You posed the question, “which is more important to you: a pile of lazy afternoons or a fat investment account?” I believe it’s possible to have both. In fact that’s what I’m striving for myself, and IMHO the latter helps make the former possible. Trent, if you hadn’t spent the initial time aggressively building your savings and investments, I wonder if you would have been able to make the leap to full-time blogging.
(BTW I’m glad that you’re doing it!)

As for trimming down and such, I can think of two big things for me. One is my furniture, or lack thereof. I’m single, have very few guests, and I’m on temporary job assignment. So I just stuck to the necessities and even have a high end air mattress. It’s a two-in-one for the occasional guest.

The second is clothing. I’m transitioning back into student life and plan to do my yearly closet pruning. My goal is to keep it simple and light, but add in a few nice, quality peices that will last. Now if only I could get someone else to the part I hate…shopping…Ugh!

I found meditation and prayer work even better than medication. :)

Thanks for your blog! I benefit greatly from it.

Still, I sooooo would go for boutique non-polluting meats rather than plant stuff. I don’t see a lot of taste benefit from organic apples, for example, but meats are much nicer if you pay for the specialty stuff.

Trent: re flow, I’m with you. In fact, I consider it the key to a good life. But it’s not easy for most people to find their flow activity or activities.

My cynical sarcastic reply is, sure, organic food is harmful when you want to be first to the starting block in the race for puberty.

@Mitch,
That’s a strawman argument there. Just because people are starving in geographically distant locations (or nearby urban locations) doesn’t mean that I should be looking to increase my yield in my victory garden.

I’m sure there are much better ways to impact starvation than using pesticides in one’s personal garden. The issues are orthogonal to one another.

If anything smaller personal plots, in disparate locations is less likely to lead to issues due to flooding, so I would say your facts are in support of smaller organic farms.

However, then we lose economy of scale and face transportation pollution for supplies. I guess its really about balance…

In regards to Mitch’s comment, factory farms (which cause a huge amount of ‘livestock waste’) are horrible polluters, and many municipalities do need to improve their waste water systems (usually due to a combined stormwater/wastewater system). But pesticides are a serious health hazard.

One of the biggest threats to global malnutrition has been the export of subsided us grains to 3rd world countries. a good example is how the US subsidy of corn (sorry Iowa) which decimated Mexico’s corn production, which more recently has caused a corn shortage due to the increase in price due to biofuel. However, Mexico is still in much better shape than other much poorer countries who have a harder time competing against US crop subsidies.

Organic crops actually do very little to help the environment. I was just at a conference concerning pesticide use. Out of 350-some “impairments” (instances of severe pollution) of Iowa’s waterways in 2007, less than ten were caused by pesticides. Most were caused by livestock or human waste spillages due to flooding. The main problem that I have with organic foods is that they often drastically reduce yields. In a world where millions are already starving, is it right that for the rich to be healthy, the poor must go hungry? I think the intentions behind organic are good, but there are consequences that many people don’t think about.

It said that deep within all of us is a real, meaningful purpose. We all hunger for meaning and we have a burning desire to make a difference and express a purpose that is special to us alone. Real fulfillment, success and joy comes when we connect with that purpose that has always been within us and we give life to it. And then comes the flow.

Point 17 was actually the reason I started my blog.

We got one of those mediocre $100 knife sets as a present so that’s what we have. Actually my favorite knife is a $5 serrated utility knife which I bought when I moved out from my parents 11 years ago. The reason is that it can stand a ton of abuse (I cut into ceramic plates all the time). For luxury knives, I have been looking at the Ken Onion designs (just google them). I’m not getting them out of fear that the wife would use them and just throw them in dish washer and kill the edge. Also, the $5 one works well, so ..

Lately, everyone has been encouraging me to get a new Mac. Mine is old and the keyboard and battery are shot. However, the keyboard is really just shot in terms of aesthetics. I have a loose key and the ink is rubbed off a few other keys. But it works fine. I could easily just buy a new battery for $70 and call it a day. I think I’m going to do that instead of succumb to consumption just because my laptop looks slightly tattered and there’s a Mac commercial on every two minutes.

This will keep my wallet healthier and keep me from contributing to the world’s waste.

http://www.theinnovativetraveler.com