At some point you have to give up the map.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
Yesterday I took Yoga from a teacher who was simply reading the manual.
She said all of the stuff you’re supposed to say in a yoga class, but there was no feeling, no connection, no emotion. She was just doing what she was told.
There’s a huge difference between intellectualizing a process and creating an experience worth living. I suppose that’s what I try to do with this blog. I want to create an experience that makes you think about the implications of your actions.
I could just read the blog manual and create a successful blog. Something would be missing though. The heart, the soul, the quality of the work.
Yes, that means that occasionally I tell you things that challenge your perception of reality. Sometimes I tell you things that a generation ago would have been so completely untrue that they’re accepted as false by most people still.
Yes, you can work from anywhere.
Yes, you do not need many things.
Yes, advertising has enslaved you.
That doesn’t mean the things on fringes of reality are false. Conventional wisdom is often very wrong, because it’s conventional.
Life is a balance between reading the manual — the public record, the modern mythos of what is acceptable and what is not — and pushing the boundaries of what the rest of everyone thinks is acceptable.
I understand that it’s scary to wakeup from the American dream and realize there is another reality which might just be better. You could aspire to owning a McMansion and filling all the closets. You could find your freedom in French Fries.
Or, maybe you’d rather go vagabonding. You’ll find the secret of life on the road, in the hills and valleys, in the trees and the swamps. Silence in the newness of everything is beautiful.
Or you could read the established manual. Do what they told you to do in school. Get the house, the career in a dying industry, the aspirations of generations past. That life might be possible too, I admit that. But honestly, is it really what you want? Especially if this is the blog you’re reading.
I think not.
This minimalist life has no manual — though I’m did my best to write a small guidebook. Leo’s simple guide is brilliant too, but a guide can’t explain every nuance of every situation. You have to make your own decisions eventually, you have to pick a point where you decide to go where the map hasn’t been written.
There is no right way that’s been tread before on this path. Yes, it’s terrifying to open yourself to infinite possibilities. Yes, maybe something will go wrong. Yes, it’s you’ll make mistakes and take the wrong road once in awhile.
But isn’t that better than taking the same road, day after day, that millions of others have already tread?
I think it is.
Here are a few links that I hope will help you:
Your Backup Plan is Your Plan by Chris Guillebeau
$0-$5000 How to Make Money With Blogs by Glen Allsopp
Email and the Art of Short Replies by Jonathan Fields
Incoming! by Seth Godin
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