The Timeline of My Journey to Complete Non-Ownership

In 2011, I lived in a three-bedroom apartment in San Diego, California. I had rooms and closets full of stuff. Much of it I loved, and much of it was sitting neglected. My new car sat in the driveway, always shining bright, a pride of my material possessions. I was on track in life. I had financial success, abundant material possessions, romantic relationships, friendships, meaning and purpose. I was adventuring around the world and creating the me that I wanted to be. My bank account had a comfortable amount of money in it, I had plenty of credit to access what I wanted, my marketing business was growing and within a couple years of starting the company I was on track to become a millionaire by the age of 30, one of my driving aspirations in life.

Today — 13 years later — I write to you from an off-grid shack in the forest outside of Ojai, California. I have simplified my life down to everything I own fitting onto a cart, which I have pushed here 1,500 miles on a walk from Canada to Los Angeles. I have $300 to my name. No bank account or credit card. No life savings or insurance. No form of government ID. The financial value of my material possessions is around $3,000. Between the cash in my notebook and the basic items I own, my entire net worth is the equivalent of less than a months’ paycheck for many of my peers.

As I’ve walked all these miles, many have assumed I am “homeless” or a “bum”, my homemade clothes and shoes falling apart and the natural dyes fading. In a sense, they are correct, I do not own a home. Yet I feel deeply at home. I am at home on this Earth. I have found a home inside of myself. I have created deep relationships with the Earth, with my fellow humans and with the plants and animals I share this home with. I have found security not in material possessions and financial wealth, but in relationships, in skills and in being a master of my own mind.

I am 75 miles from completing the walk and I am at the precipice of a new decade-long aspiration, to become a human who owns nothing. Upon arrival in LA, I will shed everything I own and give away my last penny, entering into a state of complete non-ownership. I have written in depth of why I’m going to this extreme and how I will accomplish this unusual life-design here. The fact that I am comfortable with so little, and excited to soon have nothing, is more than a representation of the physical. This physical reality is a manifestation of my own mind. But today my focus is on sharing not the philosophy, but the step-by-step journey I have taken to be on this precipice of complete non-ownership. This timeline also serves to share my development since 2016. Each of these points of development are interconnected to the practices of non-ownership, non-attachment and impermanence.

In 2011, I awoke (through documentaries and books) to realize that the “American Dream” is the World’s Nightmare. Nearly every material possession I own had me woven into a web of consumerism with ties to destruction, exploitation, inequity and destruction. Recommended watching and reading: The Story of Stuff.

I decided to radically transform my life, with a commitment of making at least one positive change each week, for two years, breaking free from the rat race that had been fed to me through corporate agendas of lies and corruption. This meant transforming my relationships with food, water, energy, waste, transportation, money and ownership. It meant rethinking nearly everything. It meant, in many ways, becoming a new human. Unlearning so much of what I had learned, and relearning a way of existence that was in more harmony. At the heart of all of this was downsizing my material possessions, dissolving the strong hold that the concept of ownership and individualism had on my life, and embracing simple, sustainable living and community connection.

(See my full Timeline of Transformation here. Below I am focusing primarily upon physical ownership.)

February 2012 I began looking at all my stuff and asking questions. “Does this bring value to my life?” “Does this help to improve my quality of life?” “Or, on the contrary, is it taking away time from my life, providing a distraction from my goals and cluttering my space?” Using these questions as a guideline, I started to remove the extraneous material possessions from my life, decluttering my space and my mind in the process.

An equally important question I would ask, was, “Do I actually use the item?” “Have I used it in the last six months to a year?” If not, the answer generally was to part ways with the possession. I found that many of these items I could share or rent on the occasion I would need it.

I would also ask if the item was costing me money (via insurance, maintenance, needing to be updated or upgraded each year and so on) and thus keeping me trapped in the financial system.

I started by purging the easiest items that take the least thought, not my most sentimental and loved items. This helped build momentum and motivation to break through the beginning stages of uncertainty and doubt.

See The Beginner’s Guide to Downsize Your Life (From a Minimalist) for support in your journey.

