Since I have gotten home from my travels I have been trying to be even more conscious of my lifestyle. My head and heart have felt much lighter and I hope to stay in this state rather than fall back to darkness I inhabited almost constantly for over 7 years of my life. In order to do this for one, I must remove areas of guilt from my life. I know there is no way to completely be rid of many of the feelings I harbor for humanity and this world, but if I can find a way to live that allows me to be mostly separate from it, and hopefully motivate others to do the same, and maybe even help change the paradigm of human necessity then perhaps I can maintain a sense of bliss, without ignorance. This is a huge process and an enormous idea and I am glossing over it a ton right now because I am tired and I just wanna get all my ideas out before they fall away, but this is a start. Here is goes:

I am slowly removing more and more meat from my diet with the hope that eventually I can perpetuate a steady vegetarian (and perhaps even vegan) lifestyle. This has became more important to me having lived in a town -Pisco- where in going to the local market the smell of dead chicken/pig/various-other-animal became the most pervasive detail of your shopping trip. Going with Simon to buy the meat for meals at PSF pretty much solidified the fact that I will probably never be able to cook meat from such a raw form. Weak stomach, weak eyes, weak nose. Additionally, I can't help but find it immoral to kill animals the way humans do. We have tools that have allowed us to prevail over any species we want to, and kill it to extinction if we aren't careful or if we so desire. We have tools that animals do not, and we abuse this fact to a most terrible degree. Factories and slaughterhouses are obviously the worst example of this, and in learning more about them and the mainstream meat industry in the US I had slowly been converted to believing that hunting one's own meat is a good thing, and even with guns (which I hate) rather than bows and arrows (since gun would allow the animal a shorter period of suffering). However, no matter how hard I try to believe in hunting it is, again, something I don't believe I could ever take on myself. And so my belief is thus: if I myself can't shoot it, skin it, clean it, cook it, then I don't deserve to eat it. What about responsible, organic, grass-fed, cage-free ect ect farming? It still doesn't sit well with me that a living, breathing creature is being raised just to be killed and eaten. I can't call that moral no matter how much more responsible the practice is compared to the extreme farms/factories/slaughterhouses that output the majority of "meat" in this country. And if I ignore it, this gut instinct that this is wrong, if I ignore it and continue to support the industry then surely I will not be able to maintain the happiness I have fought so hard to find. I will feel guilty AND angry, and rightly so.

So that is the main thing, and also the hardest. The rest aren't so drastic or difficult, but still very important.

Sugar. I am reducing my intake greatly. Sugar is difficult for the human body to process and so it ages your organs more rapidly. And you can just forget about high fructose corn syrup. Slows down your metabolism and doesn't give anything positive to the body. The idea of this causes mental stress for me. Putting things in my body that are so negative physically probably contributed much my mental anxiety.

Despite having the worst sinus problems of my life with this recent bought of illness, I have used about 3 tissues and instead have relied almost solely on a couple handkerchiefs. I think I will never need tissues again in my life. Yes. I am boycotting tissues. What a fucking waste of paper.

And I have started using toothpaste that has natural ingredients. unfortunately I don't feel I can give up fluoride just yet since I still have a major teeth-grinding problem at night and I don't know that my mouth guard protects them all too much. I would like to keep my teeth as strong as possible, but eventually I would like to give up fluoride too because I think its irresponsible to keep pumping it into our water system.
Oh, that and birth control. I couldn't possibly do that thing so many girls do where they regulate their periods and acne with birth control. Granted, some girls probably "need" it more than me since so many suffer much more menstruation than I. But even then, I couldn't bear with the guilt of it. Its chemicals meant to create infertility and we are putting them through our bodies and then dumping them out into our world (which must be fertile if we hope to perpetuate life). This has been a really personal issue for me, and I don't expect everyone to live by it, but I hope that other people at least think about it.

On to other topics...

