Living close to the bone has its perks . . . . I am proud to say that I have not paid rent anywhere in more than four years. Now while the Doug of my youth would chime in and tell me that I'm a failure due to the fact that I'm essentially "Living in a van down by the river" (cue Chris Farley clip), the Doug of now proudly stands, chest out and proclaims that fact for the world to hear.
I remember sitting in the mobile home I lived in in Quesnel (the second to last place I rented), thinking about moving and not wanting to deal with all of the boxes and boxes of things that seemed to inhabit every corner of that space. I had heard of a rule some people employ with regard to such boxes: If you have not looked in it for 6 months, give it away (or throw it out). I didn't take that hard line, it was too much of a commitment, but what I did do was have the first (and last), Doug is moving and doesn't want to move all his shit so come and get you some sale/event . . . . And make a donation if you're so inclined. What resulted was the most amazing thing. I actually got rid of a LOT of crap, spread a TON of good will and made a decent amount of money in the process. In the end I still ended up taking a LOT of things to the share shed but many things found their way to new homes and productive lives with new owners.
What changed from when I accumulated all of those things to when I gave them all away was my perception of the things and their role in my life. I had been taught that things embody the spirit of the person who gave them to me and that in order to be respectful to those persons, and their memory, I had to always keep the things. It was not an easy transition but I came to believe that the things are just things and regardless of who they came from that fact was never going to change. It made it easy to let things go.
Fast forward to Sunday, September 14, 2014 and almost everything I own now lives in my 1998 GMC Safari. The only things not in there at the moment are a box full of quilts that live at my moms place, and a couple of quilts that are semi-permanently housed with my dear friend Janice (mom is a prolific quilter).
I still have a few things to weed out but for the most part I am happy with the amount of stuff I own. My one weakness seems to be t-shirts. I think I must have about thirty to forty of them and whenever I think about getting rid of some I am quickly able to justify keeping them (you never know when you're going to need a bunch of t-shirts).
What has also evolved is my feelings about ownership of things. I possess a van full of things that I use, mostly, in my day-to-day life. Do I own them? Or am I just the caretaker of them for now? I don't know. I think that as a culture, we tend to spend a lot of time worrying about what's ours. We spend our money on things like homes and cars and then we engage in making sure they don't get stolen or damaged. We draw lines . . . . Lines between us and them, them being anyone who would take our things from us. In a time when those lines result in an ever-increasing amount of violence on a global scale I'm not sure I want to hold lines like that.
I honestly feel as of right now that if someone were to break into my van and steal everything I own that I would be alright about it. I mean it might be a challenge to figure out how to keep making music but eventually I would be okay. As it stands my record for getting through the day is 100% so I'm not too worried about it. That's not an open invitation for anyone to come and take whatever they want, I would prefer to keep the few things that I have but I feel like if you want something that I have and are willing to put your intention behind taking it from me then there's little I can do to change that and worrying about it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
So you might be asking: what's the perk Doug? It's freedom! Freedom from worrying about any of that . . . it helps keep my mind on what I'm meant to be doing which is sharing the gifts I have been given.
Live in love
Doug xoxo
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