Some of my early meaningful steps in liberating myself from the ownership structure and the rooms and closets full of stuff included:

February 2012 Got rid of all body care items with unnatural ingredients and switched to natural alternatives for the few products I continued using. Got rid of chemical cleaning products, plastic items, and the microwave and switched to natural cleaning products for the few products I still needed. Stopped using single-use products, like paper towels, tin foil, and plastic bags and started using reusable items instead.

March 2012 Pulled my money out of investments that had any involvement in businesses that do harm to the environment. This was every single one of my investments and life savings, Roth IRA, life insurance.

May 2012 Sold my car, bought a bike, and started using an electric car share program.

October 2012 Started composting and growing some of my own food. Started to make foods from scratch that I would normally buy. Started to make things I would normally buy and learn how to be more self sufficient.

November 2012 Embarked on my first money-free adventure and flew one way to Cabo. This was my first experience living on much less money than I thought I could.

September 2013 Got rid of the garbage can in my house because I was no longer creating much trash.

September 2013 Parted ways with my last set of business clothes, removing a substantial aspect of attachment to an image of material success from my life and many material trappings. This was a milestone in that it was a substantial move in shedding the societal norms and structures that I had held myself back with.

I was embracing simple living at the heart of my being and my life practices.

November 2013 Moved into a 6’ × 6′ closet in my apartment, having downsized nearly half of my personal possessions. I no longer needed the space of a whole bedroom and I rented those out so I could live rent-free.

For the last two years, I had done a substantial purge, perhaps every six to twelve months. I put in some serious work days, which allowed me to really get into a flow and get seriously motivated and inspired and make a big difference in a short period of time. At many of my purges, I readdressed items that I had kept, and many of them I now find that again I had not used them. It was time for them to go.

January 2014 Embarked on my first major international travel without possessions or money. More than ever, I lost interest in money. I traveled with just the clothes on my back and passport, experiencing how little I really needed. (My bicycle rides across the US in 2013 and 2014 also played a substantial role in this.)

June 2014 Canceled my last credit card. Paid off my last debt. Got my bills down to only my cell phone.

November 2014 Got rid of most of my possessions. Downsized to about six boxes, my bike and a bike trailer. Moved out of my apartment to live home free.

January 2015 Canceled my cell phone bill, the last bill to my name and went cellphone free.

January 2015 Moved into a 50-square foot tiny home, living very simply at my little urban homestead.

I basically lived outside here, deepening my connection to Earth greatly, and deepening the belief within me that I didn’t need so many material possessions.

August 2015 With more simplification of my life, I dwindled my total net worth down to under $15,000 ($3,200 cash, $12,000 possessions).

March 2016 Gave away my tiny home and simplified my life down to just 111 possessions, all of which fit in my backpack. I left San Diego, my home of five years.

June 2016 Closed my bank account to decrease my involvement with money even further.

August 2016 I got rid of my driver’s license and social security, having now just my passport and birth certificate as my forms of government ID.

January 16, 2017 “Today I have achieved a milestone that few strive for. For the first time in my life, I do not have a single penny to my name.” Approximate net worth of $3,000 ($0 cash, $3,000 possessions).

November 3, 2018 Approximate net worth of $6,000 ($1,200 cash. <$5,000 value of possessions).

December 2018 After nearly two years of traveling with everything I owned on my back, I settled and built a tiny house in Orlando, Florida where I based myself for nearly two years. The tiny house was built for under $1,500 using secondhand materials. I did a year-long project of growing and foraging 100% of my food and accumulated quite a few possessions for this. At the peak of ownership, my possessions valued around $7,000 and my net worth peaked at around $13,000.

Fall 2019 Began my practice of intermittent fasting.

November 2019 Completed a year of growing and foraging 100% of my food, down to the salt, oil and spices. I became a “plant-person,” my day-to-day life based largely upon my relationships with the plants, animals and Earth. Seeing food and medicine everywhere I go, and harvesting the abundance!

November 2019 I left Florida (as planned) and gave away and sold nearly all of my possessions. I gave my tiny house and many of my more valuable sustainability possessions to a permaculture community.

