My name is Mary Feuer.
I have a YouTube channel that's called maximalist minibus.
So you might be wondering why I'm on a minimalism panel.
Boy after this week feels weird not to be driving.
Eight days. 11 States, 2,798 miles.
I'm here.
This is the volunteer campsite at the RTR.
Otherwise known as the lower parking lot is the La Paz County fair,
beautiful view. It's pretty dusty.
All kinds of rigs here. Everything from tents on up.
That's pretty mellow, laid back. Seems like a nice place to hang out.
I'm not gonna stay here long term.
I'm going over to Scaddan Wash to the Par-T-R and I'm going to camp over there
because that's where all the YouTubers are, and 'm
trying to grow my channel. You know, I'm at just under a thousand subscribers,
and I want this to work cause I really like doing this.
So it's probably best if I go camp over there cause there might be more
opportunities there, you know.
But I stayed here last night because the last thing I wanted to do after all
that driving was go stumbling around in Scaddan wash trying to figure out where
I am. It's really dark over there and I've only been there once,
so I think I got to wait til daylight.
The other reason I stayed over here is because my presentation is over here and
it's at three o'clock today.
I'm nervous. Yeah. I told you before,
I'm nervous about showing my body because you know,
I do a good job of hiding it when I shoot and I'm sure they're going to shoot
this and then probably post it somewhere. So yeah, I'm still nervous about that.
But the nervousness has kind of shifted and now I'm more like nervous about the
presentation itself,
like about what I'm going to say because okay,
minimalism is kind of a hot topic for me. I'm not a minimalist. Okay.
So that's the thing.
I'm not a minimalist and I'm about to go out there and announce that to a bunch
of people who came for a seminar on minimalism.
So why am I not a minimalist? I got problems with minimalism all over the place.
I got problems with it economically, I have problems with philosophically,
psychologically, spiritually.
I got problems with minimalism and that's why I think I need to make,
make that its own episode. Cause if I go too far down that road right now,
then this episode is going to become that episode and this episode already has
other stuff going on. So yeah, I will say one thing though,
I will say my most personal reason for not identifying as a minimalist,
I would never identify as a minimalist because minimalism is boring.
Okay. Visually.
I'm talking only visually and I'm talking the modern definition of minimalism be
cause minimalism was originally describing an art movement and that was not
exactly my cup of tea, but it was not boring.
You are welcome to live in the shades of gray on white as much as you like by
me, I need color and texture and weirdness. I mean,
look at this place I have.
I have a picture of a parsnip and a carrot getting married. Okay.
That's one of my favorite things in this place.
I don't think that's on anybody's list of multifunctional necessary items.
Well it's on mine. I think if I went on the space shuttle,
I would take my picture of the carrot and the parsnip getting married.
So why am I on this panel? What's my contribution?
I actually think I have a lot to offer on this topic because as an antique
dealer, I got to see a lot about how people form relationships with objects,
both positive and negative.
I saw people drowning under the weight of somebody else's stuff.
You know,
like a collector who's like collecting something that nobody really wants
anymore. You know,
she dies and her kids have to figure out how to dispose of the estate.
You know the estate being basically a house and a garage filled with tchotchkes
nobody wants and that's, it's painful.
I've also been to storage auctions,
a lot of them where it's really obvious then no one's even opened the door to
the unit in years and you know,
some guy has crammed it full of stuff he was sure he was going to need some day
and then you know, you know,
it's only $1 for the first month and then they've been billing him ever since.
So he's like thousands of dollars in by the time he actually loses the unit.
I mean these are situations that are sad where stuff has just really taken over.
But I've also seen how much joy certain objects give to certain people.
And I'm not talking about like, you know,
an addictive high or the rush of consumerism, I'm talking about genuine joy.
I've seen furniture that is so well-made,
it makes like a bridge between the past and the present. And it's so beautiful.
It just makes you want to weep, you know? But I've also let that furniture go.
I let everything go.
You can do it, you can let it go.
I think the biggest contribution I can make is just to say
it's OK.
It's OK that you're attached. Cause being attached means you're alive.
And it's okay that you love your stuff because how cool would it be if we loved
every single thing that touched our lives.
Love is good.
If you want to have your stuff around you,
surround yourself with that beautiful stuff,
unless you're struggling with a mental illness over it,
it really is just a choice.
You want to keep your stuff, you can, you can keep your stuff,
but you're probably not going to live in a van. You want to live in a van,
you probably can't keep your stuff. Well, not all of it. Anyway,
keep your parsnips.
We are here with Maximalist Minibus YouTube channel. This is her bus..
[Inaudible]
and I'm a Erick the Goat Guy, if anybody cares. Yeah, that is Eric the goat guy.
And he, um,
I'm kind of proud that he appointed himself host of my after-party for the
minimalism event.
My name is Mary Feuer. I have a YouTube channel called maximalist minibus.
So you might be wondering why I'm on a minimalism panel.
I think it went pretty well. You know,
considering that I'm a non-minimalist up there talking to the minimalists.
All that worrying that I did about my body and yada, yada, yada. Well,
first of all, we were sitting behind a table that had like a skirt.
So you're not going to see much of my body anyway.
I actually don't identify as a minimalist for some really specific reasons I'll
go into a little bit, But I'm not even really gonna have to worry about it yet.
Cause the only person who has posted any video of it
so far is Erick again. Yeah. And in his livestream,
he's so far away that you can barely even see my head so I don't have to worry
about that one.
So I know at some point you can see there are people in the video up closer that
are shooting. So probably,
those videos will show up eventually and I will have to deal with it then.
So that's a bridge I'm just not going cross right now.
I'm just happy that the event - that I was able to like put my own crap aside
for long enough to deliver some information and a couple of laughs to the people
that were sitting in the audience. So that felt good.
Do you want to subscribe to her YouTube channel?
You could be the thousandth subscriber.
Erick took it upon himself to get just about every person that came down there
to subscribe.
He also happened to be live streaming as people were touring the bus,
which is a really good thing cause honestly I was like a deer in the headlights.
It didn't even occur to me to shoot anything.
I was just so happy that the presentation was over and that I didn't have to,
you know, talk about minimalism anymore. Yeah.
So the footage that you're seeing, this is all from Erick the goat guy.
I'm going to link his channel in the description and also I'll put a link to an
article about him from the Detroit free press.
Eric the Goat Guy on YouTube.
I went from 985 - about - subscribers at the start of the whole thing to I
crossed the thousand subscriber mark right then and there. Thanks to Erick.
We are here with Maximalist Minibus, YouTube channel, this is her bus.
And she barely just hit a thousand subscribers. Okay.
A thousand subscribers. We out here, uh,
celebrating a thousand subscribers. Maximalist Minibus, right here.
Look it up.
Thank you Eric. And thank you for subscribing. Well, the sun's going down.
And it's getting too dark again to go over to the par-T-R,
so I guess I'll stay here for one more night. I'm okay with that.
I'll go over tomorrow after I get out of work. Yeah.
I'm working tomorrow because I start volunteering,
so that should be interesting. I'll tell you all about it.
See you next time.