Conserve, localize, simplify, sustain
Today was a day of bicycles in a town i don't live in, with friends i don't see enough, local produce and lots of exercise, sleep, and general contentment. I wish i could carry this sense of peace and fulfillment with me everywhere but it always feels like i have to escape to find it. Permanent locals or jobs or things just grate on me with the doldrum drone of repetition. Maybe if i lived here the problems would arise to the surface too but i can never help but wonder if there isn't something so much better out there than what i have now.
Nature is amazing. I wish i understood higher math enough to decipher all the beautiful fractals and patterns i see arise in the leaf and petal formations of flowers and water lilies, in the golden ratio spirals of snails and the cyclic passing of seasons.
I can feel the cyclic nature of existence. Right now i mostly feel like the bastard offspring of the worst elements of intelligence and laziness in my family. I can feel their footsteps echoing in my actions. Maybe its just my imaginations based off incomplete conceptions of what they all do. Nearly everyone has a degree in some form of higher learning. I feel the need to go back to school but the only real need i feel is something akin to this: conserve, localize, simplify, sustain. Maybe there should be more, more extrapolation or something. More dual purpose? In any case its the idea of living a low impact, low energy life in balance with the earth instead of (as it currently is) in opposition to it.
Present methods of accounting don't place intrinsic or monetary value on our natural resources. There isn't a, say, an account balance of trees we have and a value we use to decide what can be sustainably harvested each year. The natural watershed and environmental (let alone aesthetic) benefits of a mountainside do not factor realistically into the operating balance of a strip mine. Money is the bottom line.
And, well, I have no money. I don't have the resources necessary to allow me the option of supporting the things i feel are important. I can't buy local produce at the farmers market because i'm too poor. There just isn't a sustainably built, environmentally friendly super insulated apartment complex in town. Even if there were, would i be able to afford it? Or would it bear the hippy mark up, because someone out there knows hippies are willing to pay more money for things they think are benefiting the earth?
I try to walk. I try to ride a bike. I try to think about better solutions and a better time in the future but right now i feel so lost and stuck in the short term. I need to get some plans and goals together. I'm not happy nor am i doing what i want, nor am i going to be doing what i want any time soon without a goal. I'm tired of the easy way out always being full of disappointments, failures and rejections.
I haven't had time to sit back and reflect in a while and i think it's been really worthwhile. Losing my job wasn't such a bad change after all. And besides, how could I live with myself knowing i drew a paycheck (and a terrible one at that) from a firm that represents everything i hate about business and ecological destruction, let alone how it treats its employees?
Where's the money in environmentalism? I mean, i can see the whole "because hippies pay more" argument but that seems counterproductive because the adjusted and unseen costs of eating grapes from Chile and bananas from Ecuador? Conservation should cost LESS not more.
I'm going to apply at a conservation center here. I had a wonderful bike ride around it today and i feel like it would be fulfilling work.
Nature is amazing. I wish i understood higher math enough to decipher all the beautiful fractals and patterns i see arise in the leaf and petal formations of flowers and water lilies, in the golden ratio spirals of snails and the cyclic passing of seasons.
I can feel the cyclic nature of existence. Right now i mostly feel like the bastard offspring of the worst elements of intelligence and laziness in my family. I can feel their footsteps echoing in my actions. Maybe its just my imaginations based off incomplete conceptions of what they all do. Nearly everyone has a degree in some form of higher learning. I feel the need to go back to school but the only real need i feel is something akin to this: conserve, localize, simplify, sustain. Maybe there should be more, more extrapolation or something. More dual purpose? In any case its the idea of living a low impact, low energy life in balance with the earth instead of (as it currently is) in opposition to it.
Present methods of accounting don't place intrinsic or monetary value on our natural resources. There isn't a, say, an account balance of trees we have and a value we use to decide what can be sustainably harvested each year. The natural watershed and environmental (let alone aesthetic) benefits of a mountainside do not factor realistically into the operating balance of a strip mine. Money is the bottom line.
And, well, I have no money. I don't have the resources necessary to allow me the option of supporting the things i feel are important. I can't buy local produce at the farmers market because i'm too poor. There just isn't a sustainably built, environmentally friendly super insulated apartment complex in town. Even if there were, would i be able to afford it? Or would it bear the hippy mark up, because someone out there knows hippies are willing to pay more money for things they think are benefiting the earth?
I try to walk. I try to ride a bike. I try to think about better solutions and a better time in the future but right now i feel so lost and stuck in the short term. I need to get some plans and goals together. I'm not happy nor am i doing what i want, nor am i going to be doing what i want any time soon without a goal. I'm tired of the easy way out always being full of disappointments, failures and rejections.
I haven't had time to sit back and reflect in a while and i think it's been really worthwhile. Losing my job wasn't such a bad change after all. And besides, how could I live with myself knowing i drew a paycheck (and a terrible one at that) from a firm that represents everything i hate about business and ecological destruction, let alone how it treats its employees?
Where's the money in environmentalism? I mean, i can see the whole "because hippies pay more" argument but that seems counterproductive because the adjusted and unseen costs of eating grapes from Chile and bananas from Ecuador? Conservation should cost LESS not more.
I'm going to apply at a conservation center here. I had a wonderful bike ride around it today and i feel like it would be fulfilling work.