December 2019 Did my first mindfulness retreat at Deer Park Monastery, which was created by Thich Nhat Hanh, one of my teachers. After four days of mindfulness — disconnection from the online word and connection with myself — I immersed myself into a level of inner peace I had never felt before.

January 2020 Simplified my life down to just 44 possessions, all of which fit into a small backpack. In 2020, I felt the most liberated I had in my life. (This article documents my journey down to 44 possessions.) I lived with less than 50 possessions for just over a year. This was a deep experiment in embracing my interdependence with humanity, dissolving the illusion of separateness.

January 2021 I created a community home in St. Pete, hosting about eight interns in service to the community. I kept my personal possessions to a minimum. However, a three-bedroom home (which I had available to me through a work trade agreement with the land owner) and the managing of a team meant a large number of possessions within my management. I built up my newly formed non-profit and found myself very overwhelmed between managing a team, the home, the community programs and bringing in enough funds to the nonprofit.

2020-2024 In the years of 2020-2024, I put in deep practice to understand and overcome my racial bias, to dissolve many of my biases, including my sexist biases, to make my work more equitable and representative especially to Black and indigenous communities, and to understand and acknowledge my privilege.
Summer 2021, I transitioned the community home up to Asheville, NC, substantially simplifying our material possessions and our work.

Fall 2021 I began the practice of Compassionate Communication/Nonviolent Communication, putting a substantial focus into fostering more harmonious relationships in my life and healing my struggles of managing a team. Read: My Journey into Nonviolent Communication/Compassionate Communication

Fall 2021 I spent a week alone in the Boundary Waters. This was my longest solo immersion in the wilderness, going three days without seeing another human. I reconnected deeply with my simple self and my relationship with Earth. I committed to taking week-long solitude trips in nature at least yearly for the years ahead.

Summer 2022 I was finding it to be a huge struggle to live the depth of integrity that I desired, while trying to bring in $150,000+ in revenue to the non-profit to fund the operation.

Although these community homes had simple and sustainable living built into their design, I was not in my place of integrity like when I lived in a tiny house with a compost toilet, rainwater shower and more closed loop systems. I struggled greatly through all of this. In many ways the St. Pete and Asheville homes and the building of the nonprofit were a setback in my life objectives of living deeply connected to Earth and in deep integrity.

Read: A Letter of Mourning: My Struggles with Communication and Relationships

June 2022 I lost my passport on a trip to San Diego and decided not to renew it. Upon returning home to Asheville, I composted my birth certificate. I now had no driver’s license, social security card, passport or birth certificate; not a single form of government ID.

June 2022 I downsized my digital world on a similar scale to the physical downsizing I had done from 2011-2016. I had been doing substantial downsizing in the digital realm over the years, but this was a breakthrough unlike anything I had accomplished before.

I deleted 90% of the content stored on my computer and in online storage, including my photos, videos, documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and all of my music. I deleted my Dropbox account (online storage) which had been a staple in my life for over a decade.

Fall 2022 I foraged 100% of my food for a month, seeing that I could nourish myself fully off the land, without even needing a space to garden. I deepened my relationships with the plants greatly, now having plant friends everywhere I went and access to some of the most nourishing foods and medicines on Earth, without the need for a monetary transaction.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass profoundly impacted my life, especially the concept of living in reciprocity.

December 2022 I ended the home and team in Asheville, drastically simplifying the physical possessions in my life, both my own and the nonprofits (which was hard to always keep separate, as they were intertwined). I stored some of the items in a shed.

December 2022 I committed to a year without sex or romance to improve my relationships with women, develop universal love, find wholeness and completeness within, develop self-control, focus and clarity and more.

December 2022 Immersed in my first Vipassana, a ten-day silent meditation. Vipassana is the direct teaching of the The Buddha on how to become fully enlightened and liberated. Through this practice I made substantial progress in dissolving my cravings and aversions and finding more wholeness and completeness within. I am of the belief that once we become whole and complete within, most of our needs for material possessions will fall aside effortlessly.

