Is It Minimalism?

Or just weird.

She studied the interior of my small space, then said, “This is weird, Daddy-O. And getting weirder.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Good weird, but weird.”

I trust daughters, so I listened. And sure, bike journeys have become my default state. This? This stationary existence does indeed feel weird, but that doesn’t mean it should look weird to others. And minimalism is fashionable, right?

I deflected with that. “This isn’t weird. This is minimalism.”

She smiled and offered, “Well, there’s one way to know for sure.”

So we watched YouTube. The first video was by a self-identified minimalist, but his home contained a lot for anything, well, minimal. He did a full tour of his kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Yeah, three rooms, not counting a bathroom. And although his vibe was super soothing, he had a lot of stuff. Sure, it was all positioned just so — an object lesson in feng shui — but it was still a lot of stuff. Among other things, he had furniture.

I had a chair. It folded to nothing and weighed less than two pounds, so it accompanied me on the bike. But it was still a chair. He had a couch and a chair and a table. A freaking table. With two whole other chairs.

“I think that’s what minimalism looks like to most who claim to be minimalists, Daddy-O, and that’s not you. But that’s a sample of one. Maybe he’s an outlier.”

So we also did some Googling. Well, DuckDuckGo-ing. Not what is minimalism? I’m craftier than that. I typed Am I a minimalist? Okay, not so crafty. After a few more misses, I typed Is it minimalist to buy the best? You’ve got to sneak up on algorithms, right?

The top result? Things a minimalist must own: our list of 111 items.

111 “must own” items? The only thing minimal about that list was its sense of irony.

Other results included: 25 Minimalist Home Essentials | Things I Buy as a Minimalist and The best purchases I’ve EVER made as a minimalist.

As for that last one, I thought purchasing was a materialist activity, while minimalism assumed, you know, not buying stuff.

By the way, quite enjoyable, that last one. An intelligent soul a third my age suggesting — oh so gently — a simpler approach? Yes, please. I subscribed and no longer think of minimalism as the opposite of materialism. Oh, and I already had several of the items she mentioned and immediately ordered one I didn’t.

And I acknowledged a daughter’s wisdom. I’m something other than a minimalist, and weird can be good. At least weird is not ordinary. Better yet, maybe we can dispense with labels altogether.

When I returned to my conventional house after the first two years of continuous bike travel, I felt overwhelmed by the scale of it all. There was even an outbuilding crammed with stuff, and two rooms looked more like astronomy showrooms than bedrooms.

The contrast with the freedom I’d felt when burdened for almost two years with no more than I could load on the Big was too much. I emptied that house, turned off the utilities, and locked the doors. It’s still there — still empty — and still no place for me.

And I guess that’s weird, too. But that house had come to represent something I regretted — the reclusive lifestyle I’d lived there for almost 20 years. Hiding. Waiting for … well, for that life to end.

Bike travel vanquishes solitude. I didn’t expect that aspect. People are curious about folks on overloaded bikes, and sometimes I literally couldn’t pedal fast enough to get away. I lost one such race once in Nevada, and the fellow was on foot. That encounter led to a magical week spent hiking Nevada’s mountains with that generous, inquisitive soul.

Before I pedaled away the first time, I joked to daughters that I was running away from home, to which one countered, “But you live alone, Daddy-O. Doesn’t that mean you’re running away from yourself?” No joke.

Eight years later, I still travel far by bicycle, but I’m also planning a tiny cabin, a structure I’ll build slowly with my own two unsteady hands — a small, tall, unconventional space, on a property where the people who are now my home live. Its exterior walls will be mostly glass and its interior mostly bare. Which is to say, as open and expansive as a tiny space can be.

Tiny cabins aren’t weird, are they?

Sometimes I play a game of surfing synonyms via an online thesaurus. Just now, a thread beginning with minimalism led to austerity which led to sobriety, and eventually to the word which resonated most, simplicity.

Clear skies.

Gary

PS: Of the 13 items listed in that The best purchases… video, I already had an e-reader, a French press, and noise-canceling earbuds. The French press stays at home base, not on the Big. It’s a durable travel press. I could pack it on the Big. But it feels too big for the Big, so I don’t.

The item I purchased after watching that video was a sunrise alarm clock. It, too, stays when I’m away. I wake at dawn and retire at sunset when traveling — if not stargazing. But nights are too long for my sleep cycle when at home in winter. My ambition for the sunrise alarm was that it simulate a 5:00am dawn when the real dawn is so much later than I desire. Trying to control sunrise feels weird — you know, for an astronomer —  but there you go.