Sustainably busy
As may be apparent, 2013 has got off to a busy start for me. Summers in Hobart are jam-packed with things to do, I’ve struggled to find time to write and I’m not as on top of things as I’d like to be.
It can be challenging to maintain balance during busy times and so often I hear people say that they’d like to be more environmentally-sound in their choices but they lead busy lives and they just can’t find the time. And so we let unsustainable choices sneak into our busy lives. We go to the supermarket to do our shopping, instead of visiting the local grocer and the farmer’s market. We drive places instead of cycling or walking. We buy ready-made and processed foods to eat on the run. Gardens get neglected… In the name of convenience, of saving time, we make a thousand small choices that make our lives less sustainable, that lock us in to being busier and busier, that have negative consequences on our health and the health of our planet, our one and only home.
If we really want to make this world, our home, a better place, sustainability needs to be a priority in our lives at all times, especially when we’re tired and stressed. That’s when our bodies and minds are telling us we need to slow down, to rest and to focus on the things that are really important: taking proper care of ourselves and our loved ones. That’s when we really need to nurture ourselves, and we do that best by making sustainable choices, by feeding ourselves wholesome and nutritious food, by connecting with our communities, by ensuring we breathe fresh air and get some exercise, by remembering that living in tune with our beliefs and values actually lowers stress levels and makes us happier.
So stop a while, take a moment to just breathe and remember how it is that you really want to live your life.
I am finally learning that making time to do things like this is essential for my well-being.
Making sustainable choices:
For me, I get through these busy patches by making sustainable choices part of my day’s structure. Daily routines and habits are much easier to maintain than big new changes, so when sustainability is part of your every-day lifestyle, sustainable choices just flow along.
Of course, I don’t have access to an endless well of time so some things do fall by the way-side when I get really busy. It used to be the healthy choices that I let drop. No time for a swim or a bush walk, no energy to cook a proper dinner, and I’ll just finish this or that before I head to bed (oh look, another night of not enough sleep…). Now I’m learning to stay off the computer when I’m tired, that blogging can wait. That I’ll feel better in the morning for cooking a real meal tonight and not opening that bottle of wine. That heading to the pool will clear my head and lower my stress, while an evening on the couch will do the opposite and that no-one is really going to notice if I didn’t do the cleaning this week, but I’m going to feel it I don’t get to the market and stock my kitchen with the sort of food I should be eating.
It’s taken an concerted effort to break these habits and I’m still working on it, but work it does and I’m getting through the busy patches now without dropping the things that really matter to me, without winding up sick and miserable as I push myself too far.
Learning new habits:
- Walk - the daily walk to work is so ingrained into my routines I don’t even think about taking the bus, plus the time and activity help me clear my head for the day ahead. Driving to work or the local shop doesn’t even occur to me now.
- Nourish - it’s very easy when busy to give into the temptation of easy food: processed stuff that will give you a quick energy hit but in the long run is bad for you and the planet (packaging, farming practices, food miles and the rest of it) but preparing and eating real food makes me feel better. When I’m tired and lack the motivation to cook I wander into the garden and find inspiration in what I can harvest there. I also over-cook when I can and stock my freezer with home-made insta-meals to get me through the busy times.
- Prepare - have the little things that help you make the right choices near to hand. I keep fabric shopping bags in places that mean I’ve almost always got one on hand and don’t get caught out needing plastic. I keep my swimming bag packed and hanging my the door. I have raw nuts on hand for snacking. I order seeds so I know I’ll get the garden ready!
- Share - turn chores into a social event by inviting friends, thus helping you to keep the commitment as well as spreading sustainable choices. I make dates with friends to sow the new season’s seeds, to go on foraging missions or get our preserve on to store seasonal surpluses.
- Decide - a friend introduced me to the concept of mindfulness a while back and it’s an amazingly powerful tool I use to keep myself going and being the kind of person I want to be. When I’m tired, grumpy or feeling over it I ask myself who I’m choosing to be, what impact will that choice will have on me? It’s usually enough to get me out and working in the garden or researching sustainability things!