December 2022 By now Compassionate Communication had become a central pillar of my life, and after a year of practice, I had entered into the “NVC Flow of Consciousness” Mindfulness, presence, gratitude, celebration of life and empathy became my daily practice in 2023.

2021 to 2023 My net worth generally ranged from a few thousand dollars to around $10,000 max during this time.

January 2023 With much more freedom and autonomy now built into my life, my top priority was to bring everything in my life and my mission into integrity. To end everything I could not be in full integrity with. To close loose ends. Deep healing was a substantial focus of my time and energy.

In 2023, I immersed myself in multiple solo nature immersions in the Florida Everglades and in North Carolina.

I returned to Robin, the name given to me by my mother after the robin bird.

December 2023 Immersed in my second Vipassana, making substantial strides in mental liberation.

January 2024 Deleted my personal Facebook profile, which I had since 2005. This deleted nearly 20 years of photos, friendship connections. I had approximately 800 friends (which I had dwindled down from the 5,000 maximum that I had for many years). This was a form of saying goodbye to many people, as I knew that we would no longer be in connection. I experienced some deep grieving. I cried numerous times, which I did not expect. I felt very tender as I was letting go of so many relationships and so many connections. (I had also deleted LinkedIn, perhaps in 2020.)

I downsized my contacts substantially in 2023-2024, deleting hundreds of contacts, getting down to ~200 primary contacts and ~400 secondary contacts. I surrendered to the truth that I couldn’t both live in the deep present fostering harmonious relationships and have countless connections. I reduced my total number of relationships so that I could be more present in the relationships that are most important to me.

On my public Facebook and Instagram, I deleted all photos pre-2020, deleted most early videos on Facebook, cleaned up a substantial amount of content, dwindling it down to the content that is most relevant and useful. This may be the final purge needed on these accounts. On X (Twitter), I deleted 100% of the content, leaving a blank profile feed.

I deleted all messages on all social media accounts; deleted all emails pre-2022 in my personal email; deleted numerous accounts that I had for over a decade and had considered essential, including Apple ID and Dropbox storage.

I did a multi-week writing immersion in a cabin in Northern Wisconsin writing and publishing foundational content for my life mission. This played a substantial role in deleting much of the content on my computer.

The work that I hoped to accomplish in the winter of 2023 carried over for two years. The header in my task list was “Organize Life / Transition into Myself / Growth 2023”. It was all interconnected.

This included writing, updating important content to bring it into integrity, fully organizing and updating my website both on the front end and back end, fully organizing and downsizing the organization’s Google docs, dealing with all tech issues for the organization (of which there were many).

March 2024 Deleted my Twitter account, my first time deleting a social media account. One month later, I reflected that I never even think about Twitter.

Deleted 90% of my computer content again over the winter (1.5 years after having last downsized by 90%). I deleted all photos. I deleted all video, including the media video package; got photos down to just the media package. All photos are public.

March 2024 I downsized my items substantially and left Asheville with everything I owned in the backseat and trunk of a car, headed to Los Angeles. Approximate net worth of $2,700 ($700 cash, $3,000 value of possessions).

Spring 2024 Accomplished the milestone of owning 100% homemade, natural fiber, naturally dyed clothes that I was deeply connected to.

May 2024 Finished writing Food Freedom. This lifted a huge weight that had been preventing me from existing in the present moment. I had been over three years behind schedule and this was a sore spot in my integrity. I self-published the book and offered it as an experiment in the gift-economy. (Note: Some of the weight was soon back on as I had 5,000 books in a shed in Port Townsend, Washington to distribute in 2024.)

June 2024 On June 16th, I gave away the last $20 I had and spent the next couple weeks without any money. Approximate net worth of $2,000 ($0 cash, $2,000 value of possessions).

June 2024 Deleted all of my personal emails, now having deleted all digital messages (emails, texts, Facebook and Instagram). The only exception being emails to me through the nonprofit account.

July 2024 Spent a week in complete solitude deep in the Olympic National Forest, without seeing or hearing another human for an entire seven days. This was a milestone accomplishment, decades in the making. More than ever felt the illusion of separateness dissolve and a oneness with life on Earth.

