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01-08-11

On Spontaneity and Having Fun

Liv­ing sim­ple is sup­pose to cre­ate hap­pi­ness and free­dom but some­times that’s not enough. In my case I’m liv­ing more sim­ple than ever before and yet I’ve noticed a sig­nif­i­cant dimin­ish in my “cheer­i­ness” level. If you asked me what’s wrong, I couldn’t tell you. Every­thing had actu­ally been going in my favor. Yet some­thing was miss­ing in my sim­plis­tic lifestyle.

Even though I’ve set up my life to where every­thing I do is some­thing I enjoy doing, it still can become an enjoy­able rou­tine. Every once in awhile there’s a need for spon­tanaity. Notice I said spon­tanaity and not just hav­ing fun. Because in my life every­thing I do is fun but there’s a cer­tain level of nor­malcy about it and it’s all pen­ciled into my sched­ule. I had a New Year’s Eve party at my house which was fun but it was still run of the mill because I had to plan it.

New Year’s Eve dif­fers from last night when I just went out to eat with some friends, kicked back, and shot the breeze. Then after that a group of us got wind of place with a local band and went there for awhile. It was so relax­ing and I felt that it being short notice made it more spe­cial than some­thing being planned and thought over.

So what am I try­ing to say? Just don’t get caught in the tracks of your life. Every once in awhile leave space in your sched­ule not to be a couch potato at home but to text some friends and see who wants go to do some­thing. What’s fun for you is prob­a­bly dif­fer­ent than what’s fun for me, but the point isn’t what you do but that you take the ini­tia­tive to do some­thing. After all, isn’t that part of why we’re try­ing to be sim­plis­tic so that it frees us up to live more of life? What good are those efforts if we don’t take advan­tage of those new found freedoms?

01-04-11

New Year “Resolutions” 2011

I wrote in my Christ­mas greet­ings how last year was all about get­ting estab­lished, and this year is going to be about build­ing on that foun­da­tion in a num­ber of ways. New Year res­o­lu­tions are over­rated, I’m more about New Year prin­ci­pals. I have a num­ber that I pulled and made my own from Jonathan Edward’s resolutions.

Here’s my main goals I’d like to see hap­pen in my life this year.

1. Rede­fine Chris­tian­ity for my life. (If you want to know what that means, keep read­ing my blog this year)
2. Come to an end on my min­i­mal­ist (not sim­plic­ity) jour­ney (I’m well aware that my jour­ney will restart if a vari­able changes in my life such as get­ting mar­ried, mov­ing, etc)
3. Find my own apartment
4. Grad­u­ate Para­medic school

Here’s a link to a list of what I call my “Life Rules”.

12-31-10

Top 10 Posts Worth Reviewing in 2010

It’s been a great year being able to write on this blog, and it’s been neat to see how it’s grown since its incep­tion. Based on how many peo­ple vis­ited, here’s a list of the top 10 most vis­ited posts on Live [Sim­ply] Free. Happy New Year!

10. How to Pre­pare for Min­i­mal­ist Travel

9. Set­ting Up to Live Extraordinarily

8. The Ulti­mate Trick to Wak­ing Up Early

7. A Look At What I’m Pack­ing | Mission:Kenya

6. Tradi­tional Min­i­mal­ists Live in a Bubble

5. Reply to: Carry Less Stuff

4. The Har­ris Fam­ily Lives Sim­ple in Kenya

3. Christ­mas Greet­ings 2010 from Andrew Randazzo

2. Not Your Aver­age Minimalist

1. Oh The Places You’ll Go

12-25-10

Christmas Greetings 2010 from Andrew Randazzo

It’s been a good year, the best in my life actu­ally. So much has hap­pened in the past year that it feels like it’s been 2yr. A year ago I grad­u­ated from col­lege and was deter­mined to trans­form my life. It all started with this idea of sim­plic­ity and min­i­mal­ism, and every­one thought I was crazy and that it was just a pass­ing fad. Peo­ple still think I’m crazy, but now a year later, peo­ple are get­ting the idea that this isn’t just a pass­ing fad.

I started a 1-​​year intern­ship in Jan­u­ary with my church, Cal­vary Com­mu­nity. It really turned out to be men­tor­ship and it was a huge per­sonal grow­ing expe­ri­ence more than any­thing else. I also had the oppor­tu­nity to be bap­tized in Feb­ru­ary after real­iz­ing I hadn’t been bap­tized after my true con­ver­sion back in high school. Some of the more vis­i­ble things I did dur­ing my intern­ship included orga­niz­ing fel­low­ships and putting together a kid’s Bible camp.

I also got a job work­ing at Apple which was a great expe­ri­ence and really broad­ened my hori­zons in a lot of ways. That job also helped me really get con­nected to peo­ple and things going on in this area. Com­ing from school where I had built up a large net­work, now I was back at square one. So, one of my goals was to build up my network.

The begin­ning of the year was a chal­lenge as I tran­si­tioned out of col­lege mode into the young-​​working-​​adult-​​phase. It was a whole new world to me as I learned how to inter­act and relate with other peo­ple in the same phase of life and also the fam­i­lies in my church. I also began defin­ing my life by nar­row­ing down my activ­i­ties to a few specifics. So, over the course of a year I’ve devoted myself to my church first and for­most, my job, and blogging. I also picked up a cou­ple hob­bies includ­ing swim­ming and wake boarding.

In the Fall, I made a career change and moved from retail to the med­ical field as an EMT for an ambu­lance ser­vice. This is the field I plan to pur­sue. I went through a rig­or­ous appli­ca­tion process to get into Para­medic school, and God blessed by allow­ing me to get in and a full year of medic school starts in Jan­u­ary of 2011.

Part of my life trans­for­ma­tion was com­pos­ing a motto for my life, and mine says “Life is what you make it to be, and I choose to live extra­or­di­nar­ily.” There has not been an excep­tion to that, and I can say that every­day of this year has been an incred­i­ble adven­ture. One of those unique adven­tures was trav­el­ing to Kenya for a month in Novem­ber. The first half was spent by myself and the sec­ond half was spent with a group from my church. I doc­u­mented every­day of that trip and you can read more about some of my crazy sto­ries at Mission:Kenya.

Near the end of this year, I’ve been ask­ing God to put some godly friends into my life, and He has been faith­ful to that request and I’m begin­ning to build a core group of friends. So here I am, finally planted in my new phase of life and ready to take on the new year and keep mov­ing for­ward. Now that I’ve got my feet on the ground, hope­fully this com­ing year will be my time to bloom.

Here’s some pic­tures for every­one. You can click on them for descrip­tions. I hope all of you will have a sen­sa­tional up and com­ing year. God bless!

05-17-10

Society Wants Options They Don’t Want

I’m in the car last week with my sib­lings and we all decided that we wanted Taco Bell.  So, we pulled off at the near­est exit that had one.  After get­ting back on the road, a few miles later my sis­ter rec­og­nized an exit and said, “We should’ve stopped here. There’s more options at this exit.”

There could’ve been 100 options or just 1, it didn’t mat­ter as long as it had a Taco Bell.

That kind of think­ing, though, is so typ­i­cal of our Amer­i­can culture.

We instinc­tively want more with­out real­iz­ing all we really want is 1 “thing”.