y34

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
- Mary Oliver

this year i want to get on a course of doing something with my life and start following that, and not worry too much about where it will lead me. this year, i'll just study. i'm often impatient to act. maybe my y35 resolution will be to take action, but for now i'll be patient, this is not that year. this year is about study and honing my Interest (of which i have only a vague idea right now, a seed) and finding direction and sticking to it.

about six months ago, i decided to focus on just one thing to get good at, and i picked knitting. i'm doing that, and i think i want to keep doing that, because it's creative and different from how i spend my days. but i also want something else, knitting is something fun to do in my spare time but i can't imagine "making a living" with it. i don't want to put too much pressure on my Interest, maybe it will never turn into making a living, but it is something that will nurture my spirit and that's important even if i don't get to do it all day every day, even if i still have to work at a "regular job" and make money.

but wouldn't it be nice if i could make a living doing something i love, something that's aligned with my values? a dream.

my Interest has to do with the way i think, the fundamental ways that i know right from wrong, the ways that are different from most other people. i'm vegan, it's important. but it's not enough. i also don't believe in neo-classical economics (whatever that is) and i don't believe in globalization, and i don't believe in capitalism or commerce or consumerism -- but that just sounds like a bunch of "don'ts", a bunch of words. basically i don't believe that technology can save us, i think "sustainable growth" is a myth, and i think the people who are living in the old ways, without technology, in the so called "underdeveloped" or "developing" places, they know things that we are not trying to know because we want more and more and more wealth and stuff which is killing us and the planet. where are we trying to get to? what will having more stuff make us feel or be? we even think the "poor" people, the people in the "third world", they need more money, more stuff, "a better way of life" with washing machines instead of hands and clotheslines, and houses instead of huts. is some technology good? what about vaccines?

i know how this must sound, i know i'm growing up quite late, most people are thinking about this in their early 20s, and i did too, but i thought it wasn't practical. i was exposed to deep ecology in 1993 but i threw it out when i wanted something from the mall, something made in taiwan. and how embarrassing is it to be having these thoughts now, when i'm supposed to be grown up, having a "real life" and a "real job"? maybe i should be ashamed, but i'm not. after 34 years i am understanding some fundamental things about how i think and i need to follow that, learn more, eventually make some contributions to that. i don't want to make contributions to industry and the continuing spiral towards wealth and destruction. every day i work toward that and it really hurts because i don't believe in it. it really hurts, in a very deep way! but like other people i numb it with consumerism and thoughtlessness and work.

here's the thing: my happiness is worth more than that, i am worth more than that, i can start pointing my face in another direction and see what happens. i have no idea what is going to happen. but this stuff i do every day is supporting the wrong things, and i need to get right, otherwise i'm not standing up. not standing up for the planet and the other people on it and they way things should be. lots of good ways of living are going away.

bringing it up a level to the shallower stuff: also this year, no mass-produced clothing that's created under awful conditions. (i tried this last year and failed. fashion is cruel, and "good" is expensive.) and other stuff we buy, the things we have to buy to make good in this first world life, i want to stop buying so much. fair trade, is it better? household stuff, try to buy "better". spend less, waste less, have more quality time with my family, still less tv. more learning about the things i need to nourish myself and all other life.

down a level in another direction: stop caring about approval. it's not that i don't want to make the people i love happy, but in general i care too much about approval for it's own sake. sean once wrote, "if too large an audience agrees with you, then you probably stand for nothing." and if you stand for nothing, you'll probably fall on your ass. i wrote that.