About four years ago, we moved to a little cottage home that looked much like Walden, which felt like the right thing to do, ...and in a lot of essential ways it was. The goal was to live simply and with not a lot of space or things. It felt like living the Thoreau dream, which I've always wanted to do. "To live deliberately." To live simply. It was about two years and two months that we lived here deliberately, ...which is about how long Thoreau lived in his cottage, too. It payed off financially because housing prices went up which boosted the equity in our little Rose Cottage, (which is what I and no one else called it). After the first year, things started to close in on me and I felt claustrophobic. We started planning a move which took another year or so. Now we are settled in a different home, where there is space to breath in and out. No shortness of breath here.
The desire to make this new home beautiful, yet still simple and deliberate is where I am at now. We'll get there one step and one day at a time. I still feel that living simply is where things are at, but I now realize that you can still live simply with more space, and that that space is what allows you to breathe. Thoreau was only able to live simple because he had a forest and a pond as his backyard to breath deliberately in and out in, after all.
These are some beautiful things currently inspiring me.
