Some things I left behind
Calendar, busy-ness, waking up early
In my late teens-early twenties, I still thought that it was important to fill up my calendar with various things to do and various events and places to be. This attitude to my time was something I inherited from my family of origin. For both my mother and stepfather, it was difficult to imagine doing nothing, to have a day free from any activities. They loved always doing something and going somewhere. In my late teens, my day would typically look like this: I would get up very early in the morning when it was still dark outside. I would then go into town to meet my classmates to discuss projects, then we would attend lectures. Afterwards, I would go to a gym or a theatre or to some extracurricular activities. In the evening, I would be studying again or hosting guests. I would usually go to bed after midnight. I would rarely sleep more than 6 hours.
My mother died when I was 17, and I moved to another country soon-ish after. I still remember the beautiful, overwhelming, newfound sense of freedom to decide for myself what to do with my time. For a while, I still felt guilty for failing to fill up my days with activities. I was wondering if I was indeed living a fulfilling life. Was I lazy? Was I on a path of healing and authenticity?
These days, in my mid-thirties, I finally healed from the internalised need to constantly do stuff. I try to keep my calendar as empty as possible. There are still important meetings, deadlines and appointments, but so many fewer of them compared to 10-15 years ago. I am protective about my time and my time with my yet unborn baby. If I have an important meeting on a certain day, I will never have another one on the same day. I will not visit my friends and relatives on that day either. This allows me to fully recharge and include into each day the things that I love, such as reading and writing.
I don't any longer try to wake up as early as possible to do more. For many years, starting from the first day at school, I woke up with my alarm. These days, I live without alarms as much as possible. I live with the rhythms of nature and my body. If I schedule meetings and lectures, I schedule them for late mornings or early afternoons. In my industry (academia), we very rarely perform tasks that are genuinely urgent, and scheduling a meeting a few hours later than planned makes a big difference to my mental and physical health.
Imposed aspirations
I was brought up to believe that university was the only legitimate path in life. Afterwards, I was expected to have a good career (read: a well-paying job and fast progression), live in a large apartment filled with many things. I was expected to play a musical instrument and have children in my 20s. Now, after being in academia myself for many years, I do not believe that this is the only path in life. I will never frame university education as the only way to succeed in life to my own child. I had intentional breaks in my career, and I loved them. They were the times of intense and deep spiritual growth and healing. Perhaps I didn't earn as much as I would have done otherwise, if I didn't take these breaks, but an extremely minimalist lifestyle is much less expensive than, for example, the lifestyle that my family of origin envisioned for me. One day, I realised that I simply didn't need all the stuff that money could buy. That I could pursue a truly nurturing, fulfilling, authentic, simple life rather than a life filled with shopping for a new kitchen every now and then, face creams that would be getting more expensive as I aged, bags, cars, and foreign holidays. I could live in a small apartment and enjoy every square metre of it. I could enjoy free glasses that I got from our local byttestation (swap shop), whole, home-made foods, stones and shells from a local beach as decorations, books borrowed from a local library, wearing the same simple outfit every day.
Early in my life, I realised that I didn't like music. My mother played piano, and my stepfather played guitar. Many of my family members did the same. I was expected to do it, too. Personally, I found all sounds, apart from nature's own music, overstimulating. Later in life I was told by a psychologist that I had sensory processing sensitivity. I loved to paint, read and write. I went to an art school, but left it after some time because I realised that I much preferred doing art for myself, as a therapeutic activity. I didn't need formal art education for that.
I postponed having a child until my mid-thirties. I wanted to wait until I was genuinely ready, that I was on a path of spiritual growth, that my life's philosophy was in place, and have a child with a person I could envision staying with for the rest of my life. Having said that, I also had many fears and misconceptions in relation to becoming and being pregnant and having a child. I will say more about this in the coming months.
The need to justify myself
Early on my path of sustainable minimalist living, I felt that I had to justify myself. While I am happy to explain, with gentleness and care, why I practise certain things, I no longer feel the need to underpin every practice with justification. For example, in my early twenties, several fellow humans were often saying to me that I needed a car. These days, in such situations, I prefer to set boundaries after referring to my ecological (or spiritual, aesthetic, health related or financial) commitments.
Reproducing hierarchies
Growing up in a hierarchical society, even as someone whose political stance is anarchist, has certainly had an effect on me. Towards the end of my PhD, my supervisor plagiarised my work. While I had no doubt that reporting him would be the right thing to do, I also had challenges with the action itself. Will it prolong my PhD journey? Will the university take his side? Will my funding be withdrawn as a punishment for confronting someone "above" me in the academic hierarchy? I empathise with my younger self, but these days I would not hesitate to report an incident such as this immediately. And this is what I always advise students to do, too. Dismantling internalised hierarchies feels incredibly important, and it goes both ways: I do not treat professors as humans "above" me and I don't treat students as someone "below" me.
Feeling shame about being frugal
When I was growing up, many fellow humans in my social circle considered frugality a negative word. They associated it with not being able to afford something, which they perceived to be an indication of a lack of success in life. I am critical of this approach. I try to live a frugal life. With my partner, we invite into our life the items that will last us a long time. When something that we usually buy in our local cooperative supermarket is on sale, we buy multiples of this item. We generally try to avoid buying what we need at full price. We do what we can to avoid food waste. We forage when we can, repair items, borrow items, and don't mind small imperfections manifesting on the objects that we use.