What Sustains Me? (Part 2)

What sustains me?
How do I make my own life 'sustainable'?

Part 2: Psychological

For the sake of discussion, let us divide ‘psychologically’ into two categories: emotionally and intellectually. Obviously, we all know these two overlap and affect each other greatly in life, but they provide useful organization for a complex, and rather personal, topic. For no particular reason, I’ll begin with emotional sustainability and then discuss intellectual sustainability.

Emotional status deals mainly with all the relationships in our life. Most intimate is our own relationship with ourselves, one we can never be rid of, except upon our final departure. As such, it’s also the relationship most affected by everyday life. Over the past five months in Breckenridge, I’ve had my share of ups-and-downs, but overall I’ve been on the happier side of the spectrum. A major portion of emotional sustainability is a sense of dignity and identity. As a twenty two year old, I’m still building my identity. Of course, at ninety three my grandmother is still playing around with her identity as an artist, discovering the artistry of writing stories, so I guess it’s a pretty long journey, creating your identity. I’m certainly in a exploratory, nomadic stage of my life, and while its not particularly stable, I’m happy to be in it. The next most intimate relationship is that of the romantic and that’s been about as abysmal as second grade, when I didn’t even know of the possibility, so it certainly hasn’t been contributing to my emotional sustainability, or detracting from it with any significance for that matter.

So I move on to a topic a bit more interesting: community relationships, friendships. Honestly, the transition to Breckenridge was one of the harder ones in my life: I knew no one on my arrival and I’m not the best at initiating friendships. But now, with five months past, I’m feeling much better about having a community I really enjoy spending time with. And to be honest, I’m pretty surprised it came in the form of a Christian youth group, but that’s life for you! I appreciate their living for more than the superficialities of life, even if I’m not particularly passionate about the beliefs. I am finding it interesting to learn about Christian relationships with God (and I suppose belief in God to start with.) And with my friendships come investigation into spirituality, something I’ve always enjoyed in my life. Funny enough though, I’ve been able to go hiking with the group, which has increased my sense of connection to nature, another relationship significant in my emotional sustainability, and my interest in sustainability as a cultural idea.

And I realize now I’ve skipped past an important set of relationships – those with family and friends back home. For the sake of family connection and support, I have weekly conversations with my parents. I’ve been exchanging letter with my old roommate, Michael Vogel. Max Gordon, on the other hand, is all but unreachable in St. Petersburg, Russia, so I look forward to his return to the States. Something I’m beginning to realize, however, is that with good friends whatever time passes, you start talking again and everything’s right there. No cobwebs to dust away, no awkwardness, the time has no impact, other than perhaps more stories to tell each other. Anyway, I think that’s about it for emotional sustainability.

Intellectually, well I’ve been slacking, as evidence in the long gap from January to April in my blog. And unfortunately, mental pursuits are an important part of my identity and general satisfaction with life. I find great joy in learning, which I’ve been satisfying with a lot of reading as well as with my various occupations: I learned how to waiter and how to teach snowboarding. Both of these tasks have improved my confidence in social situations. And this summer, I have a new job painting, so I’m looking forward to gaining a new skill set. Still, I’m considering more actively including learning in my life in the form of classes at the local college. Also, since the painting job provides more regular hours, I’ll be returning to my project (quick preview of the next post: the realignment of my project).

The other big portion of my intellectual sustainability is creation. This has been perhaps the greatest gap in my current lifestyle. Most of what I’ve done is a few drawings and fiddling around on the ukulele. What’s been annoying is the lack of intentionality, as it prevents any significant growth – and growth is what really makes creating enjoyable. I’m trying to be a bit more directed and to that end, I’m considering instituting a scheduled hour a day for creative pursuits. I have enjoyed some of my rather crude craft projects: building my shelves out of cardboard boxes, building a drying rack out of branches and coat hangers. Without tools (and intentions to move around a bit in the nest few years) anything more is impractical.

So to conclude, I’d like to do the following to make more days of flourish:

1. meditate
2. investigating/learning
3. planning – more intentionality

What Sustains Me? (Part 1)

What sustains me?
How do I make my own life 'sustainable'?

Part 1: Physical

In some ways, these are two very simple questions, with relatively simple answers. First off, that which truly sustains you, the thing which most immediately provides nourishment is food. So with food I will begin:

Food becomes you. All the energy of your cells came from the energy you've ingested and absorbed. Our growth transfers from those things we consume, and I feel strongly that the quality of those foods affects the quality of ourselves and our well-being. To that end, I'm eating primarily organic goods, though organic and sustainable are not necessarily concurrent. But with all that counter-demanding nutritionalism out there, I'm often at a loss as to what's 'good' and 'bad.' For the longest time, I've been considering going vegetarian, but mainly for animal treatment/beef production reasons (CAFO meat production has some pretty significant and damaging environmental effects), not necessarily aversions to eating animal flesh. And from all the rumors that compose my knowledge, I find a recurring theme that there are important nutrients gained from meat. Also, many meat products are replaced with soy versions, and soy is simply the counter-rotation crop for King Corn - and isn't necessarily sustainable. Living out in Colorado as well, the dry landscape reminds me that cattle are useful catalysts transferring plants we can't consume to delicious foods: eating local here means eating beef. One of my current projects is sorting out diet, and it's a complex project because food's just not that simple.

So now I have the energy to run around and play and live - and live: where? I share a home with 5 other people. Since I'm currently in my Nomadic life-stage (self-determined), temporary housing via renting is perfect. Also, increased living density means increased efficiency of resource use - so I'm decreasing my own impact by sharing. Unfortunately, more people means higher likeliness of tensions, but from such situations we (hopefully) learn compromise, tolerance, and personal responsibility. And now that I'm living on my own, I'm owning my actions - so I've been trying to do all those little things to increase the sustainability of my household: turning lights off, running a full dishwasher, running full loads of laundry, keeping the heat low. I even introduced recycling to my household, and will potentially add compost to that this summer. I've reused cardboard boxes and built myself a bookshelf. I purchased my nightstand/desk from a consignment shop: second-hand hard goods have a story in them already: most often unknown, yes, but it's there, in the essence of the object. And when I am purchasing items, I buy for quality, to ensure a long lifetime.

And as for transportation? My feet. Of course, in the sub-zero winter temperatures, this was, well, meditative but uncomfortable at best, so I also made use of the Breckenridge Free Ride public bus service. Fortunately, with summer coming (and the bus schedule reducing rounds to once every hour) I'll be walking more. I think I might also purchase an old beater mountain bike for quicker transport. Removing a car from my expenses allowed me to have a (very minimal) profitable winter, though did restrict my access to travel around Colorado/the West. Looking to the summer however, it looks like I'll have a number of backpacking trips to take advantage of car pooling.

Finally, my physical well-being, my 'in-shape-ness,' was maintained by snowboarding pretty much 5 days a week, and carrying 10-30 lbs bus tubs at Fatty's 5 nights a week for the past 5 months. Throw in some occasionally walking, running, and gym trips as well - though these were rarer, as I was usually pretty shattered from the two jobs. With summer my jobs downshift a bit: I'll be painting homes, which has a degree of physicality, but I'll need some more outside activities. Fortunately, I'll have afternoons, evenings, and weekends to day hike, mountain bike, run, Frisbee, backpack, etc. Apparently Breck is amazing in the summer.

So that's all for physical sustenance! And how I've been introducing sustainability into my life. Let me know if there's anything striking you that I could/should be doing to help even more. In a few days, I'll follow with a post on what sustains me psychologically.