- Stop - I’ve got into the habit now of giving myself a half-hour every evening to just sit and be quiet before bed; time I used to sacrifice in the name of productivity that now allows me to sift through my thoughts and feelings and work out where I’m heading each day. It’s keeping me grounded and has greatly improved the quality of my sleep.
How do you keep yourself on the right path?
Remembering what it’s all about
I’ve just returned home from a failed attempt to do my usual weekly produce shop down at my local farmer’s market. I go most every Sunday to buy my fruit & veg, perhaps a little free-range meat, and catch up with the friendly faces. Not today though: today it was bedlam as the collective insanity that is Christmas hit the market at full force.
We seem to lose the plot a little at Christmas. I don’t know why. The market was jammed with festive season shoppers, forming huge queues to purchase must-have items like raspberries and cherries. I stood there, watching, feeling totally overwhelmed (I dislike crowds at the best of times) and wondering how much of the food they were buying would just end up as waste. Honestly, who needs 2 kg of raspberries, or 5 kilos of cherries (or in some cases, “and”)? Are they really going to be able to eat them all before they spoil? Who needs all that in one glut anyway, when the fruit will still be available next week, and the week after?
It was enough to get me feeling misanthropic, so I beat a hasty retreat home, brewed a pot of tea, put some calming oil in the burner and some soothing tunes on the stereo. Ah, so much better!
Please don’t lose the plot this Christmas. Remember it’s not about having the most heavily-laden table or all the seasonal goodies. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t found the perfect presents, or if you haven’t bought presents at all. No one cares if you’ve missed out on raspberries this year, or if the panforte didn’t set (sticky, but still delicious!). It’s about spending time with the people who matter to you and celebrating the things that really matter: family, friendship, love.
Please, remember what’s important this season. Be kind to people, slow down, smile. Take your neighbours something from your kitchen or garden. Be nice to the people working to serve you and remember to treat them like the human being they are. Say hello to people you pass on the street: go, on, make eye contact and say it like you mean it! Reach out to others and let them know you care. Take stock of just how lucky we are to be living this life, with all that we have, and do what you can to build the kind of world you want to live it, a place you’d be proud to pass on to your children.
All I want for Christmas this year is a better world: more sustainable, communal, joyful.
Day by day, it’s what I try to build. I think, perhaps, you’d like it too.
On that note, I’m taking some time out in January to focus my energy on other things. I wish you the very best over the holiday season, no matter what your beliefs, and look forward to what 2013 will bring. See you next year!
Slow
One of the things about trying to live a more sustainable life is that is slows you down a little. You take time to shop locally and source small-footprint produce. You stop driving everywhere and start walking instead. Weekends are spent in the garden as often as possible, growing food and nourishing the soil. Real food, real chores, real life. And I love it, I really do. I wouldn’t go back to the life I had before. I was hardly a rampant consumer – I composted, I recycled, I was mindful in my actions – but I wasn’t as happy as I am now. I feel more connected: to the seasons, to the soils and to the community. I’m better at distinguishing between needs and wants, and I find myself wanting a whole lot less. I’m learning new, useful skills and becoming more confident and connected. I have less, I work harder for what I have, I am healthier and I am happier.
The one thing, though, that I never get enough of is time. Always in short supply, I try to squeeze the most out of the time I have, frequently pushing too far and crossing the line into exhaustion and illness. I burn out. It’s not a new state of affairs – I’ve always been this way – but it’s really not sustainable. Time is another resource, just like money, oil, water, nutrients and all the other resources I’m working to conserve. I need to treat it the same way: slow down, take stock, think about what I really need to be spending it on then prioritise my wants. There are so many things I enjoy doing and am passionate about; my curiosity is limitless but my time and energy are not.
I’m slowing down. I’m deciding what I really want (and I’m grateful that my travels have helped me start to work out exactly what that is).
