{"id":3766,"date":"2008-05-30T09:58:11","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T15:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=3766"},"modified":"2013-06-11T07:38:12","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:38:12","slug":"simply-living-simply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/simply-living-simply\/","title":{"rendered":"simply living simply"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kevindhendricks.com\/2008\/05\/30\/living-simply\/\">Kevin<\/a> has shared some thoughts on living simply.<\/p>\n<p>I think everyone wanting to live simply has different reasons for doing so, Kevin says, &#8220;Part of my motivation is money: Spending less on stuff makes our adoption more affordable. It also makes it easier to help others and be more generous.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kevin points to <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.shaungroves.com\/shlog\/comments\/simplifying_simplicity1\">two recent posts<\/span> by <strong>Shaun Groves<\/strong> who writes that his desire for living simply is: &#8220;To free up resources which should be spent on those presently in need. To prevent need. To invest in personal health &#8211; mental, spiritual, relational and physical.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>These things resonate with me deep in my soul. Yet I struggle with simply giving up my wants and desires in order to simply live a simple life. Things like having my own car (truck) to take me where I want when I want, having the AC\/heater on at the exact temperature I want it at, eating what I want, when I want or even living in a &#8220;suburb&#8221; away from the big city. These are things (along with others) that I want control over &#8211; but seem to go against the idea of living simply.<\/p>\n<p>Some other things I think are important to living simply (that Kevin and Shaun didn&#8217;t specifically mention) are taking full advantage of technology when and where its affordable and practical. Probably one reason I&#8217;m a big fan of sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifehacker.com\">Lifehacker.com<\/a> and even social networking sites. I&#8217;ve always sent prayer requests to people via txt messaging and e-mails but now with Twitter and my <del>Black<\/del>CrackBerry those processes are even faster and easier. There is some additional cost along the way &#8211; but to me, for what I do its well worth it for some of the technology (but maybe these are areas I should work on as well). Of course when and where I can use open source &#8211; I&#8217;m all for it.<\/p>\n<p>I think ultimately I have several reasons for wanting to live simply and both Kevin and Shaun have included them in their reasons &#8211; but off the cuff here are some of mine&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Investing more in others rather than myself.<\/strong> The more I spend on myself, the less I have to give away. God may choose to bless me and Laurie, but I believe he blesses people so that we in turn can be a blessing to others. I also think this carries over into investing personal time and such with people as well. If I share my dinner with friends and family, not only am I giving to them financially, it offers opportunity to give and share relationally.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Being a good steward of ALL that God has given us.<\/strong> We hear this a lot in our churches, but I think we tend to only apply it to our tithe and finances we give back to the church or other causes. I think this also includes being a good steward of the world around us &#8211; i.e. living green, recycling, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Living simply = less stress.<\/strong> Let&#8217;s face it, the less you have, the less opportunity you have for things to go wrong. Sure some of those things may happen and stress may still occur but if I become dependent on things &#8211; it becomes a lot more stressful when those things don&#8217;t work like they should.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well those are the basics. Be sure and read Kevin&#8217;s post as well as Shaun&#8217;s to see what they&#8217;re doing. Maybe a little later I&#8217;ll share some of the simple things Laurie and I have started doing to try to simply live simply.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, how, why and where do you live simply?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin has shared some thoughts on living simply. I think everyone wanting to live simply has different reasons for doing so, Kevin says, &#8220;Part of my motivation is money: Spending less on stuff makes our adoption more affordable. It also makes it easier to help others and be more generous.&#8221; Kevin points to two recent &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/simply-living-simply\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">simply living simply<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[560,18,22,10,12,24],"tags":[4659,988,541,609,1106,1105],"class_list":["post-3766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-faith","category-friends","category-mi-familia","category-techno","category-treehugging","tag-community","tag-green","tag-living","tag-recycling","tag-renew","tag-simply"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-YK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11076,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions\/11076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}