Recently, I went to an outdoor concert with a girlfriend. We don't always have a chance to talk without husbands, kids, or baseballs flying around, so we really enjoyed just visiting and spouting out whatever came to mind as we drove there and waited for the show to start.
It was a perfect early summer evening in Texas. Pleasant enough for jeans and a tank top and no mosquito invasion! A full moon was even rising over the Dallas horizon as the band was playing. What a scene.
Until the morons pulled out their phones.
We were seated on the lawn of a big outdoor venue, and there were a bunch of folks around us. When the headliner (Journey -- for their free plug) started playing, nearly every person in front of us held up their phone and hit "record". And those iPhone 6Pluses are damn large.
So I am trying to watch the band (and the band's screens also, as the stage was far away from our lawn seats), and all I can see is a zillion screens of the same image ahead of me. Most of the phone holders kept readjusting their devices and swapping between photo and video mode. It seemed insane to me that they spent $40 and up to worry about their phone containing proof they were indeed AT the concert. Some were posting the video on their social media platform of choice, which also is the LAST thing I will click on when scrolling through friends' posts. You think I (or likely, anyone) wants to watch your shitty video of Coldplay from the cheap seats? No, we don't. I am speaking for all of us here.
The sea of 3 inch screens was distracting, but mostly I thought, this is a great night and a great band, and you people are missing it! And all you will have is your fifty video clips on your phone that you will probably never watch more than once after you post for all of us to not click on. Silly people...
I find this to be the case at my kids' functions as well. Parents are jockeying to get the best position for capturing little Agamemnon accepting his "Principal's Award" for 1st grade (what is that, anyway? Your kid didn't bite anyone again this year?). Your kid knows you're there; you WITNESSED the miracle of his award-getting. Let's be happy in the moment, can we? Must we record it all for broadcast or later proof? Will we all suffer from memory loss and crave video and still photo documentation of our lives? Unlikely. And we are missing the first showing of the actual event. Like a LOT of the time.
Same with sporting events. I see parents setting up video equipment that Channel 5 would envy just to record the basketball game in case their angel gets a rebound. Or a bucket. And subsequently posting that uncut (please?) video for us all to see. When you look at a game through your two orbital organs, you can see a lot going on. Your eyes can dart to the bench to see if your kid's going in, watch the coach hitch his pants for the fifteenth time and check the scoreboard to note if the jack wagon 9th grader running it actually gave your team credit for that last free throw. It's a super cool thing, watching a game. With your phone in your pocket. You're actually PRESENT. And mindful of what's happening before you.
I know there will be protests to these blasphemous statements. Folks will tell me how they DO watch those videos and their kids LOVE watching themselves! "I could not BEAR it to not have a record of their first base hit/choir concert/spelling bee".
I challenge you to let your brain remember most of those memories. That's its job. And you can verbally recount the times to yourself or each other. "Remember when you hit that double against the Angels, and you puked when you got to second base??" Kid is probably glad that hit the cutting room floor.
As a minimalist, I savor experiences. It may be the smell of my lavender in late May, a Journey concert on a summer evening, or watching my boy give the welcome speech at his high school graduation. None of which I have on video. But I DO have the moment.
I was wondering how many of us have a guest room. And by guest room, I mean a nice queen sized bed in a room that you don't use for other stuff (except you tell guests not to look in that closet, please). The idea is when you host Christmas or Easter weekends, you will have an extra room for folks to stay that ISN'T your toddler's room with the extra twin bed, thereby eliminating having a guest in YOUR room by the name of your youngest child, royally pissed because Grandma GiGi has taken over his space.
We have a four bedroom house, with four inhabitants. Generous as we are, the Hubs and I are willing to share our room with each other, so that leaves one extra. Originally, we thought, hey! A guest room! I made the bed all pretty and put lavender hand soap and decor in that side of the jack and jill bath. We had a few guests, and when my Daddy came to visit he always had a place to bunk. But about 355 of 365 days in the year, the room was vacant. And it had to be cleaned/dusted. Air conditioned. Vacuumed. Furnished. Insured. Mortgaged.
