Why I Live in 800 Square Feet by the Beach

A smaller kitchen, a closer ocean, and what Ocean Living actually means.

My kitchen is too small. The floors aren't level. The living room actually undulates if you walk across it carrying a glass of water.

I live here on purpose.

I could afford a bigger, nicer house. A flatter one. A kitchen that fits more than two people moving around at once. I think about it sometimes — the version of my life with the upgraded floor plan and the better appliances and the rooms I'd actually want to host in. Honest moment: I'd love it.

And then I look out the window. The ocean is right there. Five-minute walk. My neighbors know my dogs by name. My garden is two steps from the back door — my happy place, no exaggeration. The community I built — the one that actually shows up when something hard happens — is on this block, not somewhere I'd be commuting to.

So I stay. For now. (I'm working toward the next bigger thing, and I'll say plainly: this is a privileged problem to be navigating in the first place. I know that.)

But the concept behind the decision is the thing I want to write about. Because I think a lot of people are quietly making the same trade-off — or wishing they could — and don't have a name for it yet.

I call it Ocean Living.

What Ocean Living Actually Is

It's not a zip code. It's not an aesthetic. It's not a brand of luxury candle or a coffee table book about beach houses.

It's a decision.

Specifically, it's the decision to build a life you don't need a break from. Where the morning is yours. The work is honest. The people around you are real. The rhythm of the day isn't something you're enduring until 5pm so you can finally exhale.

Most people are doing the opposite — building a life so demanding they have to keep saving up energy on the weekends to survive Monday. Calling that balance.

It's not balance. It's exhaustion in a nicer outfit.

Ocean Living is the alternative.

The Four Things It Actually Requires

1. Intentionality, made visible.

Every choice in your life points somewhere. Most of mine, for years, pointed at something I'd been told to want and didn't actually want. The shift wasn't dramatic. It was quiet. I started letting my actual preferences inform my actual decisions — including the one about where to live, even when the obvious "right" move was to upgrade.

2. Community, surrounding you — not adjacent.

There's a difference between living near people and being with them. The first is a coordinate. The second is a structure. Ocean Living means you're inside the community, not waving at it from the edge.

3. Valuing the exact things you actually care about.

Not the version of "success" someone handed you. Not the version that looks good in a quarterly review. The exact things — granular, specific, sometimes embarrassingly small. A walk. A garden. A friend who'd show up at 2am. A morning that belongs to you.

4. Values that drive the decisions, not the other way around.

For me that's empathy, kindness, patience, truth, love, understanding. Translated into daily life, it looks like: how I do business. How I raise the people around me up. What I say and what I decline to say. Kindness that doesn't apologize for being clear.

When the values come first, every "trade-off" stops looking like a trade-off and starts looking like an alignment.

The Honest Caveat

I know this whole thing reads from a position of privilege. I have an ocean within walking distance. I get to think about whether to upgrade. A lot of people don't have either luxury — and rent is brutal everywhere right now, even for those of us who landed on the lucky side of below-market.

So I'm not writing this as a prescription. I'm writing it as a record.

Because I think a lot of people are quietly building this — or trying to, between the parts of life that are still rented out to other people's expectations — and the writing about it is mostly thin.

This isn't thin. This is small kitchens and undulating floors and a window full of water and a community that actually came through the last time things got hard.

This is what I mean by Ocean Living.

If you're building it too — or trying to — I'd love to know. The world needs more of it.

— Shane