[[!tag personal]]

This year, I have moved to a new country two times. This sharply brings to attention the pain and cost of owning things. It is not just when carrying maximally filled suitcases across airports that things are bothersome. The more things you have, the bigger a home you need, and the more effort you need to spend on cleaning things and home.

A meme of sorts in recent years has been surviving on 100 things only. That sounds like very little, but it looks doable, if a bit extreme.

I am sorely tempted to try this, but, well, I am not like Joey, living in yurts, and using only a miniature netbook for my computing needs.

But perhaps that's the problem? I am too accustomed to my stuff, and it is hard to give up things, even when I don't really need them much. Like, USB hard disks. I like to have a Debian mirror locally, so I have a disk which has a couple of hundred gigabytes of Debian packages. However, I don't actually use that much.

Would it make more sense to rely on servers hosted elsewhere? While those might be part of the 100 things count, at least I wouldn't have to carry them, ever. But then I'd need to have Internet access, and that's also difficult, especially in the early months of living in a new country.

Things would be so much easier if I could just buy a Scottish island, with a castle, fix that up with some broadband and weekly grocery deliveries, and never go anywhere again.