City Slicker
From the blog of lifestyle guy George Hahn:
Between the space I occupy, the goods I consume, the energy I burn, and the trash I generate, I would argue that I create a comparatively small footprint for an American.
As everybody who knows me knows, I love city living. Aside from its unparalleled cultural offerings, amazing restaurant options and unyielding excitement, it’s incredibly efficient.
This is something I think about a fair bit. I watch all these Tiny Home videos (and I enjoy them!) but bristle slightly when they boast about their green credentials. How can building a house from scratch in the middle of nowhere be greener than living in an apartment building, close to everything you need, that already exists?
I love Tiny Homes and I see the economic attraction to them, especially if you’re coming from a city like, say, Melbourne where the cost of living is out of control. But buying land and putting a home on it — even a tiny one — is a contribution to urban sprawl. And, when all is said and done, building a new thing (any new thing) involves the extraction of raw materials from the earth. Many (but not all) of these Tiny Homes won’t last for decades or centuries like a real house. Not a problem for you if you don’t care about asset depreciation, but a disposable house is hardly the green option even if you invest in solar panels and keep your own chickens.
Around and around go my green bean-counting thoughts and I always come back to the conclusion that the greenest (as well as happiest, most cost effective, most socially-responsible) option is to live in a city. In a small apartment. As well as helping to continue the life of an old thing (with all its character and charm) instead of building new, you have all the efficiencies of high-density living. Everything you could possibly need is within walking distance so you might not need a pollution-producing car. Recycling centres are abundant. Club goods like gyms and libraries mean you don’t need to own so much stuff. It’s green! It’s efficient! Really!
After nearly 30 years as a New Yorker, I think I’ve managed to crystalize the biggest bonus of city living into one word, which is basically a byproduct of the city’s efficiency: access.
He means access to culture, supplies, transit, other people. And I think he’s right. I could be wrong because I don’t live in the country and there might be factors I’m not seeing, but I think he’s right.
On the other hand, Hahn seems to like “big cities” best of all and, while acknowledging their expense, he advocates for London, NY, Tokyo.
Instead, I’d say it’s smarter to keep it simple and live in a cheaper city if you want to work less and have a better chance at escaping the consumer treadmill: Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Montreal, Naples, Antwerp, [East] Berlin. Why not? Escapology happens more readily in the margins.
A Wake-Up Call
Thanks to everyone who emailed to tell me about Denise Prudhomme, who died while working for a huge corporation.
What Prudhomme’s death at her desk triggered is a stark reminder that life is short, and raises the bigger question of whether we are wasting precious time working for large companies who, at the end of the day, don’t notice if an employee dies at their desk for four days. In a year filled with headlines of tech layoffs where huge corporations continue to put profit over people and corporate America wrestles with return-to-office mandates that employees are outright rejecting, Prudhomme’s death might be the event that pushes many to leave the rat race.
The linked article (from Forbes no less – Forbes!) slams big companies for working their employees literally to death, then tells of new trends in people waking up to life being short and escaping The Trap while they can. A third of British women, for example, plan to quit work before retirement, in part because of work’s insensitivity to the menopause but also due to a growing “collective rejection of the notion that only one kind of career path and one kind of job offers stability.”
Which, of course, is wonderful news. The media talk about the Great Resignation but maybe it should be called the Great Awakening as more and more people wake up from the spell and come to their senses.
[Prudhomme’s] experience highlights a stark truth: that we really are just a number to the place where we spend the majority of our waking hours. The harsh reality is that we are spending our time and energy in the wrong place for the wrong people. For many, Prudhomme’s death is a wake-up call to make changes while they still can. And that’s a special legacy to leave.
That’s Just What We’re Going To Do
I noticed today that the ‘about’ text at our Substack is old. I wrote it almost two years ago when I was re-launching the magazine.
I’m going to update it shortly but let’s have a quick look at that expired old text to archive and reflect upon it.
New Escapologist was a small press magazine for over a decade, beginning with a pilot issue in 2007 and ending with a chunky final edition in 2017. Since then, I’ve kept the spirit alive with a blog (digested monthly in this newsletter), a column in the Idler, and two books.
Hah. “Final edition.” Whenever New Escapologist was spoken about in the past tense (between 2017 and 2023), it gave me a pang of mild sadness. That alone wasn’t enough to bring it back, but I’m glad it’s back.