You get where I am going with this, right? While many guest rooms serve double duty as a music room, craft room (which was my mother's doing), or workout area, I have found that those of us who are "blessed" (I hate that expression) with the superfluousness of a guest room rarely enter it or use it for other functions.
What a waste.
Ours has become useful because somehow our younger son has what I call "crap creep", meaning much of his stuff has found its way into our "spare" bedroom. We don't even kid ourselves that it's a guest room anymore. My parents' old love seat from their home is their in lieu of a bed, and Boy #2 uses the room primarily as his parlor. Desk for homework in there. Guitar for practicing Led Zeppelin riffs. It's his mini man cave.
I can't really eliminate an extra room in our house to minimize, I realize. So I take solace in the fact we are at least USING the room I am heating and cooling. The idea of rooms not being used in a house really drives me nuts. We don't have a "formal living" or a "breakfast nook". We have one table at which to eat, and we use bar stools when the table is full. And yes, at Thanksgiving, someone may not have a seat at the table. And somehow we all still manage to be thankful.
So where, you ask, will Aunt Edith and Uncle Earl stay when they come visit? I mean, his back isn't what it used to be, and she just hates those lumpy hotel beds rife with bedbugs. You can (1) give up your master suite and bunk with the kids, (2) send Edith and Earl to a nicer hotel with the cash you save from not having that extra square footage, or (3) have them stay at your sister's, because she doesn't read my blog. Ah, the choices!
If you are downsizing out of want or or out of necessity, keep in mind you can only be in one place at a time when you eat or sleep. Extra is really not that great once you do the math on cost per square foot. Those "spare" rooms really are spare, and, if no one is even impressed enough to look at them, why do we care?
And get to cleaning out that guest rooms closet, too. You KNOW they are going to look, even though you warned them not to!
For Mother's Day, I had the distinct pleasure of attending the Dallas showing of the Minimalists' documentary, "Minimalism: A Documentary about the Important Things". The Minimalists, Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, were there and did a Q&A after the screening. I sat in my seat in the theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was captured after the JFK assassination (really, that's where it was) and thought "These! These are my people." Well, not EXACTLY my people, because I am not a 30-something hipster with cool glasses. But they all were there for the screening, and we all lapped up what Ryan and Josh were ladeling out. I highly recommend the film, which will be available soon for interweb purchase, so look that up: minimalismfilm.com. It also is in release May 24 in many nationwide theaters, so catch it then.
I listened to their podcast while on the road this week, and they had several references to coffee. Let me preface this prattle by saying I have only been a coffee drinker about 8-9 years. Which is truly blasphemy, I realize. I grew up with parents who smoked Pall Mall reds and drank coffee like it was their life blood (which it was). I must have associated coffee with smokes, because I spurned both.
For some reason, I started a morning ritual with coffee after my mom died. Maybe to honor her memory sans cigarettes? Perhaps. I began with the standard Mister Coffee drip thing. Matching my kitchen decor, of course. Then came the K cup. The three-times-more pricey appliance that makes your cup hot and ready to the tune of $0.45 to $0.65 a cup, depending on whether you buy at Costco or Fancy Pants Grocer. With a button press, my love in a cup came pouring out to greet me. A monumental discovery.
Not minimal. Like, at all.
Back to the podcast. The Minimalists prefer the pour over style of coffee, and pretty much said not only is the k-cup a huge ass waste, but it tastes like shit. Oh. I started to think about the french press I had always thought about using, because I heard they make great barista-like coffee. I ordered some coffee beans from Ryan's favorite place in Minnesota (dogwoodcoffee.com) and had Amazon deliver my french press. When the coffee arrives, I will let you know my review.
While I sulkily look at my Keurig, me full of disdain and wasteful regret, I thought about the waste. The sorry amount of coffee in a plastic cup that I wasn't even responsible enough to recycle. Coffee shame spiral.
So I am reforming. I never looked at coffee as an art; I don't buy much at the 'Bucks. I just like to drink it. But I am trying to appreciate the nuances of grinding your own beans, fresh coffee via french press, and not tossing little 2 ounce empty cups in my trash. Crap, I may be a middle aged mom hipster in the making.
If you are a french press user, I welcome your comments and opinions. If you are a minimalist AND a coffee consumer, I am happy to be on your planet.
