All the images from today’s post come from this Telegram channel, dedicated to Japan. I liked their liminality – it’s hard to tell whether it’s a photograph, an illustration, or a bit of both combined. There’s a lot of images, so I hid some under the cut.
I wanted to title this ‘sustainability myths’, but then decided that I’m not sufficiently educated to be dropping supposed truths around. Not a scientist or anything. Just a woman with a whole lot of environmental anxiety and desire to do better in at least some areas. Here’s some thoughts on sustainability, then. I’m pretty sure more is coming.
It will be if nobody does anything. There’s 8 billion of us. Even if 1/3 does something, it will be a huge improvement. An even bigger improvement will be actual policy, system changes, and leaving Jeff Bezos aimlessly floating in space.
It is if it is reused, and reused, and reused. And then reused some more. And then reused again. Glass is incredibly impactful to produce. It’s a little less impactful to recycle. The best course of action is – yeah – reusing it in a closed loop for as long as possible.
plastic is the least problematic thing in this photo
It’s not plastic, it’s the way we use it. We’re accustomed to treating pretty much anything made from plastic as disposable when in fact a lot of the things are quite durable and can be reused for long, long, long periods of time. Remember that dude with a vintage supermarket plastic bag? The article is from 2015, and at that point the bag was 34 years old, so now it’s what – 43?
(How come 2015 is 9 years ago, Jesus.)
My brother is apparently trying to give that grandpa a run for his money, because he reuses his supermarket bags all the time. Nowadays they aren’t as durable, though, and I hear they only last about a year and a half until they rip. It’s worse here, because the local ones are either paper or biodegradable plastic, which is very fragile. You can reuse it, but not for long. I designate most of mine as garbage bin liners.
But why am I fixating on plastic bags? Food containers. A lot of foods manufactured here, especially the ones that aren’t supposed to be preserved for a year or more, like hummus or marinated tofu, come in PP plastics. Well, most of the containers I bought for my lunches are also PP. Who’s to say I can’t use the hummus container to pack my pasta? No one, that’s who.
When I was younger and plastic straws were still de rigueur, my grandmother used to wash them. And we’d reuse them. As I’m still kicking, I suppose the practice wasn’t that detrimental to my health. I have stainless steel straws now because I am not a fan of bio plastic or paper, but I’d wager if I were to stumble upon a pack of plastic ones, I’d just wash them using the little brush that came with my stainless steel pack.
And then of course there’s the old plebeian custom of washing and reusing small baggies, like the Ikea ziploc ones. My friend left a couple the last time she was visiting – I’m still using them. I bought pasta in a plastic bag – I’ll use it to store bread, pack fruit, or freeze something. There’s still an ancient – I mean it, it’s like… 20+ years old – milk plastic bag kicking around the house somewhere – I think it holds reusable hankies. The only bags I don’t reuse are ones from meats and the very flimsy ones that one would pack veg in at the supermarket. The first one is unhygienic. You’d end up using more plastic on your hospital trip after you try to reuse that one. And the second one would require more energy to wash and reuse than to dispose of.
Turtles choke on things we pollute the oceans with. Said pollutants are not necessarily made from plastic. A cotton ribbon carelessly thrown into the ocean will be as deadly to a bird or a turtle as a piece of plastic. Same goes for a metal bottle topper. The answer to happy living turtles is not ‘ban plastic’, it’s ‘stop throwing shit into the oceans’.
I thought I’d share something beautiful once a week or so. Mostly it will be pictures I think. Maybe an occasional creator or a music artist. Here is but a fragment of everything I tucked away into my private inspiration Telegram channel.
Artwork from Batman 1992.
Sketch and…
… original photograph. Wasn’t planned at all. I just saved them both in the same week.
Where I’m writing from. (No, unfortunately.)
Not my cats, but this is how it is, day after day.
Cillian Murphy for Dazed magazine in 2006. Shut the front door. Ugh.
How I’ve been feeling lately.
Every time I see this photo set by Nona Limmen, I go into witch mode.
From a series called “Passengers” by Denis Kopeikin.
Rene Buri.
What inspired you this week?
One part of me realises the futility of this exercise, but we’re going to try. Maybe it’s the part that tends to lie to me.
As mentioned in my last post, I lost my job. I also have a lot of debt. And a thing for spending money. Now that I’m on mood stabilisers, I am doing much better, but I’d wager it will always be a problem. A while ago I read a quote in Your Money or Your Life (a book that everyone should get and reread like gospel at least once a year):
Indeed, some people would say that once we’re above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.
While I can understand how that might not always work that way (enter survival mode for example, which is not always connected or even intertwined with financial matters – you can be sprouting dolla dolla bills from your arse and still feel like you’re hanging by a thread), it is a statement with a substantial amount of truth to it. And gratitude, especially for small seemingly nonconsequential things, will make one a better person and will improve one’s day, even if slightly.
