As Simple As Possible
In 2016, I hope to write and publish with some sort of cadence, say once a month.
This being my first post of the year, as I sat down in front of my laptop and opened a blank page, I found it difficult to think with clarity. A bit rusty, as they say. I began to write outlines for content related to current events, tech trends, recent travel, et al. It was getting out of hand quickly, and I knew I needed to reel it in before I gave up on the whole writing thing for yet another year.
So I looked to Hemingway for inspiration:
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
The minimalism & simplicity portrayed there are enviable. Zero percent fat in Hemingway’s prose and thought.
Back in September 2013, I left my first post-college job, of two years, in pursuit of my next journey which was yet to be determined. With the apartment lease up that same month, my roommate and I decided not to re-sign.
I wanted to stay in New York to explore, meet new people, attend events and parties, and generally share the energy of the city.
Not to live in New York, but to explore. After all, “New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of “living” there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane.”
Without my own apartment, I had to sell or send most of my belongings back home to my parents’ house. Bed, desk, chair, drawers, clothes, dishes, miscellaneous. All gone.
Luckily, I had family and friends in the city who were gracious enough to offer me extended stays. So I brought myself and a limited selection of clothing. First to my brother’s couch, then to my cousin’s spare bedroom, and then to a friend’s pull-out futon.
I was a nomad, for months, forced to explore minimalism.
An important lesson learned is that I didn’t need most of what I had lugged around in college and through my first couple years in the city. Those things I didn’t need weighed me down, physically and emotionally.
Recently, I felt like “things” started to pile up again. I could tell by just looking around my studio, or checking my Amazon order history.
I thought back to how good it felt to get rid of everything nonessential back in 2013, when I didn’t have much of a choice.
So this week, I’m going to donate, sell, or just throw away a bunch of things.
I realize that simplicity in physical life can mirror simplicity in writing. Here’s Hemingway describing his writing process, including his physical environment:
Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.
Here’s my true sentence: We tend to think elaborate is better, and more difficult to achieve, but I’m starting to think simple is a better goal.
