It’s really about a lifestyle.

 

Choosing #VoluntaryRadicalSimplicity was about not participating in things that seemed to be complicit in destroying peace and happiness for myself and others.

I certainly wasn’t at peace getting up each morning to “dress for (someone else’s) success”. It was getting clearer and clearer that I was running on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast and using up my valuable life doing something that I was beginning to hate.

Yes, it did require me to participate in said system just long enough to get to the point that I could leave it all behind. Every. Single. Day. of my career was spent angling for ways to use it to get out of it. Every. Single. Day.

Now every single day is about getting up to see what success nature has brought to my attention. I’m in love.

I see so many posts each day that could cause me the same anxiety that used to fuel my drive to escape the status quo. Articles about exactly how to get good soil. Exactly how to maximize your space. Exactly how to not do or to do this or that.

I try to utilize my intuition instead for it has sustained me all throughout my life thus far. For me now, dressing for success is getting up and putting on the same dirty clothes I wore yesterday to fill up with yet more dirt. It’s about not looking in the mirror to see if I am acceptable but rather getting out there where the birds and bees and flowers and trees could not care one iota about how I look but rather that I put out some water for them, or plant flowers that they like, or throw out some seeds that they can steal…

Yes, I’m in love with life now, finally.

I guess I always have been but I had to tolerate the invasion of the body snatchers just long enough to find a way to escape them.

Now the daily task is to assist nature the best that I can so that I might be rewarded with ever more natural peace and happiness.

 

Self imposed daily rituals only involve utilizing the least of things for the most of things.

 

And maybe, getting to the library in time to check out a new collection of movies to watch in the evenings.

It’s all I can do to get cleaned up enough to go shopping for essentials.

 

As my house continues to fall into ever more disrepair, I try to imagine how I could live without it. There is no point in worrying.

Every. Single. Day. is for not letting other people’s bad politics infiltrate what can otherwise be a day for improving something, anything.

Will there be a nuclear attack? It sure seems that it is being normalized to be expected. Oh, woe is me! What can I do? I know…I can plant food. I can not drive my car. I can eat an organic, plant based diet. I can not participate in anything that supports what is at the root of all the destruction; using resources that are scarce. I can live a voluntarily radical lifestyle. It’s the best I can do.

And, possibly…not vote! Yep, you heard it here. That also is participating in a corrupt system that needs to be extinguished. At least in my humble opinion. It isn’t working; at least not fast enough.

So I will continue to plant food and flowers in hope that enough people will plant food and flowers enough to change things the real, good way.

And…I would like to learn how to paint clouds.