This blog, this lovely little community I’m trying to nurture? Don’t worry, I’m keeping it, but instead of a well-tended neat little plot I’m going to let it ramble a little. The veg will get mixed in with the flowers and sometimes I’ll let the grass grow long. I can’t keep up with twice-weekly writings to the level of content I want to create, so instead I’ll write when I can: when I find myself with both the time and the inspiration. I’m doing the same in real life too, learning to live with the chaos that is the garden I’ve inherited, working with it as best as possible instead of struggling to enforce a sense of order. It’s ok if lettuces sprout in the pavers and kale self-sows in the lawn, if the grass grows in the beds and parsnips appear midst the potatoes. I don’t have to have this patch in perfect order for it to be productive, and nor do I need to blog on a timetable for this project to have value.
This weekend though, I’m having someone come around to give me hand to get a spot ready to plant my summer veg, because I really want tomatoes and zucchini this year, and likewise I’m still looking for guest bloggers to share content here. I love finding new ideas take root and spread.
So please forgive me when my virtual garden gets a little over-grown and help me celebrate the unexpected discoveries of richness in the chaos (like the kale seedlings I’ve been feasting on). Slow down a moment and breathe it all in.
Shape of things sabbatical
It’s about to get quiet around here: very quiet indeed. I’m taking a break from this blogging business while the rest of my life needs my focus.
It’s not that I don’t want to be writing: I do! I have a huge list of blog topics up on my wall, several half-written posts in my head and a few more sitting in the drafts folder. It’s not a lack of motivation or a shortage of ideas. What I am running low on is time.
How can doing things like this not inspire me?
I’m working long hours and travelling a lot at the moment and lots of long days are taking their toll (On the plus side I’m getting lots of practice at packing and living out of my backpack, which will be handy for my upcoming South America trip!). I’ve been too busy to get out bushwalking or go drumming. I’m running on coffee, sugar and stress.
It’s not a sustainable way to live, and so I’m stepping back a little while I get through this busy period and while I’m off on adventures overseas. A sabbatical: time to reflect, explore new ideas, go on a grand adventure and get my life back into balance. Two months off.
I’ll be back again in September to share my stories from the road and keep growing this little community. In the meantime, here are a few great reads to keep the conversation going:
Blissful blogs:
- Whole Larder Love: let Rohan’s excellent photography and delicious recipes inspire a low-impact lifestyle
- Speed River Journal: my Canadian friend Van blogs about his own sustainability journey
- Provincial Life: the lovely Kat explores Tasmanian food and places with an eye on reducing her environmental impacts
- Milkwood Farm: adventures in establishing a viable permaculture venture
Noteworthy news:
- Grist.org: Environmental news, views and advice
- ABC environment: Australian environmental news and information
- Science Daily: sustainability news from around the globe
A touch of zen:
- Zen Pencils: gorgeous weekly illustrations of great quotes to inspire you
Open mind, open heart, open road
It’s fitting that I’ll be posting again come the start of spring. It’s a good time for re-beginning.
See you in September!
Solstice
Solstice: from Latin solstitium “point at which the sun seems to stand still,” from sol “sun” + sistere “to come to a stop, make stand still” [1]. The highest or lowest excursion of the sun, relative to the Earth’s celestial equator. [2]
Today marks the winter solstice for us here in the southern hemisphere. The shortest, darkest day of the year. Here in Hobart that means an 8 am sunrise and a 4:30 pm sunset (not counting the few minutes when the sun is supposedly up but is hidden by the hills and mountains surrounding this little city). It’s a day where I’m in the office at dawn and leaving at dusk; a day that means winter.
These days, the solstice is easy to forget: busy, indoor lives and electric lighting mean we pay less attention to the passage of the sun across our skies. In the rush to juggle work, family, chores and hobbies many of us don’t give much thought to the turning of the seasons as this little ball of water and rock wobbles it’s way through space.
Solstice – equinox – solstice – equinox; the pattern of the year, the dates by which the seasons were once measured, times to stop, to reflect on our place in the great planetary dance. Ancient cultures paid a lot of attention to such dates, building temples and tombs that align to the quarterly positions of the sun and marking the dates with ceremonies and celebrations. While we may no longer believe in the death of the Green Man or the Tying of the Sun[3] I think it’s still important to observe the solstices and equinoxes, taking time to connect with the cycle of the seasons and reflect on what they mean to us.
