Hi, my name's Patrick. I am a husband to my adoring wife who I adore as well and father of one precocious toddler, who we both adore (no such thing as too much adoration). In our marriage, my wife and I have moved three times each to successively smaller and smaller homes, in an attempt to simplify, condense and begin to enjoy life without the trappings of material things that keep us bogged down, in debt and generally cause unhappiness.
That is the purpose of this blog. It is at once a diary of our journey, a place for musing and an ethos that we have tried to establish in our lives. Doing Simple Better. It is a philosophy that has been adopted by every walk of life. It lives in Amish homesteads, as well as the laboratory through an application of Ockham's Razor. But purposefully living in a simple way is difficult and discouraging in the face of the overwhelming messages to live in a hedonistic, self-centered way.
And quite often, living more simply leads to unintended complexity. For example, we have a garden in our backyard that gives us delicious vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. It would be more simple to go to a store and pick out veggies in a pile and hand over money to the cashier. But the appreciation of the growing, the praying that we have a bounty, the enjoyment of being in nature and in my opinion, closer to God, is worth the added labor and time that it takes to tend a garden. Aside from the benefits of appreciation, it helps us become a little less tied to the inherent complexities of societies and a little more self-sufficient.
This will be the overriding theme of this blog. When is simple too simple? When does it require more explanation? If being complex is entwined in our nature, woven tightly into our spiritual fabric, is "simple" a pipe-dream or can it be deliberately and successfully pursued?
Luckily, this theme can be applied broadly and I will delve into the journeys of our household as we grow in our mission to be more and be better while needing less. I will probably wander, and often meander, down paths regarding modern Christianity, current politics, child rearing, homesteading, music and the arts.
This will be open, discussion is one of my favorite past times. There are those out there who are smarter, wiser and more interesting than me. I invite everyone to engage and suggest as I introduce you to our philosophy of Simply Doing Better by Doing Simple Better.
