Ev BogueG.B. and I were sitting in the lobby of the Ace Hotel in New York on a Thursday in early May, and she decided to ask me a few tough questions over coffee and steel cut oats. Below are the answers to her questions.
This interview was originally nearly twice as long and thrice as deep, and went out to The Letter -- an intimate and immediate experience of my writing. I've edited this interview to just the elements about untethering for public consumption.
G.B.: You talk about untethering from your past. What's a tether?
Ev: A tether is an obligation that keeps me from moving forward with my work or life due to commitments that expend energy. Material possessions can be a tether, but tethers can also be immaterial, such as relationships and data.
Memories can also be tethers.
For example: I once owned a 20lb photo studio lighting kit that I used in my loft in Brooklyn, which ran me around $2,000 when initially purchased. Not too expensive, but also a commitment.
When it came time for me to travel, instead of storing the lighting kit, I choose to give it away to a photographer friend who could use it. I untethered from this possession, which gave me more freedom to move about.
We aren't as conscious of the cost of storage and travel on our things. Untethering eliminates these costs.
Untethering from this lighting kit also gave me the freedom to move away from pursuing a career as a photographer. If I'd clung to the idea of myself as a portrait photographer, I wouldn't have found that I was far more happy working as a writer in coffee shops than I was doing all of the work that goes into studio photography.
G.B.: How do you untether so cleanly from previous projects/people?
Ev: I aim for a clean break when I quit.
I do this in different ways, but it usually involves quickly suspending all energy that I'd been putting into the project or person when I find that I'm no longer being challenged by the work.
For example, in 2006, a year after I graduated from NYU with a double major in Dance and Journalism, I quit dancing. I was working as a photo editor at New York Magazine -- as a side-project I had been building a dance company called Core 4. We rehearsed for six months to put on one show, but I was essentially funding the project with my day job.
Eventually we decided to disband the dance company, and I decided to quit dancing professionally.
There were two reasons for this.
- I was more passionate in the work I was doing at New York Magazine (at the time) than I was dancing.
- Dancing had become an obligation, rather than a challenging pursuit.
So, I untethered from the work.
G.B.: Is there anything you've untethered from you regret?
Ev: I can't think of anything right now.
G.B.: Can you re-tether once you've left something behind (more to the point, have you ever had to backtrack on something you've left behind)?
Ev: Some untethers are more final than others. For example, I deleted all of my data pre-November 2010. So, I don't have any of the work that I did before that. Photos, data, etc.
I've abandoned a few professions along that way that still passively serve me. For example: I'm not actively pursuing photography as a profession, but I still find the technique useful for Instagr.am in presenting my own experience to the world.
I've burned some bridges in the past that I wish had ended more amicably, I'm working on communicating better in relationships about my intention to grow -- so that I'm doing less harm when splits inevitably happen as my own work grows through time.
G.B.: You left minimalism behind publicly, but are you still a minimalist?
Ev: I abandoned two things. 1. The label. 2. Teaching people how to become minimalist.
I'm living out of a backpack still -- but minimalism isn't a challenge for me anymore. I find myself untethering from working on a project when it bores me, and a year and a half into living with 50ish things, I was tiring of being a champion for a way of life for which people didn't need a champion.
My opinion of minimalism stands as this: if you really want to do it, throw your shit out. It's that easy. You don't need me to convince you to do that, what you need to do is look at yourself. Do you need all of it? Probably not.
Do I need the label "minimalist" to define myself anymore? Definitely not.
I'm shying away from labels currently. They're incredibly restrictive to the work. I used them when I needed them, now I don't. So I let them go.
G.B.: Do you ever get nostalgic? (If yes, for what. If no, how do you avoid pining for a past that's gone.)
Ev: I see nostalgia as a symptom of constantly reminding yourself of what you've left behind.
I don't feel nostalgia often, but usually because I'm holding onto something that I could have let go of. Photos, music, friends that I no longer have much in common with. These things lead to nostalgia.
The cure is to untether from the reminders of the untethering.
G.B.: You don't put up photos of yourself as you used to be (with friends or solo). Is there a reason for this?
Ev: The first reason is that I don't have any of photos anymore, I deleted them all. I believe that I'm going to continue to delete photos of myself -- and everything really, as time goes on.
Photos serve as a reminder, this brings up nostalgia, which I see as wasted energy. Why spend time reminiscing about the past, when I can be enjoying my life in the present?
G.B.: How do people in your past respond to being left behind?
Ev: Untethering from other people is challenging at times. I move through the world at a pretty steady velocity of: quickly. So, I'll lose touch with people who really want to continue to know me.
With people, this isn't always a clean break, other times it is. I tend to think of myself and the people who I work with was self-reliant. If someone is relying on me, I'll do my best to bring to their attention how/why they are -- and what they'd need to do to become self-reliant again.
In most cases, I'll go through phases of losing touch with almost everyone, and then phases of hyperactive contact with a lot of people.
I find myself maintaining ties with people who are self-reliant, working on their own worlds, their own projects, and are also progressing in their own personal evolution at a similar rate to me.
G.B.: Do you think you can have a future without a past?
Ev: I'm more likely to have a present when there's less constant emphasis on the past.
We overlook that only recently did humans start to have gigabytes of data that surrounded their lives. We didn't used to be able to google our friends, and ask them about projects they worked on years ago. Previous to the Internet age, all communication was done in the context of face to face communication, telephones, and hand-written letters.
When everyone is carrying around 30 gigabytes of data about themselves, I wonder if it's worth asking the question: how much does all of that information weigh you down? How much does it distract from the present moment? Maybe tethering to the past is actually keeping you from having a future.
I can still tell a story about myself -- it can be confirmed. You can pick up a copy of New York Magazine between the years of 2006 - 2009 and see my name on the masthead.
G.B.: Is there a time you should have untethered faster?
Ev: I wish I'd left New York Magazine a year before I did. Many people told me I'd starve if I left -- that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
In reality, because I wasn't challenging myself, I ended up in one of the least healthy situations physically that I'd ever found myself in.
This taught me that if I feel the urge to untether because I'm not being challenged, I need to pursue it faster. This way I can continue to stay happy, healthy, and evolving my experience of the world.
G.B.: Do you get annoyed when others don't untether fast enough?
Ev: I get annoyed when I hear someone complaining about situations that they can change if they applied half the effort that they're spending on complaining.
If I'm unhappy, I do something about it.
I find myself distancing myself from people who are continually wasting energy instead of applying it towards moving in a more positive direction.
G.B.: Do you think you can evolve with tethers or not?
Ev: We have tethers around us everywhere. It'd be impossible to cut them all.
When untethering, I do my best to do so deliberately. In my experience, cutting too many tethers, too fast, can lead to instability from an overwhelming sense of groundlessness.
The purpose of untethering is to move in the future in a healthy way.
G.B. is a Digital Liberator. She looks you in the eye when she talks to you. She has practiced and taught yoga in Mexico, Japan and around the States. She has practiced with the likes of David Swenson and Rodney Yee. When not practicing on the mat or the cushion, find her writing Letters or drinking finely crafted beers.