I've been reading a lot of gardening/small farm blogs lately to hopefully help fill in some gaps in my knowledge as we get closer and closer to the spring growing season. One of the blogs I've been reading, Garden Punks, turned me on to this great little short film called The Story of Stuff. It made me feel terrible. Not the most glowing of reviews for such a thing but I encourage you to watch it (download free from their website or check it out on Google video) because it really shines a light on what goes into all of those iPods and laptops and everything else that we buy.
It made me feel especially bad about working at a job that sells the very same sort of inexpensive electronic gadgetry with a built-in expiration date discussed in the documentary. It made me want to recommit myself to trying to not buy stuff as much as possible and to generally avoid stores that aren't second hand shops.
I mean I know this will be a challenge. Overcoming my own desires will be the most difficult obstacle. Surpassing my need for instant gratification and my tendency to connect new ideas and projects with a shopping list will be a real challenge. I'm about to start gardening again and I know that I will have to strain to rein in my tendency to buy a bunch of crap and tools that I might need to aid in my efforts (damn it, I really wanted that soil block maker). The truth is that we as a culture are raised to have this compulsion (I guess it is sort of what our entire economy is fundamentally based on) and it is going to be no easy thing to get over. In the past, one might have turned to a neighbor or a friend to borrow and share things like tools, baby, but I don't feel like I have such a resource. Certainly its not present enough to trump "buy it" on my general list of options. What a gargantuan task it seems like to undertake to reduce my consumption. What an even greater task it would be to convince the mass of people, who are unconcerned with the effects of their consumption, to stop buying so much junk. I just have to remember to be thoughtful and do what I can every day and not become driven to apathy by guilt because once in a while I do buy something that isn't completely sustainable.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
file under futurism
So as my termination date for my previous job approaches I am trying to get more into / out of my soon-to-be-primary employment running various online outlets for a local entrepreneur who sells "home automation" equipment on the side. I've been doing this work from home until recently my employer decided to open a storefront and office and so now I am commuting like a sucker to the next DFW tendril-stop to work among shelves full of these gadgets. For the first time ever today though I actually handled some and brought them home to try out. I could not believe how excited I got about some wireless light switches and a couple of other gimmicks. I now fully understand why my employer is doing well enough to open a store - these gadgets are terribly amusing. Mind you, I feel fairly sure that I have a tendency toward these kinds of toys as they take their place in our bedroom among the remote-controlled ceiling fan and the Roomba robot vacuum.
For me these sorts of devices straddle the line between truly useful and pretty silly. I generally tend to be against so-called "time-saving devices" but I think what I like about stuff like the Roomba and these remote controlled lights is how it hearkens back to what the future looked like half a century ago. I mean sure we are all now suffering like mad at the havoc wreaked by the futuristic science of that era - post WWII industrial science was hard at work cramming plastics and synthetics and all manner of would-be pollutants down our (grand)parents' throats - but there is also something charming about the optimism of that predicted future.
For me these sorts of devices straddle the line between truly useful and pretty silly. I generally tend to be against so-called "time-saving devices" but I think what I like about stuff like the Roomba and these remote controlled lights is how it hearkens back to what the future looked like half a century ago. I mean sure we are all now suffering like mad at the havoc wreaked by the futuristic science of that era - post WWII industrial science was hard at work cramming plastics and synthetics and all manner of would-be pollutants down our (grand)parents' throats - but there is also something charming about the optimism of that predicted future.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Space is the place
Growing up, our family home seemed like a pack-rat death trap akin to those rooms with the compressing walls a la Indiana Jones. Every inch of open space felt like precious and scarce realty when there was so much stuff crowding in around me. My mother, God bless her, has trouble letting go of things, to put it succinctly, and as a result took every opportunity to populate every corner of the house with furniture and surfaces for collecting masses of boxes and papers and miscellaneous junk. I rebelled against this claustrophobic environment and when I moved out of my parents' house I declared that I would live like a nomad carrying only the most minimal of possessions. My first apartment was a testament to this ideal and my huge room was spartan and minimalist and empty (also I hadn't been on my own long enough to accrue that many possessions). I became enamored with the idea of living in a loft or warehouse that was simply an enclosure of walls around free and open space.
My ideal has changed slightly somewhat as I have garnered more furniture and sentimental objects and tools and what have you. Samantha and I live in a 800 square foot 1950's bungalow with sparse and tiny closets and it seems like it has become a constant struggle to figure out what to do with all of our stuff. I'm not suddenly advocating clutter and packing your home to the ceiling, but now the prospect of loft-living gives me a little shiver. I see now that I could not escape my upbringing. I share the same propensity for collecting as my mother in a lot of ways and now I fear that living in a large space may only be an invitation to fill it up with art supplies and home-brewing equipment and what not. Furthermore I now see tighter spaces as more efficient and environmentally friendly. A smaller interior space forces one to take more frequent advantage of the open spaces outside. In our small home, our backyard and nearby parks have become our huge open living room and play area.
So I have been trying to convince Samantha to make our first home (that we own as marrieds) a sweet & tiny 350 square foot minihome - a sort of modern & modular take on the mobile home.
Living in such a tiny space means there is simply no room for clutter. An arrant article of clothing here or a disorganized paper pile there and within no time a space that small will begin to feel like its closing in. We'd have to get rid of three quarters of our furniture and 90% of our other possessions which is awesome. Like my mother must, I feel a pang every time I consider having to part company with a record or a milk crate of vhs tapes and constricting my space from the start (rather than with gradually encroaching possessions) seems like a shortcut to a more bearable lightness of being.
