What's in My Tiny Bag?

How I'm kitted out for writing on the road!

An important life lesson that we should all understand is that it's important to make the most of whatever situation we are in. Whatever our life circumstances, there will be things that give us comfort and things that restrict our freedom. It's important to be thankful for the blessings in our lives wherever we find ourselves, and to keep a positive attitude about the journey on which God is taking us.

The situation in which I currently find myself is that I’m trying to establish a career as a writer while recovering from some injuries that I sustained during a suicide attempt a couple of years ago. If you’ve read my About page you will know that I have a mental health condition called schizoaffective disorder, which is a broad diagnosis that includes symptoms of psychosis and bipolar disorder when things aren’t going well. I manage this condition well with medication and support from some excellent medical professionals.

I live in a one bedroom flat in London, which is lovely and something I appreciate very much. However, the two other people who live in the same building as me also have mental health conditions, and this means that it’s not always easy to feel at peace in my home. On the contrary, on an almost daily basis there are challenges related to the spiritual forces of darkness that I find myself confronted with, and sometimes these challenges make me long to be out in nature without the stresses of living in supported housing in a busy city. But as I said in my opening paragraph, we have to make the most of the situation we are in.

Due to the severity of the challenges I often face in my accommodation, I am always conscious that I might have to leave the flat to escape abusive behaviour or a dangerous situation that may arise. In order to help with the anxiety this causes, I have developed something of an obsession with backpacks. I find that if I always have a backpack filled with essentials, then when I do need to escape the flat for a few hours or a few days, I can feel comforted that I won’t be without important items such as a Bible and a notebook. I have backpacks for different scenarios at the ready; one bag for if I’m going to a cafe for a couple of hours, another for if I am staying somewhere overnight, and another for if I feel I’ve reached breaking point and can’t take living here anymore and have to leave and never come back.

In the process of accumulating backpacks and organising and reorganising them, I have learned a lot about minimal travel. Channels such as Pack Hacker on YouTube provided me with information regarding which travel essentials are available to buy online that are compact and therefore suitable for minimalist travel.

Having experimented with different backpacks for a few years, I have come to understand that whichever bag or backpack you use, there are always compromises. If you carry a large backpack, you benefit from storage space but have to compromise on weight. If you carry a small backpack, it’s easier to carry, but limits the number of items you can take with you. In much the same way as every life situation has pros and cons, every backpack also has pros and cons. In the end, you have to make a decision about what’s more important to you: weight, space, organisation, design, etc.

My particular preference at the present time is to focus on using the smallest bag possible. This is because I relish the feeling of freedom that comes from not being too bogged down with heavy items in a large backpack and also my faith that even if I’m not carrying very much with me, the Lord will provide and meet my needs. With these things in mind, I thought it would be a fun experiment to see just how small and minimal I could go, and in this article I will be sharing the bag that I have chosen and what I’m intending to pack into it. I don’t presently know whether a situation will arise where I need to leave the flat for a short time or a long time, but I want to be as ready as I can be for the unexpected.

But before I show you the bag and its contents, a brief tangent. On the subject of making the most of our circumstances, a few years ago I was self-publishing a lot of books and this was around the time when the audiobook industry was just taking off. Due to financial restrictions, I couldn’t afford to pay to go into a studio to produce audiobooks, so I thought I would see whether it might be possible to set up a small home recording studio instead. I ended up converting my wardrobe into a miniature recording studio, which was a lot of fun! If you’re interested in seeing what that project involved and how the wardrobe studio turned out, you can read this article which was posted in my blog Perfect Chaos and contains pictures of the setup.

Now, back to the subject of today’s article. I would like to share with you the contents of what I have termed my ‘nomadic wandering philosopher-theologian’ travel bag. I have really enjoyed the process of trying to kit out this small shoulder bag with items that will hopefully provide the opportunity for me to continue to develop my career as a writer, wherever I find myself. I will share a series of photos of the bag itself and all of the items I have been able to fit into it. I hope you enjoy seeing just how much it’s possible to fit into a bag with very limited space.

Substack only allows users to upload a maximum of nine images to a gallery, so please excuse the fact that there are several galleries below.

First, here’s a picture of the bag itself:

I’ve owned this Converse shoulder bag for many years and it is still in excellent condition despite heavy use. It has four compartments in total, which means a lot of options for organisation. The only real downside is that it isn’t waterproof, though it looks and feels as though it would withstand light rain.

Here are some of the items I’m going to pack into it:

Going from left to right (top to bottom), the first item is a collapsible wall charger. The second item is a mobile broadband router. The third item is a high capacity power bank. The fourth image shows two slim notebooks. The fifth item is an ESV Bible (please forgive the bad lighting!). The sixth item is a Kindle Fire tablet. The seventh item is a handkerchief. The eighth photo shows four miniature cables which are compatible with the electronics I will be taking with me. The final photo shows a bluetooth keyboard and case, which are compatible with and the same size as the Kindle Fire tablet.

Below are nine more items that I’ll be taking in the bag:

These items from left to right (top to bottom) are as follows. The first image is of some A6 flyers which I designed to promote my website. The second image shows a compact comb which I intend to use for my hair and beard. The third image shows some spearmint polos. The fourth item is a medication holder. The fifth item is a packable Osprey tote bag. The sixth image shows an Innokin vape pen and liquids. The seventh item is a pair of earplugs. The eighth item is a pair of wired Apple earphones. The ninth image shows two ballpoint pens.

Believe it or not, every single item shown in the two galleries above fits into that small Converse shoulder bag.

I also wanted to make use of the plastic strap holders which I discovered could be used to attach some external items. As well as the Osprey packable tote bag I mentioned and pictured above, I found that I could also attach a collapsible water bottle and some soft toy mascots to the bag. These are pictured below:

A considerable amount of thought went into every item that I chose to include in the bag. Even each one of the soft toys has a personal meaning. And some other examples: The polos will serve to freshen my breath due to a lack of space for toothpaste. The medication container means that I can feel confident I have enough medication for a full week. The tote bag provides additional storage should I need to do any shopping while out and about. The Fire tablet offers a way to read books, write my Substack articles, promote my website, surf the web, etc. The Bible means that should any of the tech fail, I still have access to Scripture.

In the following gallery you can see how the items fit into each of the different compartments in the bag and also how the bag looks once packed:

With the bag fully packed, I felt I would like to add a few pin badges for a personal touch, so I selected my favourites out of a pack of 20 I bought on Amazon and attached them to the front of the bag.

Here’s what the bag looks like with the project finished:

The inclusion of the Kindle Fire tablet and small bluetooth keyboard mean that I will be able to work from pretty much anywhere, especially because also included in the bag is the wireless broadband modem. The high capacity power bank will enable me to charge the Kindle Fire tablet, my phone, the bluetooth keyboard and my vaping device, and the power bank itself can be recharged using the collapsible wall charger.

All things considered, I’m happy with how this little packing experiment turned out, and I look forward to testing it in the real world!

Here’s a photo of me ready for action with my fully packed bag:

That’s a wrap! I hope that this article has given you some packing inspiration. I know this article is something of a tangent from my usual reflections (which are focused more on faith and mental health) but I enjoyed the process of kitting out and organising this bag so much that I wanted to share my enthusiasm.

Do you have any tips for minimalist travel? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts!