More With Less
As we plan more and more for our move, something that’s coming into focus is how much (or rather, how little) we’ll be able to bring. Shipping things overseas is expensive, and even bringing checked bags adds up quick. From the beginning, we’ve been planning to save just a handful of items we love (our mid-century couch and coffee table, for example), shipping only the essentials to our new home in Japan. But I’ve started to realize how little that actually is. At this point, I’m planning on just bringing some essential photo gear, my laptop, and a few personal effects alongside my clothes; in essence, not much more than what I brought for our trip there.
Obviously it’s hard to leave anything behind, but I knew from the jump that’s more or less how this would go. Still, it’s making me rethink how I tend to spend my time, and what I actually need to do the things I want to do.
Part of the goal of this experience has been to cut closer to the heart; get down to what is actually essential, in hopes of opening space for more life.
This week, it seemed like my desktop crashed. This is the third PC I’ve built from scratch, and it’s been running just fine almost continuously for the last five or so years. Any small issues that arose, I’ve been able to fix, but something about this stumped me. After a BIOS update, everything seems to be working again, but this afforded me a glimpse into a desktop-less future.
Usually, when I need to use a computer, I go for my desktop. I’ve got two monitors, and prefer the large screen real estate, the way things feel. It’s very comforting, very familiar to me. But when forced to use my laptop, everything was fine. My files are backed up, and at worst accessible via my NAS, but the most immediate files—namely, the folders with my writing in it—is synced wirelessly between my devices using Syncthing. I was so thrilled to have set that up this week; where doing my daily writing was as simple as loading the same app on my laptop, and everything was in its right place.
Similarly, I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to trim down my photography kit. It’s been hard, giving up a lot of the gear I’ve accumulated over the years, but at the same time, I’m ready for a change. I’m excited to return to photography being purely a hobby for me, with no expectations. I’m excited for the limitations I’ll have going forward, the opportunity to make the most with what I actually need.
Part of the goal of this experience has been to cut closer to the heart; get down to what is actually essential, in hopes of opening space for more life. I can write from my laptop on a kitchen table, Murakami style (sans laptop). Who needs more than three lenses? One day, I hope to have a home with the items that mean something to me, shelves of the books that have moved me, but that's still a ways away.