So here we are. Treat these as extended gratitude lists about one thing in particular. In no way am I bragging. For some people the amount of certain things I own will be overwhelming. For others dumb, for somebody else interesting, enviable, or confusing. I’m not a fan of “it is what it is” – but it is what it is. I’m not a minimalist. And whilst at this point in time I can imagine myself having only two mugs (more on them later), I can’t imagine having two books. Let’s talk about them.
I have a lot of books. Most of my library is inherited from parents, grandparents, and their parents, but I bought quite a few myself. I remember having a weird dream (as in wish) of finishing all of the books in my home library, but that is simply not possible. Well. It is. But it is not probable. Highly unlikely. Because at least in this moment in time I have little desire to read up on *zooms in* the history of soviet civic aviation. I also wouldn’t touch that particular philosophy textbook with a six foot pole. Never again. *shudder*
Plus my library is not finite. I may have titled this post ‘i have enough’, but I know that at one point in time I will go out and buy more. I feel calm right now, and also oddly satisfied with the selection available to me at the moment (big thanks to z library for that, I might add), but it does not mean that I don’t want to own all the six volumes of Heaven’s Official Blessing, or the next Rowling book, or a bunch of manhwa, or the next Hunger Games, or yet another dystopia, or a cookbook, or a spellbook, etc., etc. E-books are a big part of my reading habit, largely because shipping endless amounts of overtly commercial fiction printed in the English language to the lands I inhabit will never be financially sustainable, but I will always and forever prefer paper. I’m very tactile, I’ve come to realise. I like tangible things. A big part of the charm of listening to music for me, for example, is CDs, records, and even tapes. I like the sounds the record player makes. I like pressing buttons. I like the whirring sound of the CD or the tape.
But back to books.
My lifelong affinity to all things paper tells me that I will never not want to buy paper books. Few things compare to the satisfaction of turning the last page on a paperback, and then just sitting with it for a while, flicking pages, recalling some paragraphs. Touch screens and swipes just aren’t the same. Tucking in receipts, pieces of paper with notes, an occasional real bookmark, maybe a postcard, a bus ticket, or a photograph, then finding all of this years later. What am I supposed to do with a Kindle that feels the same way? Glue stickers in layers and then peel them off?
But at this point in life, for my purposes, and for my current goals, I have enough. I have enough classics to occupy me for years. I have enough modern literature and non-fiction, bought, downloaded, and bought and downloaded to keep me entertained and out of a bookshop. One day I will be back, and fingers crossed this day will come soon, but for now I’ll stick to my shelves, pretending that I’m browsing a store or a library. Certainly my delusions are powerful enough to handle this assignment.
May has not been fun. If you’re new here, these posts are where I talk about all the ways that I used to save a cent here, a penny there. For an indepth intro please see the very first post. As always, I ask you to keep in mind that I know ten thousand and one way to save money – the reason I’m in a pickle and say things like ‘didn’t buy a new bag/ piano/ car/ life” on this list is not lack of knowledge, but a certain deficit of screws in the head. I know how to save money, I just don’t, because I’m a lunatic. Would provide receipts, but who the heck are you to ask for them.
Without further aggressive ado, I give you the narrative of May. Because there’s no real list of thrift.
As mentioned, May was not a fun month. I’ve had a good couple days around Easter, and it all went downhill from there. So let’s list the good things that happened. They are not plentiful. Apart from the anxiety-sponsored “everyone’s alive and not gravely ill, so that should be good enough” – and it is – I give you the following:
I saw a cardiologist. For free. Got prescribed meds that are pretty cheap by the standards of heart and blood pressure medication.
It may have been April, but I think it was May – I had several good conversations with my friend.
My therapist saw me for free for the entire month of May when I told her that I am unable to continue our sessions because I can’t pay. That’s a lot of savings.
I found a kitten. I took her home. She’s a new family member. It’s not a frugal move, but it’s a happy one.
I lost weight.
And now I give you parts of the shitshow. Just the big ones.
My brother is now aware of the true state of my finances. This drives me up the wall and kind of makes me want to light things on fire.
My car got towed for “unlawful parking”. Quotes, because it was not unlawful, but if you ever tried to dispute a parking ticket, or any kind of ticket, then you know the action is futile. So naturally I have a fine now, and I also had to pay for the towing and the tow parking lot. Had I paid the fine within three days, I would have paid 50% the amount, but I could either pay the fine or get my car back. I chose the latter, because the accrued fees on that parking lot are insane. Plus as we have discussed elsewhere I need a car to get to and from work.
Because of that towing fee I couldn’t meet my financial obligations on several loans. Thankfully not all of them. But it is still unpleasant.
I’m currently running around without my medication. I’ve been microdosing and having withdrawal symptoms for about two weeks now. Today before bed I will literally take the last half-dose of the one remaining night medication, which I’ve been taking very sparingly. Everything else ran out already.
Oddly, I think that helped with the last point on the list, because I’m already feeling rather low, and there’s really, like, nowhere to go from here. So I did not turn hysterical when I got fired on the very last day of May.
Yes. I am currently without gainful employment.
We will talk about this later.