In the past few months, at some point, my automated bill pay service neglected to pay my natural gas bill because it climbed over some hidden threshold. Rather than get an email alert, I got a cold shower alert the day after the gas was turned off. It cost me a pricey reconnection fee, security deposit, and several months of unpaid gas service to get warm water flowing again.

Motivated to never let this happen again, I’ve been on a organization and conservation kick of, for me, epic proportions. I replaced most of the lights in the house with compact fluorescent bulbs to reduce my electricity and cooling bills. Carrie and I are making changes in the garden that should reduce our summer water usage. I’m considering retiring the beautiful, but quite costly to heat, cool, and keep replenished with clean water reef aquarium. We have a goal to go air conditioning free this year by practicing good window covering and opening strategies. I wouldn’t say I’ve become an environmentalist, but I am becoming a simplicitist.

A simplicitist, in my view, strives to reduce monthly burn of anything we (all of us) consider to be a consumable and fleeting commodity such as food, money, space and time.

And because my goal is to both conserve time and money, I’m organizing my internet life as well. I’ve cut down my blog reading to very few, and spend less than 20 minutes a day now hitting Digg and Flickr. Immediate, noticeable changes for my readers here include a forthcoming move to TypePad where I already pay for service, and eventually I’ll retire the server that runs this blog. The format of the blog will become simplified, and blog entries will be less restricted to the current format. I’ll be able to share a link just as easily as I will an essay such as this.

On a far more exciting and life changing note, I’m working on a project that is currently the secret brain child of Rael Dornfest, but has also been a dream of mine for over six years now. We’re working hard at making it what we have both envisioned and wanted for so long now, and we hope to begin revealing it soon.

So stick around and see what comes of the concentrated effort on simplicity. I’ll share what I can about the changes.