JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

There are no two ways about it, 2006 was an eventful year for me. There is not really any part of my life that didn’t see change during the year, and most of them underwent pretty radical reshaping. From the very beginning, 2006 was a pretty monumental year for Jenn and I.

January

I began the year by setting out for myself the following New Year’s Resolutions:

1. I will finish removing from my life the things that have no purpose and meaning outside of maximizing.
2. I will pay more attention to, and spend more time taking care of and maintaining the things I already own.
3. Money and finance are the largest stressors in my life. I will work towards the elimination of that stress through the elimination of my debts.
4. I will work to develop and maintain routines and order in my daily life.
5. I will endeavor not to compare myself to other people and not to judge the actions of others.
6. I will continue to examine myself as rationally and completely as I can.

Spurred on by those resolutions, the last part of January saw us working to lay the groundwork for a radical restructuring of our financial situation.

February

Having quit work late in 2005, I dedicated myself to getting my life in order, having ignored most everything in it other than work for far too long. That led to us getting serious about our project to fix our financial situation. It began to take off as we began to evaluate our possessions, trying to decide whether or not we truly wanted to keep them.

This led us to begin selling off many of our possessions and applying the proceeds to our outstanding debts. This blog was started, mainly as a way to chart my progress through the sell off.

March

Amidst the selling of our extraneous stuff (which turned our second bedroom into an eBay shipping dock), I began to turn my thinking to food and simple living, branching out a bit from the strictly financial mode I had been thinking in before.

April

April saw us beginning to think about leaving Myrtle Beach and finding somewhere more suited to our aspirations to live.

Food continued to be of concern, and my newfound interest in it saw our grocery bills shrink dramatically while at the same time the quality and variety of our meals increased.

Our rampant selling off of our possessions began to pay dividends as our debts stopped mounting and actually began to shrink. Emboldened by this we redoubled our efforts and shipped even more of our possessions off to new homes.

May

My thinking on debt underwent something of a change during May, as I came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as “good debt”, which led me to question home ownership in general, something that I am still not settled on today.

I began writing for the (now defunct) Linux World Net blog network, covering the myths and misconceptions about Linux, marking my first foray into (semi-) professional writing.

June

In June my attention turned to the Protestant Work Ethic and the Puritan philosophy that underlies it, as well as delving into Pastoralism and the end of the Industrial Revolution.
I also spent a wonderful week in a field in Manchester Tennessee with friends at the Bonnaroo music festival, returning home just in time to watch my Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup.

July

…and then everything changes. Just like that we were no longer looking for potential places to move to - we were moving to London. What followed was a whirlwind of activity, to say the least. We sold our house a mere 72 hours after it went on the market, and a mere ten days from when we decided to move!

If I had thought that our previous efforts in the war against stuff had been strident, nothing could have prepared me for how quickly and efficiently we jettisoned everything that we weren’t moving to London with us.

August

The first half of the month saw us continuing the mad dash we began in July; selling off almost everything, packing the rest onto a pallet for it’s ocean voyage and making our “farewell tour” of friends and family.

On the eighth, with everything done but the actual flying to London, we headed to New York to visit my oldest friend and have a bit of a well-deserved vacation.

New York is a fabulous city to be well-heeled and homeless in, by the way. We spent several hours huddled under a picnic shelter in central park during a torrential downpour, brunched at Syrian/Israeli restaurants, drank ale in The Boathouse, hung out in Bryant Park, wandered around museums, watched the Dragon Boat races, partied at Coney Island and generally had a good time.
Early on the morning of the 16th, after delays caused by the “terrorist plot“, we lifted off for London, and landed eight hours later, had an amazingly expensive cab ride, and collapsed.

The remainder of August was a flurry of domestic work: buying furniture, decorating, finding our way around, etc.

September

The month of my thirtieth birthday saw us collect our oceanic shipment of goods, get telephone and internet service, and working to set up new budgets and routines in our new home.

Honestly, September passed in something of a blur of satisfaction, a sort of post-move afterglow that saw us mightily pleased with ourselves for what we had just pulled off.

October

This was really the month in which we started to get the hang of living in London. Our grocery buying certainly changed when we got here, though the budgeted amount (as a percentage of our total budget) did not increase.

We learned to navigate The Underground, queue properly, do everything without a car, always have an umbrella and a wind-breaker, and a host of other little tricks to living in a city.

November

During the month, my focus once again returned to the distractions and tensions of modern life, culminating in a manifesto of sorts. I also finally decided to not pursue paid employment from any other company or person, and to work solely for myself.
Back in the States, the mid-term elections came and went, with the expected change of power and the election of one Keith Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress, which still seems to be upsetting some ignorant racist bigots back home…
December

My “problogging” gig at the Linux World Net blog network ended as the network owner decided to wrap up the whole network in order to concentrate on other projects. I took an abortive stab at music journalism (which I may return to later) that saw me unable to generate the words on a deadline…

Family came to visit immediately after our first Festivus abroad, and I finished up the design for the new version of this site.

In Review

You might say that 2006 was the year in which we really came into our own and took control of our lives. With that in mind, I am definitely looking forward to what 2007 brings us.