Money is a funny beast. From an early age, I learnt that one is supposed to be careful with money. Save, be smart, invest, make safe bets, the adults said. From them, I learnt that money equals security. Choose a career that will get you a well-paid job, they advised. So the disapproval of those same adults didn’t come as a surprise when I informed them that I was studying arts. It is not a safe bet, they said, you will struggle. Those ideas must have gone deep in my core because my relationship with money has been anxious ever since I can remember. And I never really gave my creative career a good go.

I don’t want money to rule my decisions any more. I want to do things differently. I don’t want to keep making safe bets and choosing the job with the steady weekly pay while my creative self shrinks and pains at the back of a dusty drawer. As it turns out, the economic security the adults taught me to pursue only leads to a depressing sense of dissatisfaction. More and more I have been thinking that making choices based on whether they will be ‘good for my career’ just doesn’t make sense anymore. It is individualistic thinking. It is also extractive and look what that kind of thinking has done to our planet. Surely there’s a better way to do things.

I think it’s time for me to step out of that false security and ask myself, what do I really want to do? What can I do differently? How can I be less fearful and more trusting of the things that I’ve got to give? Whiua ki te ao. I want to live fully. I want to reconnect with my true self, with my spiritual self. I want to attune myself to the rhythms of the Earth and explore, experiment and be creative. And to do that I know that I need to simplify my living because I don’t see any other way to make it work. That’s why I’m starting this Simple Living Journal. It’ll be an account of the things that I’m experimenting with and what I learn in this ride. You’re, of course, welcome to walk alongside.