To Live a Different Life to Everyone Else, You Have to Be OK with Being a Weirdo
Embracing the strangeness of a path less trodden
The picture above is all my husband and I own in the world. If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you’ll know the spiel already. I reduced my belongings to less than 100 items, said adios to a country I no longer felt part of, and got my ass to mainland Europe.
It’s such an unusual story that it won me a place on a coveted month-long residence in Dubrovnik. The organizer (and now my very good friend) told me out of the 120 people who applied, no one had done what you did and jettisoned absolutely everything.
By main societal standards, I’m a weirdo. An extreme case, taking minimalism to the very edge of what it can possibly be without becoming truly deprived.
But as all true weirdos know, societal norms don’t always have your best interests at heart. The fun really starts when you start to find a way that works for you.
Meet Dave and his hot tub
I have a friend, let’s call him Dave to preserve his modesty.
Dave owns a 5 bedroomed house in a desirable part of southern England. He owns a £100k car, a motorhome, and a “small run-around” car. There are hot tubs, walk-in closets, and carpets that cost more than my whole kitchen.
We all know that Dave’s life has the sort of life that society would call successful. And you could argue that there is nothing wrong with Dave’s life if it works for him. That’s the standard argument.
We’ll gloss over the fact that he feels the pressure to work All The Time because he’s putting 2 kids through private education. Or that he spends his weekends (when he has them) doing all the chores, DIY, gardening, and cleaning that come part and parcel with a 5 bedroomed house.
And besides, how does Dave know that this is the only life that would work for him? He, like most middle-class Western people, was set on a clear path from the moment he was born and he’s resolutely sticking to it because it’s the blueprint that everyone follows.
Go to college, get a degree, work up the corporate ladder, buy a house, buy a bigger house, maybe find a partner, probably make some kids, retire, die.
The problem for Dave - and countless other people I know - is that their life is pretty OK, so they don’t change it up. But when they open up after a few beers, they always tell me the same thing. They wish they could do something more meaningful but finding time to do anything else other than work is impossible because shiz doesn’t pay for itself.
So the days drift by, the feeling of discontent grows but is buried under the argument that this is life. This is what everyone does, I’m not alone, thinks Dave, I can go to brunch and moan about how difficult everything is because I’m greeted with a chorus of hell yeah, we feel you, but that’s just the way it is.
We are, unfortunately, living in a world where this sorry state of affairs is unquestioned. It’s bitched about, but it’s never strayed from.
Unless you learn to become a weirdo.
Learning to live outside comfy confines
On the one hand, I hate being out of sync with everyone. Every day I wonder why don’t take the path of least resistance. From where I’m standing, it looks a hell of a lot easier than doing what I’m trying to do, pounding out thousands of words a day to try to enthuse and help strangers on the internet.
On the other hand, I get a kick out of living a different life because it’s fun to watch people’s jaws hit the floor when you tell them how you live.
It’s a constant push and pull.
In the society we live in, there is no middle ground. Either you go along with everyone else, or you step out of line and learn how to deal with the questioning looks, the dismissive attitudes, and the well you’re very brave comments (urgh). Confines are cozy and pushing the boundaries, even just a little bit, is chilly.
If you let me indulge this cheesy analogy a little further, yes living within normal confines is comfy. But the coziness you leave behind when you choose to live differently is replaced by something more internally warming. Like swapping out piles of blankets that are only warm when you’re actually under them, for hot soup that gives you a nice glow from the inside.
Man, I love a metaphor.
The point is, as you start to embrace living in a way that may be different from the rest of ‘normal’ society, those looks bother you less, those comments roll off your back more.
Once you find meaning that stems from your own internal compass rather than looking for it in society-approved ways but ultimately vapid ways, everything starts to feel rather lovely indeed.
It might feel like it, but you’re not the only weirdo
Back in 2010, I started my first business venture. For the first six months, I didn’t tell a living soul, other than my husband. I was nervous to tell people, thinking they’d either dismiss it or tell me to stop filling my head with nonsense and get back to the real world.
Eventually, I announced what I was doing on Facebook. Within a couple of days, word had spread around the office and two separate colleagues told me that they were doing something very similar, but were too nervous to tell people too. Three of us had been working away trying to burst out of our confines, with no idea that two other people - people we interacted with every single day - were trying to do the same.
Take comfort that you’re probably not the only weirdo in the room.
If your childhood was anything like mine, you were told there was only one successful way to live and it included all the expensive trimmings.
It’s simply not true.
Learning to live differently and a bit like a weirdo can be uncomfortable and, well, weird, at first. But like everything, it gets easier with practice and time. Eventually, it becomes the new normal.
In the words of the great Ayodeji Awosika:
Next thing you know, you look up and what’s now normal to you would blow the mind of former you.
It’s all about putting one foot in front of the other and becoming the weirdo you always wanted to be.
Portugal is my home for the next 4 weeks so this week it’s obrigada for reading! There are no calls to action this week, just a simple statement:
I love you guys. Thanks so much for supporting me with your eyeballs.