Lifechanging

I am now officially back in school. I feel hopelessly lost in all of the things that this entails. This is my first year officially in the Nursing faculty and it is hectic. I am going to be working in a hospital starting next Tuesday, and from then on every Wednesday for 12 hours a day. This is really the first real step to the rest of my life. This is where my real education towards becoming a Nurse starts. My personal time is now officially fucked. Oh well though, over the summer I got more than my fill of my shitty job at a phone centre and downtime in which I did little to nothing.

Second Commandment

Well starting today, no more fast food. This is going to be more all encompassing than the last time. The last time around I allowed myself to eat food from work, so this time I am definitely cutting that out as well.

So now chips are gone along with damn dirty fast food. I am pretty excited about all of this, I am excited to do this for good now (or at least until the next folk fest). The environmental reasons to do this are also pretty compelling.

I am hoping to try to kick it up religion style and try to give this more weight, even though I don't really believe in any kind of religion right now. I do however understand the importance of religion, and hope to at least give myself some concrete guidelines to live by. Heres hoping I have will power!

The first commandment

The time has come to finally lay down the unbreakable law. I had hoped to have a real and full list by now, but I have been lazy and languishing. That said, the first commandment is:

Do not eat at corporate fast food-esqe joints.

Eloquent, I know.

This is the beginnning though, which is nice. Well the official no break the rules beginning. I have been trying to think of some sort of punishment for not keeping this most sacred commandment sacred, but have thus far been drawing a blank. Either way, I feel that this is the most important of the commands at this time and needed to be aired.

Tomorrow I should have another one ready, so STAY TUNED.

Tread Lightly

According to old sayings I am next to a deity. In other words my room is more or less clean for the first time this summer. My room is generally in a state of constant flux between cluttered and a horrific mess. Over the past month and 3 “cleaning days” I am about 99% finished cleaning my room. This is the beginning of a new effort to simplify my life and work towards the goal to “tread lightly.”

For those unfamiliar, what I am attempting to do is make as little impact as possible and leave as little indication that I was in a certain area as possible. I hope to apply this to as much of my life as I can. Through this I will immediately be aware of the mess I had just made and hopefully be able to more accurately track the so called “damage” and with the knowledge lessen the mess and consumption I partake in.

This obviously goes further than the clutter in my room, and moves into the realm of mental clutter as well (studies have shown there to be a much higher incidence of psychosis and schizophrenia in cluttered, complex and distracting urban environments). With this in mind I hope to at least have reprieve in my room, turning it into more of a solace than a place where I keep my junk and not much else.

From here I hope to downsize the “stuff” that is in my room, because really, I don’t need it. In a world that people are ruled by their attempts to attain and accumulate consumer goods I would much rather be a part of the rational minority. In other words, the less space there is for random junk that I don’t use the better. I am also planning on selling all of my DVD’s to get rid of the useless plastic clutter (also I better get on it before the next gen HD DVD/Blu Ray become the norm.

To close it out I am also starting today going to start keeping meticulous track of all of my spending and keep a tally on the site so I can start up a reasonable budget. The end goal of all of this other than to reduce my footprint is to live an enjoyable life that doesn’t revolve around possessions and more towards friends and using my mind and hands to have fun.

Reboot

I hate to say it but..... Since coming back from Folk fest, I have been more or less at the mercy of the small amount of food in my house, most of which I would rather not eat. I am hardly on the bandwagon, but rather than spiral into failure and obscurity I am going to take the chance to do some review and then make myself a religion style way to go about things.

So far, failures included, I have made some great changes. I have gone from eating fast food about three or four times a week to once a month. This was the biggest drain of all in my opinion. Not only is fast food terrible for the environment, but it is terrible for your health and your bank account. I have been saving around 60$ a paycheck and have noticeably brought my weight down to slightly above average.

Soft drinks are the next part of the success list (even if I just drank one). I literally have drank one or two soft drinks a day for the past 5 years. Since I have begun to try to change the way I live, I have cut that down to almost none. From the time I started the blog I had not drank any until this past week, and I have had about 3. While it is below the instant drop to zero I had planned, it is still quite good.

Chips are another issue for me, but in this category I had not eaten any chips whatsoever (well 20 chips the weekend I started) from the start of the blog until folk fest.

Everything else has been rather constant, and my showers have been both short, and recently, lukewarm at best. The next step being the fabled Navy Shower.

All in all, in writing this I am happy with my progress, but completely disappointed in my failures. As I have mentioned, without constantly updating the blog to remind myself it is much easier to stray from the path. From here, I am going to spend the rest of the day starting to formulate my quasi religious style rules and hope for the best.

Back in the city :(

Folk fest was amazing. I was able to see dozens of amazing bands eat really good food and get a wicked tan. Not to mention the huge party that is the campground at folk fest. That said, I did have two cokes. I failed, and I failed twice. The worst part is, that the first coke I had made me feel ill. I suppose that is a good thing though my body is learning that coke isn't the nectar of the gods but some sort of cruel poison. Other than that, I bought Manitoba beer (hurrah!) and ate rather well (aside from a hand full of chips). I would like to say though, that while I am slowly gaining self control, I am doing a great job compared to the way I used to live.

Now that I am back though, I am planning on making a couple more changes. Again I am breaching the sanctity of my shower time. At folk fest the showers were like ice. It is as though they are pumping this water from the north. It definitely took some time getting used to, but after a couple days it is a really great way to shower. So from this day forward not only will my showers be a paltry 5 minutes, but the five minutes will be spent with the water temperature at cool (not antarctic mind you...).

One thing that I would like to say though before I end this, is that the life at folk fest is just amazing. You get up, cook your breakfast over a fire, sleep more or less outside (but in a tent) and you just live for yourself (for 5 days). It is such an eye opener at how little all of the products we buy mean, and how little happiness they actually give. I didn't think of the internet once while I was gone, I had my cellphone turned off for 90% of the festival and I walked everywhere, barefoot (it is a good 20 minute walk from the campsite to the concert grounds, and a good 5 minute walk from one stage to the next, or about 10 from one end to the other).

It just goes to show that the life we live isn't needed. The things we buy are more or less empty and the isolation we get from our houses leaves us isolated. If we were more like the community feel that you get in a giant field with tents our lives would be amazing.

Controlled failure

Over the weekend I went to a friends house. It seems innocent, but I assure you something terrible happened. My only consolation is that it could have been worse. I ate some chips. I admit it, I wasn't even drunk upon this terrible action. I do have defense though. I allowed myself "1 serving" according to the bag. I ate them in this controlled fasion to avoid the Paul standard. This standard is me eating over a full bag of chips. I would like to think that I offset it slightly by buying only local beer (Catfish Cream Ale!). Regardless this failure cannot be hidden away and must be avenged (beyond getting drunk off of local beer).

In order to keep progress I am going to do the unthinkable. Now this may not be a big deal to many, but the shower is a sacred place to me. You get to just relax, pushing the heat as hot as possible without burning and just enter a serene place inside your head. While I have had vague goals of "navy showers" which would be turning off the water while lathering soap/shampoo. This is something I was hoping to leave for a month or two. Well this transgression nixed the idea of leaving the shower an untouched luxury. Now I am not going whole hog, not yet at least. For now I am just cutting down my shower time from 10 minutes to five. This may seem small to some, but this is going to be most difficult for me.

GODSPEED!