I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Monday Musings, I write freely and wanderingly about some topic that’s on my mind.
I started to create a Meetup group yesterday, moving out on my plan to launch a local philosophy discussion group. But overnight I started questioning whether I really want to take that on.
I realized it might be more of the same: not feeling content with the life I already have, thinking I need to have more social interaction (because my culture says so), feeling like I should do something, seeking external validation for my intellectual achievements and capacity.
“Yes, you can!” said my inner achievement subject. “Let’s get out of basecamp!” said my inner mountain climber. “Fulfill your purpose!” said my inner self help fanatic.
What if where I am doesn’t have to be preparation for something better and higher and more externally impressive?
The stuff of my life
Achievement minimalism might help out with some material minimalism I’ve been thinking about pursuing.
My house is filled with evidence of my past efforts at achievement: a guitar and guitar music from when I went through two years of group lessons at Swallow Hill, video lighting and microphones for when I thought I’d start a YouTube channel, a studio full of paintings and art supplies, photography equipment worth thousands of dollars both for photographing paintings to turn them into print and to possibly pursue a professional photography career.
I want to get rid of some of this stuff but it makes me feel a little bit like giving up on myself and my potential future(s).
Maybe it’s time to give up on myself.
Maybe that’s a key move in achievement minimalism.
I love to write (and think) so much
One thing I really appreciate about blogging here every day is that it is a countermove to the achievement society.
I don’t blog here to build an audience. Sometimes I see that I get a big influx of views and mostly I try to ignore it. I can’t really tell where it comes from based on the WordPress stats and I don’t want to get caught up in it.
Making it 1,000 days long means it’s not about a short-term goal. It’s more about a daily-ish practice, just continuing to show up day after day, with no thought of some outcome for it.
I wrote on July 1st of this year about surrendering to writing solitude. But part of me — the achievement subject in me — keeps whispering inside my brain, “you need to do something with this! Something that reaches other people! Something that is not so self-indulgent!”
Byung-Chul Han offers, as an antidote to the achievement (a.k.a. burnout) society, the vita contemplativa. And perhaps that’s enough for me. A life of contemplation.
Achievement maximalism vs achievement minimalism
Achievement maximalism – doing things for other people, to impress them, to get their attention, to seem important, to quiet the voice in my head that says “you should live this way not the way you are living.” Making more and more and more money.
Achievement minimalism – living the life that makes sense to me rather than to the crowd, seeking satisfaction in having engaged fully with a writing or an artmaking task, accepting my wish for solitude at this stage of my life, letting go of the versions of me that might have been but will not be. Accepting my life right now as it is as enough financially, materially, activity-wise, socially.
Which life do I want? The latter.