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.