Winter: I exhale, the introverted self prevails. It is time for me to slow my life down, conserving my energies. Time to think a little more and do a little less, reflecting on what the previous summer brought and making plans for the next. It’s the season for planning and preparing for the growth ahead, time to contemplate and dream a little of the shape of things still to come.
As within, so it is without: winter is time to rest the soil in my garden, prepare the soil for spring plantings and plan what I will grow. I’m mulching and composting, feeding the ground, and this weekend (weather permitting) I’ll bury my bulbs to lie dark and dormant until spring warmth provokes them into growth. Rain and time will work their magic, life underground preparing itself for the return of the sun.
I like winter. Having grown up somewhere sub-tropical I find myself enjoying the distinctive change of the seasons. Winter in Tasmania means waking up to the wonder of snow on the Mountain, it means enjoying the sunrise as I walk to work and curling up in front of the fire in the evenings. Winter is time to catch up on the books I’ve been meaning to read, to catch up with friends over a quiet night in and a home-cooked meal, to catch up on sleep and re-energise myself.
I’m ready for the months of cold and dark, for my fallow season. It feels strange, instead, to be busy preparing for a big holiday, to still be busy, no time to reflect.
I like winter. It’s the best time to watch the stars as they glisten, ice-bright.
[1] www.etymologyonline.com
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice
Life is beautiful
I’m writing this on a Monday – that dread day of the week – telling you that life is beautiful.
Thanks to a weekend with the most excellent company, filled with shared laughter, food and affection, I’m feeling totally in love with life. My perspective is refreshed and I can see quite clearly that my life is amazing.
I look around me and see so many good things: the little cottage that’s become a cozy home, the community of warm and inspiring people I’m connecting with, the astonishing natural beauty of this place (that I get to appreciate every day), the loving and inspiring people I’m fortunate to call friends and the many excellent adventures I’ve had and have yet to come. In a few weeks’ time I’m off on an adventure of a lifetime with one such friend: the Atacama Desert and Machu Picchu (I’m almost imploding with excitement about this!). I have a job I enjoy, working with people I like and respect. I wake up in the mornings and I want to get out of bed, to see what the day brings.
This little corner of the universe is a pretty damn special place to be. This life – my life – is something astonishing. My life is amazing. It wasn’t always so.
Not so long ago, my life looked very different. I was lost, defeated and seriously ill. Disaffected with my career, isolated in a State where I knew no-one and with my life tied to another who was pulling me in the opposite direction to where I needed to be, it was a very different picture indeed.
I was not living my values, I was not listening to my emotions and I was very, very stressed. Every ounce of energy I had was expended running as fast as I could just to stay still. They call stress the silent killer, and they’re really not kidding: I developed severe Grave’s Disease, an auto-immune condition triggered by stress and a latent genetic susceptibility. I lost the best part of 5 years of my life to this illness and I lost my will to fight, instead watching my life slip further and further from where I wanted it to be.
Eventually, after two doses of radio-iodine, my body recovered and I finally found the energy to start re-building my life. It was a long, slow process, filled with challenges and difficult lessons, but it’s brought me to the place I am now, and for that I will be forever grateful.
Being sick was awful. Extracting myself from the unhappy mire that had become my life was one of the hardest choices I’ve ever made, but these experiences helped me to build the life I have today. Worth it? Yes, several times over.
Here are a few of the things I’ve learnt along my journey, and will likely keep re-learning for the rest of my life:
- Life in tenuous, uncertain; the future rarely turns out the way we plan. Stop waiting, stop telling yourself “one day” and start living now.
- If your thought processes seem a little broken or you just can’t keep your head clear, find a good psychologist. Persist until you find one who feels right for you; it’s worth every cent.
- Without risk there is no reward. Taking risks challenges us and makes us grow. Playing safe constrains and cripples us. Put yourself out there.
- Learn to be resilient: build the support structures, emotional strength and coping mechanisms to roll with life’s punches and make the best of it. Fighting things you can’t change is a waste of time and the universe doesn’t give a damn about fairness.
