I grew up in a 4500 sq ft. home sitting on 10 acres of land, with a six-car attached garage and an inground swimming pool. You could say my parents did okay in life. But we weren’t exceedingly wealthy — my Father mowed the lawn, maintained the pool, did his own maintenance on the house, and stuffed the garage with old cars he planned to fix someday. He parked outside.

Inside the house, there were knick-knacks, collections, bowling balls from the 70s, and a room full of things that ‘needed to be gone through’ that, by my estimation, didn’t get gone through or thrown out for a decade or two — an entire room used as a holding facility for transitory trash destined for the landfill. Some of it is still there.

This isn’t to say the place wasn’t clean. It was. We just had too much space. If you have a six-car garage, why throw anything out? There is space for it, and besides, we may need it someday.

My bedroom was no different. A 10-year-old boy has stuff. Toys and books and clothes that don’t fit anymore, clothes that will fit someday, and dirty clothes worn for three days straight, left to decay on the floor. When the mess got out of hand, things were stuffed in the closet until the door would no longer shut as a way to escape detection from my parental wardens.

Eventually, the mess in my room would garner the attention of my Father, who, by decree, would order it to be cleaned no later than Sunday Night, usually on a Friday night during family dinner. This was terrible news for 10-year-old me. The weekend was ruined. I didn’t want to clean that mess.

Late Sunday afternoon, I would begrudgingly dig in, bringing trash bags from the kitchen to start filling them with things. Logically, my thought was: the easiest way to clean this was by getting rid of the 90 percent I didn’t want. As I started hauling bags full of toys, clothes, and actual junk through the house toward the garage, my parents would stop me, exclaiming, “What? You’re throwing all of this stuff away? We need to go through this first,” my Mother would say. My brain would melt. You people wanted this room clean, I remember thinking. Now, you’re complaining about the way I’m doing it!? I’ve had a disdain for clutter for much of my life.

Minimalism wasn’t on my radar at ten years old. I didn’t know the word existed. I was just a kid who didn’t want to clean. Yet, when my room was clean, I felt better. I liked how it looked, my parents stopped complaining, and I felt lighter. I liked the extra space and being able to open the closet without an avalanche of preteen refuse falling in my direction.

Fast forward to today, and the 291.5 things I own as of this writing, the .5 being a sock without a mate, minimalism is a central part of my life. But it’s not because of childhood trauma. It’s about freedom, control, and a slight touch of OCD. The thought of having to acquire, maintain, and eventually discard stuff, the burden of it all, keeps me from wanting to accumulate more.

I won’t go into the cliches of minimalism. I won’t use words like intentional or meaningful, and if anything, I am somewhat cynical these days. Minimalism isn’t a fix-all for life’s complications; however, it can lessen the number of complications one must confront. The lifestyle movement in itself has become gross, infected by influencers who found a way to commercialize anti-consumption, which could be a whole other essay if finger-pointing were my jam.

For me, though, minimalism enables a certain degree of spontaneity along with the convenience of nimble living. Want to go on a weekend trip? Absolutely. I’m already packed. Need to leave because of a natural disaster? I can have the car loaded in 30 minutes flat. It is a way to control circumstances out of my control. Minimalism as a form of prepping, so to speak, and a way to safeguard my time. I don’t have to spend my weekend doing housework. Things never get lost because most of my stuff is organized in bags. I can spend time doing what I want to do, which is usually not very much.

But really, I think it is about taking responsibility for your life. Sculpting your day-to-day experience by chipping away at nuisances. While chores, stressors, and financial constraints plague many, minimalism can alleviate some of those symptoms. My parents struggled endlessly to maintain their 4500 sq ft. home, and my Father did so until the day he died. My Mother continues still. This afternoon, I plan to read a little, then I might go for a walk. There’s not much else to do.

I promised to write you in January, but then life happened. A sick pet, winter malaise, and… a lot of other things. I despise this time of year. The cold, dark, and depressing routine of it all. Each day, waiting to get to the next. Counting the squares on the calendar, hoping for sunshine and real life to resume. To hell with January.

What transpired in the great nothing that is January was a temporary return to bachelorhood. My wife took the dog to her dad’s house 15 minutes away as she could no longer navigate stairs (the dog, not the wife). They have been staying there ever since. I am alone in an empty house.

Living alone is exhilarating. The house remains spotless, the music can be cranked, the evenings are still and quiet, and this is the sort of pleasure a 15-year-old whose parents have taken a trip would experience. I drink cold beer and eat frozen pizza and I don’t mind it at all. Of course, there are downsides. The cleaning is all on me, there is the occasional misunderstanding with household appliances I am unqualified to run, and I was forced to succumb to the horrors of grocery shopping at Walmart, no less, but still, this is far from tragic.

