Embracing Digital

I am 40 years old. I saw computers come into my school system in middle school but they never got a foothold before I graduated. Therefore, I have still relied on paper notebooks for writing, CDs/cassettes/vinyl for music, and paper bound books for reading. I love to collect all three hobbies. While I don't think that I will ever be able to get rid of my paper notebooks entirely, I want to start writing on the computer more and downloading books and music rather than buying a physical object to "have."

I am to the point in my life where I have too much stuff that isn't serving any purpose other than keeping me from enjoying my life. I don't have the room to store all the books and music that have piled up over the years and now reach from floor to ceiling. I don't want to pick up fallen Jenga towers of books, magazines, CDs, and notebooks anymore. I want to embrace the digital lifestyle.

Wordless Wednesday

I Am a Vegan

I have been a vegan for a few months now and I finally feel like my life is on the right path.

This is the not the first time in my life I’ve called myself a vegan. I was a vegan once before. Being a vegan was a big reason why I left my first husband who was a restaurant owner who wouldn’t take veal off the menu when I asked him to. I had read John Robbins book “Diet for a New America” and “Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat: by Howard F. Lyman and could not believe the horrors I was reading about and how people could do that, then perhaps the first epiphany I ever had took form and became this thought, “I’m a big part of the problem because I own a restaurant.” I quickly adopted the true, ethical vegan lifestyle. In addition to the foods I ate, none of my clothing, or cosmetics contained animal products either. I stood by my ethics until I met someone I thought I might be in love with.

I let myself forget who I was. I let myself crawl into the dark again and forget everything I knew about the meat, egg, and dairy industries because I was so insecure that I didn’t think this person could possibly love me for who I was. I tremble at the thought that he might not like me, or worse, would even make fun of me for not eating meat.

Even though I went back to eating meat, I still didn’t use cosmetics that contained animal by-products, but I do know I bought leather shoes. It’s no wonder that even though I was with this wonderful person, I was still not happy. I would often tell him, “I’m going to become a vegetarian,” and I would do it for a few weeks, then crave a cheeseburger or chicken strips and run to the bar for dinner. It’s no wonder I spent so much time beating myself up and feeling sorry for myself.

It was just before my 40th birthday when I finally figured out that I had to become at least a vegetarian again or I was going to be miserable. I was in the bathroom rescuing a spider from going down the drain, which I often do, when I had an epiphany much like the one that caused me to become a vegan so many years ago. “How can I say I love animals when I am rescuing a spider, yet continue to eat meat?” So I stopped eating meat.

I was still piling on the cheese though and eating eggs. Until I bought an issue of VegNews and then a book suggested in the magazine: Veganist by Kathy Freston. While reading  Veganist, I was reminded that the dairy and egg industries are often worse than the meat industries. I also found out that study after study shows that vegans are far, far healthier than people who consume a traditional American diet. What a great bonus, I thought.

So here I am a few months later and without even working at it, my body shape is changing and my clothes are starting to fall off me. I know I am doing the right thing and nothing is going to make me crawl back to meat.

Making a Difference

Often I feel like I should be doing more to help the world. I feel like I need to go back to school and get a degree so I can get a job that will allow me to make a noticeable difference in the world. A job that would allow me to sit back in my chair and say, "wow, I made a difference in the lives of so many people this year," instead of "wow, I added a bunch of books to the collection this year that will probably never be read." But when I weigh everything I think I want against what I already have (a growing son, a wonderful husband, two crazy but awesome dogs, lots of land, a job that allows me to provide for my family, etc.) I realize that as long as I am making a difference in my son's life, I don't need to save the world. What he learns from me is going to trickle down and affect everyone he meets on his road so by being the best mom I can be, I am already making a difference in the world.

Mulberry Meditation

Last night I picked mulberries while my husband watched our son and dogs. My mind wandered here and there and then came back to picking berries. I thought, this is a meditation. I heard the birds and the traffic and brought myself back to berry picking. I wondered how my guys were doing and came back to berry picking. I stopped to take pictures of the fruit and the insects, and came back to berry picking. I wondered if we were going to get a storm, and brought my mind back to berry picking.

One of the insects I found was a newly hatched grasshopper. He was such a pale, translucent green that his features were unrecognizable from a distance and the camera had a hard time picking him up. I would have missed him if I hadn't picked berries.

I have a problem with holding my breath. I think I always have. I carry a baseline level of stress that makes me stop several times a day and have to start breathing. Even with this pleasant task of berry picking I found myself having to unclench my chest and begin breathing again. I think I need more nights of berry picking.

I wondered why people wanted to get away from picking their own food and got jobs elsewhere. City life and working in an office is something I have grown to hate. I would rather be able to pick berries and can tomatoes and harvest potatoes, but I cannot, and others gave that up in the past. Then I thought, they must have needed to because of drought and insects and the like. If everyone around you looses their crops for a season or worse, several seasons, you start to go hungry. So the first people to leave the farm-life probably had no choice and now every farmer needs to have a second stream of income. Of course later, after I went into the house, I remembered the stock-market crash and the dustbowl and thought, "duh!" I really should remember my history.

The birds were singing so beautifully that I said to myself, "I wish I had a tape recorder. That dates me doesn't it? What do they call recorders now? Is it a MP3 recorder? Of course the traffic's so loud I wouldn't be able to just record the birds." I returned to picking and tried to stay present and "in the moment" but the mosquitoes got worse and I decided insects were the reason people stopped farming and I kept wondering what time it was and if it was time to give my son a bath yet, and the clouds were fast and dark and I figured I would get rained on before long, so inside I went. But I want to go back. I want to do something like this every day. I want to capture a piece of what our great-grandparents had to give up.