Caeman Lipsey

I chose gratitude. I have an amazing backyard, and I have wanted to get out to mediate for a long time, and this last week has been very stressful, full of illness and lateness and stressful planning, so I decided to try and alleviate some of that with mediation outside. This has helped a lot, dealing with the stress seems easier afterwards, and I feel happier over the day, and while I'm not very good at it, spending some time just being present while outside in the sun next a pond is nice and helps me unwind. 

I have never tracked my purchases before, however, when I started, one thing I noticed quickly was the number of times I used single use items. I normally try to avoid single use plastics, and I am generally successful, but I found it nearly impossible to avoid packaging. Even buying a huge bulk batch of toilet paper still ends up consuming the plastic it's wrapped in. I noticed how much I spend on food, and how little I spent on raw ingredients to make things like soap. It was a generally eye opening activity.

This week I watched a number of food based documentaries about food production, the waste and environmental aspects it has, and the effects it has on the environment. One thing I can never understand is how some people are willing to put animals under such cruel, disgraceful, and awful treatment. Murdering millions of baby chickens at birth, having huge industrial scale cattle farms. These facts, and the ones I learned today, are the reason for my eco-project, and my transition away from meat. While it hasn't been easy, especially at the start, I really feel better about my decision 

For my pollution reduction I decided to switch from my normal type of laundry detergent, with its bulky plastic waste to a more sustainable type. I order a set of paper like detergent sheets, that come with paper packaging I can recycle, and its shipped in bulk using electric vehicles, to help reduce waste in that department as well. In addition, to help reduce water use, I changed how often we do laundry. I have a lot of clothes, but I often wear then wash the ones I like the most. I have started wearing my less worn clothes to reduce the number of wash cycles, and to ensure full loads when washing becomes necessary. 

In actuality, I almost never eat meat. The only times I actually eat meat, are sustainably caught small fish, like sardines, or anchovies, bought from sources that are line caught, and sustainable. I almost never eat beef, or pork, usually once or twice a month, and I also hardly eat chicken. This was originally due to cost, but eventually, I got so used to not eating meat, the idea to buy it never even crossed my mind. Even today, the only meat I had was a suitable sardine pack that I had as a snack. Often I will eat the fish for the protein after my workouts, and the Adderall I take to help me concentrate (doctor prescribed for my ADHD), often reduces my appetite, and my fiancee cooks most meals, and she doesn't use meat because I do most of the shopping. Even today we only had avocado toast, and for dinner we had bean noodles with green onions. The only meat today was the sardines. Over the past month I have eaten chicken, beef and pork a combined total of 2 times. Once was a failed attempted at chicken legs, (we haven't cooked chicken in so long we didn't cook it long enough and it was still raw), and the other time was pepperoni on a pizza I ordered. Other than those two times, I ate no meat, only vegetables, eggs occasionally, and the sardines and anchovies I previously mentioned. This dietary change, combined with the exercise have both boosted my mood and helped me feel better about myself. 

Each week I used to drive my car to campus, as the pay to park station there is broken, and as such the whole parking lot there is free, however, my car has awful milage, and the bus stop is really close. This week I have, and will only use the bus for transportation. I actually like using the bus, the route is straightforward, and I know a couple of the people at the bus stop. It will also save me money that I would use to fill up the car's gas tank. I work at a grocery store just down the street, and while its a 30 minute walk, its only a 5-10 minute bus ride, and I can take the bus to work as well. If all else fails, I can just walk to work. I would walk back from work some days even when it was a 2 hour walk. 

I chose to start recycling everything I can. This is much more of a formidable goal then it may seem, as my living space is small, and it can be hard to tell what is and isn't recyclable. Many companies prefer you toss things you can't identify as recyclable. However, I am committed. I already return bottles and I haven't thrown out any glass for a long while, but the glass adds up, and without a proper recycling container, maintaining this goal will be tough, but I am sure I can accomplish it. My fiancee also wants to recycle as much as possible, so together I believe we will be able to do it. I already recycled some things today, after I received a number of packages containing school stuff, I made sure to strip of the non-recyclble tape and only recycle the cardboard box.   

I watched the film Fantastic Fungi, very fitting considering I plan to grow edible mushrooms for my eco project. The film was very interesting, and I was glued the whole time. I loved the descriptions of peoples experiences on the psychedelic mushrooms, and I was fascinated by the way it could be used medically. The way that science was shut down due to a fear over a culture shift reminded me of how far the world has gone since then. I wonder how much science could have taken place during those years, and how far research could have gone into these amazing plants that was all wasted and lost because one person, Nixon spread the fear over a culture shift into the heart of America during the cold war. Simply disliking being sent to a war in a far away jungle was enough to be labeled "counter culture" and this term carried a lot of baggage at the time. You would be labeled an enemy of the state, and reviled. Many were abused by police because of this. The medical benefits of turkey tail fungi was also interesting. The use of it during cancer treatment made it seems almost like it was the deciding factor in the recovery, and it may well have been. However, what I found most interesting, was how the psychedelic mushrooms could cause neurogenesis. The ability to create new neurons is almost unheard of in the natural world. Humans create all the neurons we have during our gestation, and once we have what we got, that all we will ever naturally grow. This is why Alzheimers is so devastating. The body has no way to regrow the lost neurons, and so a slow, degenerative process begins, stripping memories and personally away until death eventually claims the sufferer. With the ability to create new neurons, this process can be halted, possibly even reversed, and this has huge potential to change the world.