At school (though I can't be too much more picky about the place I am going to live) I would like to find a place with a yard because I want to dry all my clothes by hanging them out rather than using a machine dryer. I could get a rack for indoors if I had a proper space to do it. Boycotting dryers. It would also be ideal to have a space for gardening and growing one if not more of the foods I will be relying on. If I don't have a space for this at my house/apartment then I think I will get a plot at the organic farm. Oh, also, I am boycotting the Greenery and hopefully eating mostly from the Farmer's Market, the co-op, and The Flaming Eggplant. Supporting local economy and eating food without pesticides and that hasnt been shipped across the world and back, or pumped full of ingredients I dont understand the half of? Yup. Much better.

I also want to boycott dishwashers and toasters. Pointless things. Dishwashers use far too much water and they use energy which just isn't necessary to use for a task that could be done else-wise. And toasters are just wanna-be ovens which create nothing that an oven can't, except perhaps in a more time-efficient manner. I can see the utility in this for people constantly in a hurry and on the go. But that too is an issue in itself and something I also want to work on for myself. Slowing down.

Also, I want most of my transportation to be on foot, on bike, on bus, on train. Carpools are okay. But in any case, I hate cars. They scare me almost as much as planes (too much hubris). And they are yet another commodity that everyone seems to believe are absolutely necessary for a happy life. Who doesnt have a car? Who NEVER owns a car in their life? Hopefully me. Yes, obviously I appreciate them because they allow everyone to get where they want when they want and I am also a person who enjoy such luxury, but the idea that EVERYONE should have their own personal death machine (I mean.. vehicle) is ludicrous. I am very grateful for the people who drive me around all the time (especially when I am too sick to exert myself physically), and I think that is the way to do it. Share. I have been thinking more and more about getting my license even if it means I have to pay insurance (even if I only drive on very very rare occasions), just for that purpose --to share vehicles. I know that many people believe I should get a car in addition to my license, but I don't agree. Firstly, while I have great self-control and focus with most things, the few times I have driven any considerable distance I have found myself falling asleep at the wheel because watching the road pretty much forces my eyes shut and my brain off. Also, I would like to help break the paradigm of the necessity for an individual transportation mechanism of such over-embellishment (especially one that contributes significantly to our "necessity for oil," and essentially fuels the war for fuel). Public transit need to be developed, alternative fuel sources, ect. Anything that will help us break from these "necessities." Oh, but solar-powered motorcycles are pretty cool. I'm suddenly a motorbike convert too, which I think for many people would be more efficient because the majority of people travel in 4-7person gas-guzzling vehicles by themselves, every day to work and back. FUCK THAT.

I have been getting rid of clothes and possessions as fast as my heart will let go of emotional or memorial attachment to them. I am finding that it is easy to become less and less inclined to obtain new things. I hope that my discarded goods will bring as much happiness to the people who obtain them as they do for me to be rid of them and feel a bit lighter and freer.


Oh, I thought of some other things I want to boycott. Tampons/pads. Male advisory for the next paragraph. This might get graphic. Made from cotton which likely has been bathed in pesticides and you are sticking it in your soft-tissued vagina. Secondly, it's such a waste to manufacture these specially designed absorbent materials and then throw them away after a couple hours of use. So I want to invest in a diva cup and a luna pad and see if I can make those work for me. Also, one of the clubs at Evergreen has held an at-least-annual workshop for how to make your own less polluted, less pollutive feminine hygiene products. So I want to go to that too.

I shower less frequently and have only shaved once in the past 5 months. Less water, less manufactured plastic for razors. Plus a shower is so much more appreciated after a couple extra days without.

Maybe this only makes sense to me, but I feel better in all of this. I probably wouldn't sound so weird except I spent much of today reading Kokoro and when I read I often pick up on the author's style and tone and mimic it, if unwillingly. Not to mention the main character in the book is somewhat like-minded as me. I suppose Zach knew I would relate to it when he gave it to me. Perhaps not. Either way... the book is good company.

I have more to say but it is late and I will sleep.