Category Archives for Variety

I wasn’t feeding myself. (It’s a metaphor!)

Yesterday I realized I’ve been working so hard and so long on proximity thinking, and lately working on the related Shared Situation Guide and Shared Situations website, that I haven’t been feeding other parts of myself.

And when I wasn’t working on those things, I was working to make enough money to survive. But when’s the last time I did a drawing or painting? I often can’t help taking some photos, but when’s the last time I posted one?

It’s sort of like I’ve been working so hard on feeding other people, with the projects I think could help a lot of people, that I haven’t been feeding myself.

So I took part of yesterday to start preparing a photo to post, which I hope to do soon.

I’m the variety guy, but didn’t have variety. Luckily, there’s a loophole. Maybe I needed the variety of not feeding those parts of me for a while??

Getting Tired of Beautiful and Special Things

I don’t know about you, but I can get tired of even the most beautiful and special things. I think this is probably true for most people.

I’ve lived in beautiful places like Boulder and Vail in Colorado, both of which I appreciated less over time. I’ve taken truly special photos, put them on my phone as the background, and gotten tired of them. I’ve made awesome art I loved and grew less fond of it, and seen amazing, historically important art in museums that started to bore me over time. I’ve listened to great music too much and cared for it less and less. You get the drift.

This is why I think differently when I see houses by the beach, or in the mountains, or some other amazing place. I’ve realized, yes, it would be great to live there for a while, but I would not want to live there for the rest of my life, or even for too many months or years. So I would not want to pay the high premiums people pay for houses in those places! For the same reasons, I avoid collecting expensive art, as I would get tired of it so quickly.

This line of thinking also probably implies I would get tired of being wealthy!

The thoughts in this post are yet more arguments for variety. And when you think about variety for a while, you’ll probably realize what you want is sustainable variety. At least that’s what I realized. This means finding ways of living over weeks, and months, and years, that give you variety you don’t get tired of! I don’t want kinds of variety that are like beautiful and special things that I get tired of. I want varieties of variety, and I want that to be sustainable, so I stay engaged and have the potential to keep being engaged. I think probably one of the best ways to get sustainable variety is to also pursue sustainable proximities. I think the two go together. Although that’s another topic, for now, here’s more on what I call the sustainable proximities approach.

If some of this rings true, you might be a bit of a variety person. Check out a project I started called varietypeople.org, where anyone can post their own thoughts, wishes and experiences, comment on the posts of others, and share ideas, events, resources and opportunities for other variety people. You might want to join us.