- Stress is your body and brain telling you that something is wrong. Chronic stress is a sign that something is fundamentally off-track in your world. Find it and change it.
- Where you can’t change the circumstance, try changing your perspective. Sometimes looking at things a different way can change your whole world.
- As much as possible, live your values. Work out what they are, then how to build them into your every day: life feels much less like hard slog once you stop fighting yourself.
- Don’t underestimate yourself: you will be amazed at what you can learn / achieve / withstand once you’re making those choices for the right reasons.
- Trust your instincts[1]. Our brains are processing so much more information than we’re consciously aware of and feeding it to us as gut reactions.
- Surround yourself with the kinds of people who bring out the best in you. Choose friends who inspire, motivate and encourage you to be the best version of you. Avoid the people who try to make you less than you want to be.
- Tell the people who matter how you feel. Be honest with them and with yourself, ask for what you need, give what you can and love freely.
- Make mistakes, and forgive others for making them. Remember that everyone deserves a second chance, including you.
- Take good care of yourself: no-one else can do it for you, so it’s up to you to work out what you need and provide it for yourself.
So have I won the war? No, but I have learnt how to win the battles that really count. I still take on too much, get over-stressed and under-slept and let life’s knocks bowl me over now and again. There are many lessons I’m going to need learn repeatedly: the ones about balance, about the warning signs of stress, about taking on too many things and trying to control too much, about security-seeking, risk avoidance and resilience. There will be many times I fall down, sliding back into old, broken thought patterns and behaviours. I will fail again and again and again; that is inevitable. But you know what? That’s not what counts.
What matters is picking yourself up again, dusting yourself off and getting back on that bloody horse, no matter how many times you fall. It’s remembering who you really want to be and putting in the work to get there. It’s about learning from each fall, challenging your behaviours and beliefs and finding a better way forwards, building the shape of things to come. It’s about making change sustainable, and stopping occasionally to look around and see just how far you’ve come.
So who do you want to be?
[1] Unless you’re a woman on the contracetive pill, in which case your instincts may well be broken.
Finding my happy place
Do you have a happy place? Somewhere you can go when the world gets too much, a place to re-charge and reconnect?
I do, and I’m lucky that my very special place is practically on my doorstep. It’s one of the reasons I love Hobart so much and am loath to consider leaving. My happy place is Mt. Wellington, the dolerite peak that makes this little city so unmistakable. Hobart folds itself around the Mountain’s flanks, seeking shelter from the westerly gales that batter this latitude and drinking from the many creeks and rivulets that drip their way down the slopes and run through the gullies. The Mountain’s unmistakable silhouette can be seen from most every part of this little city, watching over the lives below.
Wellington is special, and not just because it’s an ecological treasure-trove (A Gondwanaland remnant, with wet and dry sclerophyll forest, temperate rainforest, stunted alpine woodlands and alpine heath-lands, it’s incredibly diverse). There’s a power to the place; a deep, quiet presence that sinks into you and reminds you that the world is so much bigger and older than your little griefs and anxieties.
I like nothing better than to lose myself in solitude for hours on one of the many trails that criss-cross the Mountain’s peaks and valleys. After a year of walking on the Mountain most weekends there are still dozens of new trails awaiting exploration, plus old favourites to re-visit and experience in different seasons. In autumn the rainforest is full of fungi in a riot of shapes and colours. In winter the summit may be dusted in snow and the woodlands wreathed in mists. In spring tiny wildflowers sprout unexpectedly from rocky crevasses, tiny jewels in a harsh landscape. In summer the views stretch out forever and every inch of Mountain hums with life… There are hidden waterfalls, arresting outlooks, vast alpine plains and craggy peaks to climb.
Wellington is the wilderness on my doorstep, and it calls to my soul. Every hour spent walking the slopes is time well spent, restoring my spirit and reminding me why these wild places matter. That’s what is so important about preserving pockets of wilderness: these spaces nourish us and help to keep us connected to the ecosystems we rely on. Wild places teach us how to be alone, how to reach the sacred inside ourselves and how to reconnect with our environments. My Mountain, it is love.