The theme of this franchise has been escape, typically from the alienating concerns of work and consumerism, with a sense of style and grace and humour.
I’d like to cover more kinds of escape than the escapes from work and consumer culture. I already know that Issue 17 will see some examples of that.
Over the years, New Escapologist saw contributions from Alain de Botton, Caitlin Doughty, Mr Money Mustache, Will Self, and Tinky Actual Winky from Teletubbies. Most importantly, we published over 200 essays designed to temper the work ethic.
And with two interviews per issue now plus a roster of columnists, we’re attracting more prominent citizens than ever before. Famous names is no reason to buy the magazine. But the thoughtful things these cherrypicked favourites happen to say is a good reason to buy the magazine.
In 2023, it’s clearer than ever that “honest hard work” is not the answer to poverty, loneliness, boredom or ill health.
And in 2024 it’s clearer still. Recent news stories include a “presenteeism epidemic,” people being unable to afford sick leave, graduates who’d be better off if they hadn’t gone to university, and a cleaner sacked for eating a sandwich.
Moreover, people are questioning the primacy of centralised digital platforms.
Also in recent news is the analysis of how social media enabled far-right riots across the UK.
The time is ripe to bring the mag back! So that’s just what we’re going to do.
We’ll do it again too.
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A Swiss Picnic
This is an interview I gave to a Swiss newspaper when Das Gute Leben (the German-language version of The Good Life for Wage Slaves) came out in 2020. They wanted to talk about what the Swiss call “home office” (i.e. working from home) in the then-pressing context of the pandemic. I don’t know how much of this made it into the newspaper, but I recently chanced upon the full transcript.
Many studies and surveys (before Corona) come to the conclusion, that working from home is not as great as people think. Why do you think that is?
The most cited disadvantage to home office is that there are too many distractions at home and not enough motivation to work. But when you stop to think about it, there are far more distractions at the office. At home, you need some self-control to switch the TV off and you need to resist the temptation to play PlayStation, but the fact remains that you can turn those things off. At the office, you can’t turn off other people’s noisy gadgets or the antics of an office joker or an overbearing manager.
It’s just a question of learning to deploy self-control for your own benefit instead of someone else’s. If you’ve got the self-control to set an alarm clock for 6am and to trudge to the train station and reach the office on time, you clearly have enough power within yourself to to work independently. And even if you occasionally do give in to the temptation to watch Netflix when you should be working, at least you’re slacking off in a fun way! Research shows that people spend vast swathes of time in the office pretending to work anyway. It’s called “presenteeism” and it’s a far darker and more depressing situation than trying to resist a 2pm nap, which actually might improve your life and your productivity anyway.
I understand it’s tricky for people with children to work at home under lockdown, but under normal circumstances, the children will be at school or in day care. The lockdown home office situation is a bit more tense than regular home office.
Read the rest of this entry »
How Working a 9-5 Ruins Your Life and How Consumerism Leaves You Broke and Sad by Design
The idea of a grown-ass adult having to request time off is hilariously sad to me.
Reader M draws our attention to a YouTuber called Nicole. M writes:
I’ve been enjoying her no-BS style. She dispenses tips and wisdom on personal finance, frugal living and all the rest. None of it is new, but she’s unusually young to have already worked out The Trap and is telling the world about it on YouTube.
M’s right. She’s fab.
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New Escapologist Issue 16 is available now.
And there’s a half-price sale on Robert Wringham’s Escapology books this week only.
Half-Price Book Sale This Week
The publisher recently surprised me with some extra stock and I don’t really have space to store it comfortably. What better excuse for a half-price sale?
Use coupon code GOOD50 for a 50% discount on The Good Life for Wage Slaves and/or OUT50 for a 50% discount on I’m Out.
Naturally, you still have to pay shipping, but this is still the best deal I’ve ever been able to offer on either title. And to be fair to the cyborgs among you, the deal also works for the digital versions (here and here).
The offer runs for one week only, so go, go, go!
Stop, Thief!
A random thought about ownership in relation to minimalism.
Once, when I was working a short-term contract, I found a funny coconut monkey (you know the sort of thing) in a dusty storage box. It looked like the souvenir of a Wage Slave’s holiday, brought back from Hawaii for ambivalent co-workers.
