When Sustainability Gets Boring

Yeah. I said it.

Sometimes being good and green and sustainable gets BORING. Boring and tiring.

And you don't wanna hang your laundry anymore or watch how long you shower or use tin foil as a static trapper in the dryer. There is a reason the term "better living through science" was coined - because using a car is faster than a buggy and horse, and using a dishwasher is faster and more sanitary than using your hands and loading up a grocery cart with processed and packaged food is quicker than raising, butchering and processing the hen.

Sometimes you look at the bags of frozen blackberries awaiting dispatch to the land of jelly and think: "oh, for fuckssake, just make yourself already, or I'm going to the store to buy jelly." The stack of good books not read. The projects yet dreamed but not pursued. The crafty mccraftington pinterest things you want to do with your toddler but can't b/c that would require going to the store for supplies and you get nauseous thinking of more things being bought from China. And the fossil fuel being burned to pursue the craft that has no redeeming value other than quality time with the Tot that could just as easily be found chatting and pulling weeds in the back yard.

*gulp of breath*

Sometimes, dear public readers, sustainability gets boring. And it doesn't mean I'm gonna fall off the wagon and start hitting up the Burger King for all dinners to come, but it does mean that I sometimes heave a heavy sigh when I see the bags of green beans awaiting processing, or the chicken carcass needing to be made into stock.

Once I heave that sigh, from the depths of my heels, I hunker down and get some home living tasks done and enjoy them very much, as naturally I would, but it's still the initial exhaustion hurdle I have to cross to get there.

Part of that is informed by moving and the bone weary fatigue I feel. Part of it is that I am anxious to reshape this yard I now call home. Some of it is "caregiver burnout" - a term usually used in conjunction with a therapist who simply doesn't give a shit anymore, but for this purpose, used to mean "Earth Caregiver Burnout". Sometimes I feel like all we are collectively doing to live greener, leaner, and more sustainably is falling on deaf ears and/or not making enough of an impact fast enough.

It's usually right around this time of feeling that I pick up a Mother Earth News and recalibrate my brain.

So I'll go do that and leave you with cutey pie pictures from the trip we took to the river when it was 95 degrees outside. I don't swim in standing water, so that pretty much leaves rivers and the ocean as my only means to float unencumbered and feel like a kid again. 

Brain now back on the right track! Whew....

I'm going to go to bed, wake up tomorrow and make an assload of blackberry jelly. Because the jeweled tone jars all lined up nice and clean like dancers makes me appreciate the free produce all around me (apples just down the street I'm going to, um, procure for sauce...) and further appreciate my skillz to process said bounty.

Let it never be said that living greener and leaner is for the faint at heart. We are a herd of bad ass people. Don't you forget it. Even when it's exhausting!!