Donate It All

Vogue posted an article this past week about the tech entrepreneur and architect of Songify, Prerna Gupta and her husband Parag, who took a year and lived as nomads.

Before the sucesss of Songify as a top music app, Prerna and Parag lived lowkey lives near the Bay Area of California.

“Our house was in a part of the city known as Old Fourth Ward, where break-ins and vandalized cars were not uncommon — but we felt safe because we had nothing much to steal: a vintage couch we’d found on Craigslist, an IKEA footstool, an old TV,” Prerna told Vogue. 

Two years later, their home in California was full of modern furniture to match their modern life, living in luxury off of the royalties of their hit music app. 

But as Songify continued to bloom in the industry, the hsutle and bustle of the big city had the couple in over their heads in wealth, busyness, and material belongings.

Prerna says she felt empty.

She was surrounded by things, but nothing meaningful.

So the two packed their luxury belongings in a storage facility and took off with not much more than the clothes on their backs for a year of nomadic leaving, going wherever the wind led.

What they found in this year was profound freedom.

Prerna, who spent years as a tech developer, said that she would set down her phone for weeks at a time and not even notice.

They built relationships with people deeper than networking relationships, and just being caught in the day they were in.

When they got back after a year of traveling and living, they came home, opened the storage shed, and said, “Donate it all.”

I have been thinking about living with reckless abandon over the past couple days, being that I’m graduating from college in a little over a month, and I have no clue where I’m going or what I’m going to do.

This article is so inspiring to me.

It reaches out to my desire to simplify and let my creative mind keep me company instead of material possession and monetary worth. I am grounded by my family, and know I need little more than my husband and little dog. 

However, I can’t just pick up and live like a nomad for a year, unless JR and Lucy and I all agreed to throw it all to the wind.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t find more freedom.

What can I do to simplify and let my creative mind keep me company instead of so much material possession and monetary worth?

Perhaps, as Prerna and Parag discovered, the best way is to “Donate it all.”

Read the whole article here: http://www.vogue.com/13235619/prerna-gupta-songify-got-rid-of-possession…

Photos courtesy of Vogue and Google Images