The monkey was so grotesque and kitschy that I almost took it home, but then I realised that this would in fact be stealing so I left it in the box.
Most people wouldn’t even have thought of taking it, would they?
A similar thing happened a decade earlier. Just before leaving for a long spell in Canada, I found a novelty coffee mug in the back of a girlfriend’s kitchen cupboard. It said on it: “you can take the girl out of Glasgow, but you can’t take the Glasgow out of the girl.” Well, this would be the perfect talisman to take to Montreal! “Could I have this?” I asked. “No,” she said, bewildered that I’d just ask to take something from her house.
I think this weird (occasional!) willingness to just take something that isn’t mine comes from years of minimalism because:
1. I’ve honed a pseudo-spiritual belief that ownership is a relatively empty concept. It’s rarely more than a case of displacement: a thing is “here” instead of “there.” Big deal.
2. The idea of things not being “in circulation” frustrates me. I don’t want anything to be neglected or out of service. It would be better to have X valued objects in the world, all moving around and everyone having a turn with them, than 1000X objects in the world, all locked away in boxes.
My literally criminal urge to “take” is probably the flipside of the more widely documented minimalist urge to give things away. When I’m done with something, I return it to the world by taking it to a charity shop, by listing it on eBay, or by leaving it on the street with a “please take” sign.
Or maybe I’m just a secret klepto.
You never really own anything. Either it breaks and becomes garbage, which you then surrender, or you die and someone else inherits it or throws it away.
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Sleeping Coffins
My partner and I were talking to a friend recently about international travel and how the cost of accommodation is, for what you get, quite a lot. All an Escapologist wants is a clean bed plus a door with a lock on it, yet even at the affordable end of the scale you have to pay €40-90 per night. It becomes the main expense of travel, even though sleep isn’t exactly what you’re travelling for.
We discussed the prospect of (we couldn’t think of another name at the time) a “sleeping coffin.” They’d be immovable coffin-like boxes, lockable from the inside, and purchasable for €7 by contactless debit card. They’d be scattered around city streets like e-scooters and locatable via an app.
My partner said it was the worst thing she’d ever heard me say. She’s probably right.
But wait! Lets think again. With sleeping coffins, you’d be completely mobile, freer even than a snail or tortoise. You’d just turn up to a city, zero planning, confident of a secure place to sleep for barely any money. Maybe you’d bring an inflatable pillow or something, and climb into a coffin when you run out of steam.
Faced with the prospect of a camping trip shortly, I was wondering what the absolute minimum of a tent might be. I remembered the sleeping coffin and understood immediately that such a thing must surely already exist in the realms of camping.
And of course, it does:
It’s true… The bivouac sack (or “bivy” sack) is merely a weatherproof cover for your sleeping bag with a breathing hole — the perfect bear burrito, filled with your ambitions to complete those ultralight objectives.
It’s more of a body bag than a coffin. Perfect!
So, you’d pack a rolled-up sleeping bag and one of these “bear burritos” then sleep where you drop. Obviously this is intended for ramblers and adventurers rather than culture vultures like me who visit cities to see art galleries and opera. But how bad could it be? Sleeping in one of these in a cosy alley or a public park?
Well, it could be absolutely terrible, obviously. And dangerous. And yet…
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The ideas in Issue 16 — Footloose and Facy-Free — are better than this one. Get your copy here.
Nature is Not in it
This is Enrico Monacelli writing in the Quietus last year about the previously mentioned After Work by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek:
Work sucks. It just does. Especially in the state that we’re in: a good job is harder and harder to come by. Let alone a good job that gives you the time and means to enjoy all the things that make a life worth living: a nice place to rest your head, quality time with those you love and free time to idly cultivate those very talents and aspirations that makes you human in the first place. More and more people feel like life is being sucked out of them just to get by. Work lingers throughout each aspect of our daily life like a horrid Thing that gnaws at our very vitality.
and
A job is a way to force you to schedule your hours and organize your life entirely around capitalism’s every demand, leaving no space to your autonomous ability to enjoy or do whatever you like. There’s no pointing in reforming work or creating better jobs then: an oppressive system of total domination remains an oppressive system of total domination no matter how much you ameliorate it.
That’s true!
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