Abandon Convenience is what I originally wanted to call this vlog-blog thing we’re doing here. As with most of my ideas, Kelsey played her part of the sieve, laughed, and said try again. It definitely doesn’t have the same ring as Abandon Comfort, nor the dual meaning of pushing your comfort zone while also reducing the amount of comfort we surround ourselves with and ultimately waste money on - but it tells a clearer story.
Now don't get me wrong, we both enjoy comfort and convenience, but typically only after we feel we've earned it. Like after spending 24 hours on a passage with little to no sleep, then arriving at your protected anchorage and rowing over to the closest restaurant to woof down some grub. Living without constant comfort and convenience truly makes you appreciate these luxuries when you do get the chance to enjoy them.
My fellow millennials are the biggest culprits of taking convenience and rebranding it as experience. That local coffee shop you visit twice a week for lunch isn't an experience, it's a convenience and its crushing your ability to live out your dreams simply because its tying spending to happiness. The sad part is this is such a basic concept: Don't buy stuff, embrace frugality and eventually live out your dream, yet virtually no one actually does it. The reasons why are still befuddling to me. I assume most people construct some false narrative in their mind that allows them to write off others living their dreams as trust fund babies or just being luckier than them. Or maybe its because we've all grown accustomed to instant gratification and don't want to put in the hours to lay the foundation for executing our dreams.
It probably has something to do with us humans not being wired to think of things from a “long-term” perspective, hence why so many of us spend money on things that are unrelated to our dreams, while we work jobs we hate, to watch our limited savings and prospect of not having to participate in mandatory work slowly slip away. It’s hard to be rational when everyone around you is smothered in the usual, daily luxuries and conveniences of our modern, rich world.
Then, of course, there are the stigmas surrounding it. Being cheap has never been cool nor will it ever be. There are no corporate interests promoting frugality. You can't make money off telling people not to spend it. There's no billboards or 5-second ads harassing you on YouTube telling you to save your money so you can actually follow your dreams. The same could be said for reducing your environmental impact. If there's nothing to sell, there's no awareness. We don't treat frugality and the ability to not buy useless shit as the golden tickets to freedom that they truly are.
Some say comfort is the biggest killer of dreams, I'd argue convenience is.