Hi! Thanks for coming by.
I was inspired to start Concrete mostly because I’ve found reading other people’s blogs so inspiring. In the last few years, I’ve tended to start my morning by going through my RSS feed reader and seeing what my favourite bloggers have written about. I love reading their stories and hearing about their personal journeys. I feel encouraged by their words and get ideas for practices to bring into my own daily life to help me live in a way that feels right to me.
As I’ve been going on this journey I’ve read their stories of how blogging has changed their lives, but I’ve still thought that starting a blog wouldn’t be right for me. What would I have to say? Could I write anything that wasn’t already out there? Would blogging really help me or my readers?
In the last month or so, though, I’ve come to think writing for the blog could be useful as an alternative outlet to my normal daily activities of working life. Something to balance out the feeling that my life is solely focused on work. Something else to think about and something to encourage me to just explore what else I can do, to see whether my words are of interest to anyone else. So here I am.
I enjoy reading a range of blogs about a number of different topics. When I try to combine them all under one umbrella theme, it would have to be ‘simplicity’. They all cover, in one way or another, processes and strategies for more simple living. These include topics around minimalism, decluttering, frugaling, personal finance and living on a budget, simplifying household tasks, downsizing, tiny-house living, living on the road, packing light for travel, zero waste, meditation, mindful and slow living, and also focus and productivity. They share a theme of making do with less to live a more grounded and fulfilling life.
These themes all speak to me and are things I’ve been on my own journey to implement in my life. And they’re the things you’ll find on this blog too.
But something that I always encounter in my efforts to bring simplicity into my life through these strategies is this: complexity. Many challenges arise purely because simple living is in fact quite complex. This is a theme that I think isn’t always tackled in blogs on simple living and something I want to contribute to the discussion.
Complexity is often pitted as the opposite of simplicity, but here I want to explore the ways in which they feed off one another: how simplicity requires some form of complexity and how complexity can be made a part of simple living. Rather than striving to do away with complexity, I want to talk about building it in. This might mean finding ways to deal with the mess of life and finding ways to embrace uncertainty, challenges and contradictions. I want to explore how coming up against obstacles is inherently a part of living simply. Nothing is ever simple, and that’s part of the reason why we strive to simplify!
So, this blog is all about finding a way to marry complexity and simplicity. I want to do this with a sense of lightness, humour and optimism. I want to share my ongoing journey with you, the things I’ve learnt so far, the things I continue to work on. I hope to inspire you not to see complexity and mess as an impediment to life, but as the stuff that makes it all worthwhile.
Why ‘Concrete’?
Choosing a name for this blog was pretty difficult. When I began to read about how to choose a good blog name I saw the huge volume of advice and I baulked. In the end, I shut down all the tabs in my browser and went with the name that just felt right: Concrete.
Concrete may immediately conjure an image of something hard, solid and even mundane. But as with everything, on closer inspection there’s a lot to concrete. What I like about the idea of concrete for this blog is that it’s made up of a composite of materials, some fine, some coarse, some fluid (water being a key component). It begins as bits, becomes a fluid, and sets into something strong. But it also requires maintenance and is open to fracture. This combination of fluidity, strength and fragility felt right for a blog focused on the complexity within everyday simplicity.
So here you’ll find a range of topics related to embracing the uncertainties and challenges in striving for a simple and fulfilling life. You’ll find some small, simple ideas for dealing with life in all its complexity and encouragement to make small moves towards big aspirations. And musings on the mess that abounds along the way.
I hope you’ll join me. Let’s see where it goes!
Ella
Concrete. 