To blog or not to blog… 4

Blogging away… (fortunately for me, we now have laptops instead of pen and paper).

That’s the question. I’ve been playing with the idea of starting a blog for a long time now. According to this statistic, there are already 240 million blogs out there on the 5 largest blogging platform alone. That’s not counting the millions of blogs on smaller platforms and on independent websites (like this one!). At least one out of every 10 internet users has a blog*. So is there a point to adding yet another blog to the internet?

My unique lifestyle

I think there is. One reason is that I live a pretty interesting life. That may sound arrogant… ok, well I guess it is a bit arrogant. But I’ve put a lot of effort into making my life as interesting as possible. I’ve made some hard and against-the-current decisions in order to be able to live my life the way I want to. The points below summarize how I live my life.

• I try to remain as flexible as possible with regards to where I live. Often I live nowhere in particular and just move from one place that I find interesting to another. I avoid anything that would tie me down in a particular location: a job, a house, a wife, and kids.
• I seek out new experiences and try to meet people from different cultures and learn from them. I am an active ‘couchsurfer’, both when I travel and when I have a ‘home’ for a while.
• I work in a way that is independent of location and working hours, in order to retain maximum freedom to enjoy life. I don’t particularly like working, so I keep my working hours to a minimum. Right now this means running my own affiliate marketing business from my laptop.
• I try to live fairly cheaply, and to get good value for the money I spend. This means I have to work less, and have both more time and more money to get cool experiences.
• I’m a minimalist. I own very little ‘stuff’ and don’t desire anything more. The material things that I do have are usually the result of thorough research and are highly functional. Everything I own fits into two bags and a suitcase.
• I am very reflexive. I rarely do anything without thinking. As such I’ve gathered a lot of thoughts about life, travelling, making money, friendships, love, food, sustainability, and happiness. These are thought’s I’m willing to share with others. I hope that they will make your life better, too.

My view on the world

Aside from my ideas about how to live my own life, I also have a thought-through world view. It is the result of both a long period in the academic world, and many real-life encounters with interesting people from various cultures.

• I care a lot about sustainability. For far too long humanity has been using the natural resources surrounding it as both a mine and a garbage dump. If we as a race have any hope of surviving, this has to change. A good start would be to desire less ‘stuff’. Another aspect is to produce goods in a more sustainable way.
• I’m an outspoken liberal and believe in self-determination. People should be free to pursue their dreams and seek happiness in the way that they see fit. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion, and I’m certainly not a cultural relativist. But people’s own beliefs and values should be paramount in the way they get to live their lives.

I believe that the combination of my lifestyle and my world view will make for some interesting articles. What they will be about exactly, I cannot say at this point. All I can say right now is that in my blog I will cover the topics of location-independent working, travelling, and living minimalistically. Aside from that I will write about whatever comes onto my path.

Will this be worth reading? I’ll let you be the judge of that. If you like something I’d be very happy to read it in the comments. But also if you think an article sucks, or if you disagree with me, don’t hesitate to let me know.

* This is a conservative estimate. As of Q2 2012, the world population is estimated at 7.017 billion. According to Internet World Stats, 34.3% of them have internet. That’s about 2.4 billion. If there are 240 million blogs out there (the number for Tumblr, WordPress, LiveJournal, Weebly and Blogster alone), that makes 10% of the internet using population.