My ideal has changed slightly somewhat as I have garnered more furniture and sentimental objects and tools and what have you. Samantha and I live in a 800 square foot 1950's bungalow with sparse and tiny closets and it seems like it has become a constant struggle to figure out what to do with all of our stuff. I'm not suddenly advocating clutter and packing your home to the ceiling, but now the prospect of loft-living gives me a little shiver. I see now that I could not escape my upbringing. I share the same propensity for collecting as my mother in a lot of ways and now I fear that living in a large space may only be an invitation to fill it up with art supplies and home-brewing equipment and what not. Furthermore I now see tighter spaces as more efficient and environmentally friendly. A smaller interior space forces one to take more frequent advantage of the open spaces outside. In our small home, our backyard and nearby parks have become our huge open living room and play area.
So I have been trying to convince Samantha to make our first home (that we own as marrieds) a sweet & tiny 350 square foot minihome - a sort of modern & modular take on the mobile home.
Living in such a tiny space means there is simply no room for clutter. An arrant article of clothing here or a disorganized paper pile there and within no time a space that small will begin to feel like its closing in. We'd have to get rid of three quarters of our furniture and 90% of our other possessions which is awesome. Like my mother must, I feel a pang every time I consider having to part company with a record or a milk crate of vhs tapes and constricting my space from the start (rather than with gradually encroaching possessions) seems like a shortcut to a more bearable lightness of being.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
making friends is easy
Samantha and I have been living in Denton for something like 18 months now and we are suffering from a terrible dearth of friends. We have a couple of really great, similarly-minded compatriots nearby but they are pretty much it for us. I'm still pretty introverted and am not inclined to actively seeking new friends and since I've been working from home (at a job that is actually located 200 miles away) since we moved, I haven't had many opportunities to meet people at work, the way I've sometimes managed to make new friends back in Austin.
We want to try to join more local groups in an effort to meet people, but the problem we keep running into is that while we definitely want to meet people who share similar interests to us, we are so frequently irritated by people in the various subcultures where our interests lie. I'm a vegetarian and enjoy cooking, but the vegans in the vegan club irritate me. Samantha is very interested in womens' issues, but the campus feminist group rubs her the wrong way. The art groups are populated by elderly ladies and the groups dedicated to environmental issues is made up primarily of guilty suburban moms.
To combat this feeling we've tried hosting a few vegetarian potlucks at our house, hoping that we could create an event that would be welcoming to people like us. Since we don't really have a base of friends to build on, we've relied primarily on impersonal fliers and web communications to spread the word and while we have met a handful of totally nice folks, it wasn't quite the response we were looking for. Its also incredibly disheartening (and a little embarrassing) when 50 fliers and non-stop craigslist posting results in only one guest showing up to your shindig.
It would be great if I could meet some nice folks in my new job endeavors outside of the home, but I'm not holding my hopes too high on that score. My new plan is to just get more involved with groups that I can stomach and host stuff outside of our home and perhaps a little more neutral, since I can entirely understand that going to any kind of gathering at a stranger's home can be sort of intimidating. Or maybe I'm going about this entirely wrong. The biggest problem is that I've never been faced with this situation before at all. I've never been tasked with seeking out new friends. My friends are either people I've known since I was six years old or that I've met while working. I'm not even sure I have the social skills necessary to undertake this challenge.
We want to try to join more local groups in an effort to meet people, but the problem we keep running into is that while we definitely want to meet people who share similar interests to us, we are so frequently irritated by people in the various subcultures where our interests lie. I'm a vegetarian and enjoy cooking, but the vegans in the vegan club irritate me. Samantha is very interested in womens' issues, but the campus feminist group rubs her the wrong way. The art groups are populated by elderly ladies and the groups dedicated to environmental issues is made up primarily of guilty suburban moms.
To combat this feeling we've tried hosting a few vegetarian potlucks at our house, hoping that we could create an event that would be welcoming to people like us. Since we don't really have a base of friends to build on, we've relied primarily on impersonal fliers and web communications to spread the word and while we have met a handful of totally nice folks, it wasn't quite the response we were looking for. Its also incredibly disheartening (and a little embarrassing) when 50 fliers and non-stop craigslist posting results in only one guest showing up to your shindig.
It would be great if I could meet some nice folks in my new job endeavors outside of the home, but I'm not holding my hopes too high on that score. My new plan is to just get more involved with groups that I can stomach and host stuff outside of our home and perhaps a little more neutral, since I can entirely understand that going to any kind of gathering at a stranger's home can be sort of intimidating. Or maybe I'm going about this entirely wrong. The biggest problem is that I've never been faced with this situation before at all. I've never been tasked with seeking out new friends. My friends are either people I've known since I was six years old or that I've met while working. I'm not even sure I have the social skills necessary to undertake this challenge.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year Order
Another new year is upon me and I am readying myself for a lot of change this year. I'm going to be changing jobs around and doing a bit of personal inventory so I can figure out what it is I want to do with my life. I am very excited and looking forward to new challenges. I have a few goals and resolutions, but I think if enumerate them here, there will be a record of my attempts and it will be all the more sad if I can't pull it all off... For example in this new year I will not make a common resolution of mine to blog more frequently. These announcements from me in the past have never worked out and the post containing my resolution always seems to be left alone for months on this site, gathering dust and drawing attention to how difficult it is for me to stick to my plans. This all being said, I am transforming this site back into its original bloggyness (it went through a brief incarnation as the site for a now-defunct plan of mine to host a sort of intellectual variety show - needless to say the interest in such a thing was minimal), though I obviously can't guarantee that it will be populated with thoughtful insights and well reasoned arguments.
So here is to the new year -may we all manage to harness even a little of its vast hope and promise and make our love and talent manifest in the coming months.
So here is to the new year -may we all manage to harness even a little of its vast hope and promise and make our love and talent manifest in the coming months.
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