Now, one would think living alone would be lonely, but that is not the case. I am alone, but I am not lonely. Perhaps loneliness is failure to enjoy one’s own company. To find dull one’s thoughts. A recurring affliction resembling boredom. I am unsure. I don’t get lonely, the adjective, or the condition.

The wife is coming back, I think, and we speak on the phone most days. Still, the house is all mine and I work, read, write, and watch movies late into the night. I listen to The Band, Alice In Chains (Unplugged), and Bob Dylan’s cover of House of the Rising Sun. The same songs over and over, some on repeat while I shower and cook dinner. Life is seemingly good. I think.

From July 2024

I wasn’t writing or writing anything well but, I had some gig work as a business consultant I had picked up through a contact meaning I felt productive. My marriage barely had a pulse so, naturally, I left for Maine, alone, late in the month as a test of resilience and to escape real things.

I wanted to see if I could do something I hadn’t done in over twenty years. Travel alone that is. The trip went well and I realized, on my own, I could feel self-reliant, untethered even. Stress and duty and the pressures of home life were all but eliminated even though the trip started with deep sadness driving east on the New York State Thruway.

Somehow, by going, I realized being alone was a strength and injection of agency alike. It seemed to alleviate the chronic low-grade melancholy that has accompanied me throughout my life. I sat and watched strangers in strange towns. I pondered and mulled and smoked cigarettes sitting on guardrails next to busy highways. I sat on the cliffs of the rocky coast of Maine, staring out at the sea. I drove back roads through New England, through quaint towns bustling with summer tourists, festive bunting, and little shops seemingly disqualifying the notion America had slipped into a third-world republic.

When I returned, real life resumed, and within days, it was as if I had never left. I thought my trip would reveal something. It had not. It added no clues to an unsolvable mystery.

And August 2024

It was wet and hot and soupy and reeked of continuing failure. I felt like I was letting E down. My family, most likely doubting my worth. Unable to cope with stagnation, I began fixating on trivial matters well-adjusted persons would not find concerning. Matters that would become the theme of this period.

On several occasions, I tried to reset, finding I could not escape the fog that settled upon my thoughts. I was traveling in circles, unable to find the glimmering light of a candle in a window leading me to a doorway out of this haze and into warm clarity.

The fact that I could not write or do anything resulting in meaningful progress left me reclusive. I didn’t tweet or spend time outdoors. I don’t know what I did. August was a dream I remember experiencing with little recollection of what happened because nothing did.

The Maine trip had not been the lasting respite I had hoped for, nor were the various mental exercises attempted. Even my marriage, which I had tried to restore, still carried the same affliction. An affliction that I had no cure for. One with no distinct and qualifying symptoms.

And November 2024

The sun hangs low on the horizon by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, if at all. Early nights turn gray and cool. The election dominates the news cycle, but I couldn’t care less. I make a plan for divorce, then do nothing, avoiding confrontation and my own desires. I begin to think this story, the story I am writing now, needs a dramatic shift. I don’t have the will to continue this marriage. I don’t want to work on things. I want it over. She wants to talk. I do not.

Girl drama peppered with the occasional all-out fight. The space between us growing larger in every moment still, I am numb and indifferent. A marriage, one upon the eve of its death, pollutes the air in a way that burns the throat leaving no mortal choice but to hold your breath, swiftly looking for the nearest exit. It encompasses every moment of the day, the only respite being alone.

My trip to Maine increasingly stands out to me. How I haven’t experienced comparable happiness in recent years. Not just happiness, but freedom from anxiousness. I wonder how I can recapture it. I wonder why I returned. My writing streak fades, and I feel like a waterless well, unable to provide anything creative. Even tweets become painfully impossible to call forth.

I cannot take the steps required to upend inertia. I cannot exercise my own will out of cowardness and circumstance alike. The days blend into one another, and it is the 17th of the month, and soon it will be Thanksgiving. There will be days in between that I will not know. Of course, I want to know them. I want them to mean something. I want to get on with it. I search for apartments in mid-sized domestic cities where there are palms and brick-lined streets. I consider the west coast even. I’m chasing sunshine and frantically digging myself out of quicksand.

The last week of the month, I pull the trigger on my newsletter. I instantly feel lighter. Like I have space. Thanksgiving arrives with heavy, wet snow and an early morning argument I refuse to engage with – the rest of the day spent in silence.

Overall, the end of the month brings about a sense of renewal. Like I am no longer carrying the weight of writing a weekly email that has gone flat. Like I can turn my attention to new challenges. The weather turns cold and snowy and signals the beginning of another unending winter. My marriage, I continue to ignore.

February 9, 2025

I wake up to dim gray light streaming through the windows and a fresh blanket of snow outside. I start coffee and boil a pot of water on the stove for humidity. I open my laptop and re-read this essay. Digesting the harshness of it all. The selfishness, coldness, and detachment. I wrestle with the notion of hitting send. I do some light edits and pace around the house. I hit publish, grab my phone, and text my wife, “Good morning.”