Where is your happy place? Where do you go to get away from it all? Does the wilderness call you, or are you refreshed by city life or the sea instead? What makes a place truly special to you?
…and if you ever want a walk on my Mountain, you only have to ask.
All work and no blog…
This week marks a major work deadline for me, with the final draft of a project due tomorrow that’s been the best part of a year in the making. Despite the long lead-time it’s now a sprint to the finish to get everything done and off to the publishers tomorrow. I’ve been working long days, then dealing with the house move on the weekends and it’s fair to say I’ve just about had it.
It’s late, I’m tired, grumpy and in serious need of a massage, and I still need to do the dishes before bed. Despite a valiant attempt at writing something thoughtful about electricity costs there is no finished blog post tonight. I’m accepting defeat and prioritising getting some sleep.
One more long day tomorrow and I should be done. This weekend I shall sleep and sleep until I am no longer a tired and grumpy little fish. Unlike the gruff old fellow above, the grumpy look doesn’t sit well with me.
Right, dishes, shower, bed!
Seeking balance
Balance is an essential quality of living sustainably: prioritising activities and accepting limitations to reach your goals and avoid the pitfalls of over-commitment, burn-out and apathy. Balance is critical in managing our time, resources and health, maintaining momentum and juggling competing demands. It’s so damn important, and I’ve been so bad at it.
I may have the best of intentions, but I over-promise and under-deliver. I take on too many commitments, throwing myself into activities without allocating time to rest, relax and nourish myself. I lose sight of the big picture, expending too much energy on small stuff or prioritising things that really could wait. Depressingly, I still get sucked into the time-wasting void of the internet. I say yes too readily and I never, ever get enough sleep.
It’s a familiar pattern: procrastinate and fall behind then go into manic over-drive, or over-estimate what I can do in a given amount of time and run around like a mad thing trying to keep my promises until eventually the mind or body cracks under the pressure and I succumb to sickness or anxiety. It’s the habit of a lifetime but it has become a problem: it’s clearly unsustainable.
Experience and expert advice has taught me that I need structure and routine to help me find balance, though routine doesn’t come easily to me. The last six months have seen the routine I worked so hard to establish disintegrate completely due to housemate dramas, injuries, illness and a period of rapid change and uncertainty. It hasn’t been good for me!
Now I’m living on my own and starting to settle into the Cottage it’s time to work on establishing new routines and seeking that elusive balance.
A grand autumnal day out! A trip to Mt. Field National Park with my camera and a very good friend.
I’ve been pushing so hard to get this place set up and the House of the Gumtrees ready for final inspection (not helped by my housework-shy and occasionally stupid ex-housemate) I haven’t been setting aside time for me, winding up tired, cranky and no fun to be around. After having a minor meltdown last week over a dodgy oven I realised I was long over-due for a break to re-charge and relax. Despite my seemingly endless to-do list I took some time out last weekend to look after myself, heading out to Mt. Field National Park with a good friend for some quality time in the forest.
It was just what I needed, helping me to clear my head and re-evaluate my priorities. I still have just as much to get done, but now I have a much better idea of how to do it. And the best part? We were lucky enough to find a protected pocket of fagus up there, still blazing with colour. *happy face*
The very last of the fagus for 2012.
Of course I’m going to keep struggling with balance. It’s going to take me a long time and a lot of conscious effort to learn to walk that fine line between effectiveness and burn-out, but establishing a basic routine and prioritising sleep and forest time is a positive first step. I have no doubt I’ll mess it up many more times, but the important thing is to keep learning and working towards finding that blissful state of equilibrium.
If I’m to build the life I want to live I need to find balance.
How do you maintain balance in your life?
Unsustainable
You know what’s truly unsustainable? Pushing yourself until your body finally breaks.
Yeah, I’m sick. Proper, no fighting it, sleep all day sick. Instead of moving house I’m spending this weekend curled up in bed feeling pretty sorry for myself. A sustainable life is all about balance, and that includes giving myself enough time to sleep, rest and relax. I’m notoriously bad at that, always trying to squeeze a little more out of myself. I really, really must get better at looking after myself.
On that note, I’m heading back to bed.
