The road to sustainability.

Today I’m going public with my quest for personal sustainability. I’m halfway through my doctorate in environmental studies and the cognitive dissonance between my lifestyle and the change I want to see in the world is more than I can take. Rather than rationalizing the facts to relieve this discomfort, I choose to change behavior.

I have held on to this vision, as I suspect many of us do, that if I could just accomplish x,y and z, then I can put my energy into creating a better life, but I can’t do it from here. I’ll have to move from in town to the country, where I can have the acreage to grow my own, farm my own, go solar, or maybe even wind, use a wood stove, or pellet stove, maybe join a cooperative, and become part of a community that lives more in harmony with the planet. Use less. Produce more. Share more.

Well, it can’t wait for a move. And frankly, it shouldn’t. That’s like saying the only way for the world to become more sustainable is for everyone to move to an organic farm in the country! Ridiculous. So I don’t know how I will do it, but I’m here to say I’m going to find a way. Many ways. I have half an acre, an old 1920’s home, and I am determined to figure out the rest. I’ve already started.

Yesterday I went vegan. It was the one thing I could think of that I can do now. I cleaned out loads of out of date and spoiled items from my pantry, fridge and freezer over the holidays, and I was looking for something to change in my diet. The voice in the back of my mind that was weighing the vegan option all last year has been getting louder and more pro-vegan. I mean really, what have I got to lose? I’ve made more radical changes in my life than this before.

I went down to my awesome public library and checked out a bunch of vegan cookbooks. I went online to see what I could find, avoiding highly political and vivid animal rights websites. I don’t need to see conditions in a slaughterhouse to understand the evils of the industry. My reasons are primarily about living more lightly on the planet. I will eat honey, definitely. And I will define my veganism in a way that makes sense to me. Maybe I should call it an experiment. My vegan experiment.

I’d like to share my first discovery in the vegan experiment: saving fruit. I tend to buy fruit with good intentions and then miss the timing on ripeness. It doesn’t help that I’m very picky on the exact preferred stage of ripeness for eating. But in the wonderful land of fruit smoothies, you can throw in just-past-prime fruit and it’s perfect. I made one yesterday with a very mushy cantaloupe.

Tasted strangely fresh for January in New Hampshire!
-Dyanna
(original posting date: January 6)