My name is Leeja. I live in Minneapolis. I work in education by day and take pictures on the side. I graduated from Vassar College with a dual degree in Political Science and Latin American Studies two years ago and, upon graduating, realized that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I dabbled in music classes, because singing and making music has always been a passion of mine, but it wasn't the outlet I was looking for. I've started to seriously pursue photography as a side-gig but it's not at a point where I'd be comfortable quitting my day job. So for now I'm working in Corporate America where I make a comfortable wage and generally like what I do, but I still have that pull, that nagging feeling that I'm not fulfilled, that something's missing, and that the life I'm leading isn't exactly what I'm looking for.
In examining that feeling, looking outward and inward to try to figure out what the hell I actually want to be doing, I stumbled across the idea of minimalism and the fast-growing community of minimalists all over the western world. There's a reason this movement is spreading. We are the children of the generation that perfected consumerism. We are also the generation with the most crippling student debt. Ever. So many of us are seeking an escape from the cyclical nature of working, over-consuming, and then working more to make up the difference. There has got to be more. There has got to be a solution.
While I don't have the answer to solve the US student debt crisis, minimalism seems to me to be the answer to a lot of the other issues facing our generation: global climate change, stagnant wages, overcrowding of our major metropolitan areas, a culture where image and consumption comes above substance, quantity is always better than quality, and bigger is always better. And yet, despite all this excess we are still more depressed, fatter, in more debt, divorcing at higher rates, and generally more unhappy than ever before. Could it be that the excess *is* the source of this unhappiness?
I believe it is.
And as a social experiment I am making drastic changes to my own life to see if maybe I can find a way to get rid of the clutter of every day life and find fulfillment in the simplicity of minimalism. Minimalism brings freedom. Freedom from debt, freedom from confining to social expectations of consumption, freedom from that growing pile of crap in your closet and under your bed. Minimalism allows you to live untethered.
