which will keep me company now that sitting outside is less of an option.
I guess that’s what makes it a frugal fall: video games, tv and food preservation. But mainly, it’s staying close to home & having fewer social events as the cold weather hits. By next month Canadians realize that life doesn’t stop for weather and the transition back into social events will begin in time for spooky season.
BBC documentary: Throw it Away!
A 1964 video about conspicuous consumption and disposable culture
Finland: the happiest country
“…Finnish happiness has nothing to do with how jolly they may or may not be as a people. “It has less to do with how ‘ha ha, smiling, happy’ people are, and more to do with: There’s less reason to be unhappy in Finland than any place else. You can think about all the things that can make people unhappy, and Finland has less of them,” he said. He talked about how his children are safe from gun violence, the sacredness of personal time, the knowledge that if he and [his wife] became sick, or couldn’t pay the mortgage, or lost their house, there would be a social safety net there to catch them. “Everyone takes care of everyone else, to some extent,” he said.
Given all this, I expected David to tell me frankly that, no, it’s not possible to “learn to be happy” like a Finnish person, because it’s about what society offers you. That’s not what he said. “It’s also about an acceptance of what you’ve got, and being grateful for it,” he told me. You absolutely could learn.”