Wes’s Life

So, instead of sit­ting in my room and doing noth­ing all week, I’ve decided to start exer­cis­ing. My plan is some­thing along the lines of cardio Monday through Friday and weight train­ing on Monday, Wednes­day and Friday. I plan to give myself the week­end off, because I think there is a ‘too much’. So I’m trying to keep at it and see where it takes me.

I usu­ally end up read­ing PostSecret’s new secrets every Sunday and I always end up seeing ones that I like. Here’s one that par­tic­u­larly struck me.

Heaven’s not a place that you go when you die
It’s that moment in life when you actu­ally feel alive

Some of the people that know me very well might see this and ask them­selves some­thing to the effect of what is Wes smok­ing, a mes­sage about reli­gion?

I think that actu­ally describes my beliefs very well. I don’t think of heaven as being a place, a final des­ti­na­tion or some­thing you pray every­day for. It’s simply what you feel when you real­ize why. Why we are here, why we do what we do, why we strive in life for money that means very little. I’m not saying that you become exempt to these con­di­tions, you just real­ize what the mean­ing of life is and why we are here. It’s sheer sim­plic­ity is over­whelm­ing, so most people just pass it off as not being good enough. We expect answers as com­pli­cated as the lives we lead.

I hope you find your heaven, nir­vana, or what­ever you may call it while you can appre­ci­ate it.

Well, I talked about the virtues of Min­i­mal­ism when applied to the com­puter a while ago, so I fig­ured tack­ling some other parts of life might not be such a bad idea.

I tend to keep my Mole­sk­ine Ruled Pocket note­book on me at all times along with one of those fancy Fisher Bullet Space Pens. That combo is some­thing like $30, so I real­ize a lot of people will scoff at that. Just keep a simple note­book and a small pen on you. For the longest time I wanted to find a Mole­sk­ine plan­ner, and then I real­ized some­thing. The weekly pocket one doesn’t have enough writ­ing space and the daily pocket was too thick. My solu­tion? Use one of their pocket note­books — not too thick, not too thin — and just put the date at the top. As simple as this sounds, this greatly helps me. If you want to get more than 192 days out of yours, split the page in two and get double that, which is more than a year. I find that if an idea pops into my head or I have some­thing due, I’ll just write it down.

Pos­ses­sions are always the hard­est part. All of the other crap, I’m not talk­ing about your com­puter or your speak­ers. I am talk­ing about books, gad­gets, office sup­plies, video games, and any­thing else you can fathom. I keep every single card I recieve (yet, I don’t know why…), but they cause no clut­ter. I have all of them in a ziplock bag in the back of my filing tub. Always ask your­self: “why is this impor­tant or spe­cial and why do I need to keep it?” By asking those two ques­tions you can get rid of a lot.

If you have any ques­tions address­ing min­i­mal­ism, feel free to put them in the com­ments. I will be sure to reply to them. And by any ques­tion, I mean any ques­tion.

As I look back at the past year, I see my change of major, a change in hob­bies, a change in what I do with my time and my trip to Greece. It also marks about thir­teen months or so of run­ning my blog. I don’t post nearly as often as I should, but my life isn’t too ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing. I can only do so much in that depart­ment.

As for New Years Res­o­lu­tions, I guess I should make one. I resolve to take more pic­tures.