11/08/2025
My GrowingFREE SimpleLife Book is part story, part poetry, part inspiration, and part practical information. It is a library of the wisdom we need for the internal work needed to unlock our own chains.
It’s filled with inspiring quotes and insights that give us little glimpses of liberation from our own bad, which are barriers to the way we really want to live.
From the beginning I felt different, meaning there was a deeper calling. The idea of being FREE began later in life, just after crossing 60 trips Around the Sun.
When I first read Thoreau I realized I wanted more for myself than the “lives of quiet desperation” that Thoreau saw most people living.
Most people, it seemed to me, lived scrambling from paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep jobs they complained about, with little time to actually live.
I am 5-Years into this Transformative Adventure of a GrowingFREE Simple Life,
Wow, I Say,.....
It is quite decadent,.........
From the start, I decided to slash my Housing Expenses, partially to add some wiggle room in my budget, but mostly because I was really drawn to a Nomadic LifeStyle. So I have spent my Summers at a Lake in Ohio in a newer RV I purchased in 2021.
I acquired the taste of Freedom to Move around a decade or so earlier with a smaller camper, and traveled Up North Michigan and Out West Arizona several times or so before “Retirement” with long weekends, and really enjoyed the experience.
The larger RV suits my needs well. In 2016 I downsized significantly when I moved into a small one bed apartment. It was a cool space in a downtown urban setting, but it required me to either store a bunch of stuff, or get rid of it. I did a little of both, finally letting most of it go when I sold my OffGrid Cabin in Northern MI.
Because we live in a society that constantly feeds us the message: you are not enough. We have Jones’s to keep up with and FOMO, the fear of missing out, and phones that advertise to us all day long every day.
In such a world the internal work of being FREE is never-ending: being grateful,
being present,
building community,
Embracing the experiences of life instead of getting caught up in life in single-serving-sized packages.
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.
They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ~Pema Chödrön
I continually have to parse out “what is really enough for me, what do I really want,
what is truly life enhancing,” vs “what does advertising say I should want?”
But I suppose that is the work of living consciously, after all. And as I make those conscious choices, I will return to this book again and again for its collection of inspiring wisdom.
I have discovered patterns to becoming FREE.
The core principle and common denominator is time; time to notice the small things, followed by time to actually do the small things.
We all have the same 24 hours every day; however, society goes about that in a way, perhaps like a merry-go-round designed by the corporate villains who regulate, absent our input, of command and control.
Someone decided that a 40 to 60-hour work week, five to six days a week, with maybe a couple weeks off a year for vacation, is an amicable exchange for money. Here’s the kicker – those same people who pay the wages decide the rate and value of our currency.
Society at large, Trade Time for Money.
And the dirty secret is We think that's how everyone does it,
and that's what we are supposed to do,.........
Except it isn’t.
It’s a big lie, believed by many
Eric is an Entrepreneur, and lives a Nomadic Lifestyle and is an OffGrid Practitioner. He is also an Instructor for Melina Emerson Small Biz Lady and served as an Adjunct Instructor at Drexel University.
Eric has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine
Break From the Pack of Work, Work, Work to NumbUp,.....
Find & Experience the Highest Currency We
Have, Time!
Time to Do the Things That Matter,.......
The Growingfree SimpleLife is Delicious to Our Soul!
Follow Eric's Musings, Books & Offerings here; https://linktr.ee/ericurbane
Message Me Here or;
EricBrown.Urbane@gmail.com 248-767-4460
