Friday, 26 December 2014

The One Thing

Such a good Christmas present.  And just at the right time.

Sleep in 2015

I am going to aim to sleep for 7 hours a night.  I'm around the 5 to 6 per night at the moment and normally much less if in a hotel.

I will monitor sleep with a fitbit which I'll only wear in bed.

Tuesday, 23 December 2014

Morning Rituals

This is how my first hour in the morning looks like.

Pint of water
Aeropress Coffee with fresh beans
Basic Yoga stretches whilst water is cooling
Coffee and 30 minutes of non fiction reading
Walk the dog
Go for a run.

Normally from 6am to 7am. Every morning.

Photon - a post about Travelling Light

Over the past 25 years I've accumulated a lot of things. 
I moved out of my parents house when I was 21 and moved into a 2 bedroom maisonette. All I had was a TV, a stereo, some CDs, a load of records and a single bed. My mum bought me a couple of handmade 2 seater sofas as a moving in present. My little maisonette was very empty and sparce.
However it didn't stay like that for long. A series of girlfriends and improvements in my income soon had an effect on the contents of my life. I lived in that little maisonette for almost 10 years, it was my bachelor pad. I drank a lot in it, I smoked a lot in it and I shagged a lot in it. When I moved into my first proper house I needed to hire a truck and rope in 4 friends to help me move out.
My first proper house was a 3 bedroomed Edwardian Semi and huge compared to the maisionette. Knocked through lounge/diner, master bedroom, lodger's room and then my 'mancave' room. Huge garden too. It was an inappropriately sized house for my new wife and I but we soon filled it up with stuff.
We stayed there for nearly 10 years. The lodgers came and went, the house got renovated, garden remodelled, 2 young children came along and my 'mancave' room became a nursery. You know the rest. I started to earn a better than average income and spent all of it and then some.
3 years ago we moved to a bigger house. This time we actually hired a team of removal men to fill a lorry to drive less than half a mile to move us into our new house. We did no lifting or carrying. The lorry was jammed to the max and we even had pieces of hand made furniture that wouldn't fit in the new house.
When we started to decorate each room of this house we realised that we had so much stuff. We had moved things from house to house and hadn't even opened the boxes. My brother recommended a book called the '100 Thing Challenge' by Dave Bruno and my interest in simplifying my life and possessions started.
This is my journey, not my wife's or my childrens. I'm the Photon who's trying to shed his baggage and wanting to travel light. I'm setting the example for my family.
This blog will chart the journey and record the progress. I've already started but there's a long way to go. It's not easy flirting seriously with Minimalism with a wife and 2 children.
It's not easy when my profession is in the Advertising Industry where my main brief is to get people spending more money buying more stuff.
I hope you enjoy my journey as it unfolds.

Hello...

It's been a while eh?

So much has happened in my world since I last blogged here. I started my own business, left the rat race,  spent more time with my kids and have been around the house more.

2015 will be the year I start to simplify my life and this is where I'll document it. I toyed with the idea of setting up a new blog however I'm quite attached to this one so I'll carry on using it.

I'm not sure how to manage the adverts that appear on the page so please bear with me. I started a blog on SETT called photon however the platform is closing so I've decided not to faff about with smaller blogging sites. So... Back to blogger.

I'll cut and paste the entries here.

Another idea is to be able to blog entirely from my phone and not use a computer. I started this blog many years back with a brand new MacBook, I still have it but it's running very slow now.

Anyhow, it's good to be back. If you read this, do leave me a comment and say hi.