Would You Give Up Everything to Live More Simply?

In February of this year I was a successful photographer paying rent on two studios, one glass office in midtown, a big house, and school tuition for my son. In February of this year my family also sold almost all of our possessions, moved out of our house, got rid of the studio and office spaces, and took our son out of school.

We had a child three years ago. We didn’t realize it—but slowly over time we boxed ourselves into a regular life. I even turned my freelance self-employed photography job into a regular 9 to 5 day job for stability (with a glass cage office and lots of bills). Our yearly schedule was dictated to us by our son’s school schedule. There was never enough time for anything and definitely not enough time to travel the way we wanted to travel.

So we made a choice about what we wanted, and what we didn’t want. And what we didn’t want was to use our son as an excuse for not living our lives. Today we’re traveling the country in a rickety, constantly overheating, forty year old RV while looking for adventure and doing everything we can to beat back the comforts of “normal.” We know that we can always go back to owning more stuff, renting a regular home, and making all of the standard life choices. It’s an everyday effort to not settle for a life that everyone else wants for us.

I’d like to say that it was a hard choice to make but it wasn’t. It was a relief. We were so excited that it was only a month between when we made the actual decision to when we had our big sell-everything-or-it-goes-in-the-dump weekend. Making the leap was easy. The challenging part is the everyday now.

What does our everyday now look like? Well at first I think we literally had no idea what to do with all of the newfound time. Do we need to go hiking every day? Do we need to read? Do we need to explore more? How can we spend more time as a family doing everything, everyday? During the first few months we assumed that since we had reclaimed so much time for ourselves, we needed to use all of it on… other more meaningful, authentic life things and experiences. So we became very busy again for a while. Eventually we got over that and really, finally, started to slow down. But it’s still a challenge to not fill our lives with busyness out of habit.

The nature of my work (wedding photography) enables me to create my own schedule. It wasn’t always that way. For the past five years I photographed weddings twelve months out of the year. I rarely turned anyone away. Now I only photograph weddings during certain months and I block off months at a time for trips (or just leave them open and unplanned). My wife and I designate specific days of the week as sort of “individual” days where we have the full option of working, or doing nothing, or whatever (basically we’re free to do as we like, individually, away from the family).

We’ve lowered our living costs significantly but honestly—we’ve spent that extra money on doing more things that we always wanted to do. Specifically travel, learning new hobbies/skills, and supporting causes we believe in (something we do more of these days). It wasn’t lack of money that stopped us from doing these things in the past; it was lack of time. I’ll tell anyone that we didn’t become nomadic to be poor and live frugally. I didn’t become a photographer to be a struggling artist either. I like to live reasonably comfortably (and I have a clothes habit). On average days I’ll hang out with my three-year-old, respond to emails every few hours, and edit in the evening a little bit. Mix in yoga, hiking, mountain biking, and anything else that sounds interesting.

Oh yes. And we have a lot of fun picking where we want to live next. Do we want to live right on creek this week? Or a lake? What about the beach? This mountain or that mountain? How about we spend next month in Belize? They’re all real possibilities and we’ve been checking each one off the list. Even if I have to drive six hours to reach a wedding—I get to go back to a house on the beach/mountain/river for the rest of the week. It’s not bad.

There’s still one big leftover from our past lifestyle. It takes us a lot of effort to not work so hard.

I’m still learning this and I’m usually flailing around trying to live it. It’s easy for me to fall back into old habits of equating effort to money to survival. I’m still wired into thinking that everything will fail and fall down unless I have wedding inquiries and bookings coming in all. the. time. What if people stop hiring me to photograph their weddings? What if the business and our main source of income just… dies. How will we live? How will I be able to take care of our son? I am afraid of all of that and so much more.

I’ve learned that it’s all just problem solving. How do we achieve this? Do I need to break something? Do I need to build something? I can do that. That’s our formula these days. We don’t even need to have all the answers—we just need to be willing to do what it takes. Forget being embarrassed. Forget living up to expectations. As long as we keep and grow our love (for each other, for our family) then the rest can fall away.

Yet the idea of not achieving a regular, standard type of success still gnaws away at me—but only sometimes. I haven’t reached some level of enlightenment where I don’t compare myself to other people. I just decided that I would change the game I was playing. Success at being a nomad is completely different from being a successful suburbanite or city dweller. Success running a surf shop is different from success in a law office or farming. I can’t use the same measurements for success as I once did.

Yes it’d be nice to have cool and pretty kitchen appliances, or fancy electronics, or a new stylish wardrobe—but I decided not to let those things have the same importance anymore. My life now is so far removed from my old life that it is actually getting easier and easier to not care about those things. They don’t make me feel good. And often they’re just in the way. I see how they benefit other people and their lives—but not mine. That makes it easy on me. The further away I get from the old “success,” the closer I get to this new kind of success that I really do want. It motivates me to continue on, even when it’s really, really scary—and it is always scary at the beginning.

What do you think APW, can our generation redefine what “success” looks lIke? what do you think about this modern minimalist movement we’re seeing right now? (I’m looking at you MARIE KONDO.) would you give up modern comforts to live a simpler life?