In his post titled $100, Michael Schechter retells the heartbreaking situation he went through recently involving home invasion. In that post, Michael hits on two points that I have also learned recently — one which I have mentioned here before.

Backups

I was telling my wife about the importance of backups last night. When I told her about keeping an offsite copy of your files, her face displayed this confused look. Of course, to some people, offsite backups can possibly come off as paranoid. While no one ever wishes to actually need the data from an offsite backup, Michael's unfortunate incident definitely showed why it's useful.

Nomadic

The second thing that Michael brought up his was his attempt to grasp onto the idea of zen and minimalism. Part of the reason why I've been so busy lately is because I recently moved. Prior to packing, I purposely placed packing my personal belongings low on the priority scale. Reason?

I don't have much stuff.

So I thought.

While I did have the least amount of stuff in the house, it was a lot more than I expected. Going paperless and digital has greatly contributed in reducing the footprint of my crap, but I had clothes and miscellaneous computer junk that needed boxes to contain. So I figured I'd take what I needed and bring the rest later. Aside from the computers, what I needed amounted to four bags. Four medium sized bags.

It's been a week since we've moved, and I still haven't grabbed all my stuff from the old house. In fact, I'm actually thinking of listing out all the things I believe I need and donate the rest. There's something about being minimalistic in terms of belonging that brings tremendous value to the ones that you've chosen. It also makes me feel, nomadic.

While I don't recommend any person go down the route of minimalizing for the sake of minimalizing, I certainly found it liberating.

While that does mean that the items that I am keeping have greater personal value — translating to a greater emotional impact if a loss were to occur, rebuilding should theoretically be easier.

However despite being minimal or a hoarder; tangible or digital — one thing for sure is that emotionally, loss is still a tremendous battle to overcome.

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