July 2024 Simplified my physical possessions down to just what I could carry in my backpack, approximately three years after having tied myself back down to material possessions.

July 2024 Began my walk from Canada to Los Angeles, 1,600 miles along the Pacific Coast with the intention to slow down and simplify, with deep focus on bringing my entire life into integrity. With the intention to shed my past with every step forward and walk into my future.

Fall 2024 Deleted all organization emails up to 2024, so just 2024 were left. Went from 12,000 emails to 1,400.

Deleted substantial amount of Google docs for the nonprofit, especially community programs, social media and tech stuff. I deleted almost all newsletters, newsletter contacts (from 100,000 to 12,000), and sign up lists on the web pages for our programs.

I distributed all physical assets of the nonprofit, putting a pause on “Seeds for the People,” the last active program that had physical assets. I put the nonprofit largely into hibernation mode.

December 2024 After months of downsizing, I published all content that I had on my computer or deleted it. At this point, I have no writing, photos or videos that are not publicly viewable.

I have dedicated my work to the public domain. My creations are copyright-free and free to copy, redistribute, and adapt under a Creative Commons 1.0 Universal License. What this means is that I do not own any of the content that I have online; photos, videos or writing; on my website, social media, YouTube channel or elsewhere.

The nonprofit has a Google documents account and we have entered into a deep state of transparency by making all documents publicly viewable, except five documents that have personal contact information that is not ours to share, passwords and financial account numbers.

I have deleted 100% of my personal photos and videos. There is a folder of a small selection of photos that are stored online for media usage and are available under Creative Commons.

I deleted all emails up to January 2nd, 2025. I have now deleted all digital messages.

I have deleted the vast majority of my online accounts. I have almost no personal online accounts.

The digital realm has been even more challenging for me to enter into non-ownership than the physical realm, and in this area, I would say that I have not achieved complete non-ownership. To the best of my ability I have shared to show the gray areas of ownership and non-ownership in the digital realm. This is a complex concept that has only just been created within my lifetime. I have seen very few people explore this concept in depth and in public, so it has taken much thought and self-observation. I share in more depth on this realm at: Non-Ownership in the Physical, Digital and Mental Realms

Summer 2024 to January 2025 Healed almost all of my relationships that needed healing.

January 2025 In the spring of 2024, I was reading Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth. As he neared the last chapters of his life to write upon, he wrote that there was nothing to share, because it was all already known by the public. For the last 13 years, every action he had taken, every thought he had, was in public view. This deep embodiment of truth, transparency and integrity struck me, deep into my heart. As I walked from Canada to Los Angeles, I committed to sharing everything inside of me that I had been holding a secret. Anything I had been guarding or hiding. I accomplished this task and I now exist without a single secret. I am holding nothing from you. I exist in a state of utter transparency.

January 2025 Renewed my lifetimes vows for 2024-2028 and added new vows for the next four years:

To exist in complete transparency. I will not tell a lie. I will tell only the truth and have no secrets. There is nothing that I will hide or guard. My mind is Creative Commons.

After two years of meaningful gain from the practice of non-sexuality, I have committed to four more years.

January 26th, 2025 I will arrive at Griffith Park in Los Angeles and give away everything I own, entering into an experiment of non-ownership. I will be offline for three months — no checking emails, texts, social media messages or comments, not touching a computer or phone. I have had a teammate change the passwords to every online account. This will be a milestone chapter in breaking free from the digital realm and coming into being a more whole, complete and present human.

Read The Experiment in Non-Ownership for details.

As I dissolve much of myself, my cravings and aversions, my desires, my concept of “mine,” I am working towards the ultimate goal of living in full service to Earth, humanity and the plants and animals we share this home with.
Love,

Robin

Reading:

The Experiment in Non-Ownership
The Beginner’s Guide to Downsize Your Life (From a Minimalist)
100+ Positive Changes to Live More Sustainably, Healthy and Happy
My Vows
My Net Worth
My Life Design and Mission Statement
My Commitment to Donate 100% of My Media Earnings to People and Planet
My Commitment to Financial and Corporate Transparency