Consumption Confession #2: GUILT

Okay so one of the things I have been striving to do this year is not buy much at all. While I feel that I have greatly reduced the amount of items that I spend my money on, I recently (as in today) am suffering from loads of guilt. I went out and bought a new winter coat and boots. I am justifying it by the fact that I have been keeping an eye out for either item at thrift stores and not been able to find what I was looking for, and the fact that I am currently walking 9-12 miles a week, generally in a chilly-fall-going-into-winter climate. I got both items cheapily yet I still feel guilty for spending money when technically I probably could have made it through the cold season without either. Maybe the guilt also stems from the fact that my mother just purchased me "new" pants from a thrift store this weekend, as I had bought new pants but have slimmed down due to the increased walking and so after one wear, the new pants no longer fit. So I suppose it all stems from the fact that in the last couple of weeks I feel that I have been consuming a lot.

I have to remind myself that I basically moved into my apartment without buying many new things. I bought myself a new chair that will last me for years and that I have wanted for years. I had bought for me a broom, a dish drainer/dryer, and curtain rods, but everything else was things that I already owned.

I can also acknowledge the fact that in the entirety of this year I have bought or had bought for me:
-4 pairs of new shoes, all of which I wear routinely
-2 pairs of new jeans and 3 pairs of pants from a thrift store
-a thrift store dress
-3 new tops and one new sweater, and 3 used sweaters (the sweaters I wear all the time)
-one new skirt
-and one brand new hooded coat (the only hooded coat I now have)

While it is much less than many people I know buy...I still can't help but feel guilty. Do I really NEED all of that stuff? NO. Could I have spent that money on other things or SAVED it? Yes. Do I routinely use the majority of it? Yes. But when I look at my wardrobe, I realize how much other people could benefit from what I have....sigh.....Guilt...Consumption......How much I do NOT feel frugal in this moment.....

Language

It always floors me the amount of cussing, cursing, foul language, whatever you choose to call it that people use. Now I will completely admit that when I am in the midst of certain individuals or when I become angry I myself will throw out cuss words-however it's not a behavior that I'm exactly proud to engage in on occasion. I never noticed how much our language choices impact the impressions we leave on others until I started student teaching and was appalled by the language I would routinely hear out of my students' mouths. Thus began my rule of "If I hear a significant cuss word out of your mouth, you're writing sentences." Whether or not it was a fair punishment, the kids would write them and the amount of foul language in my classes was greatly reduced. In fact, I'm known as the sub that "you can't cuss around." Shouldn't all adults be instilling in kids the desire to use more descriptive words?

I recognize that some individuals grow up in home environments in which foul language is the norm and where the F word becomes the most used adjective that there is to describe anything. However I believe that we all should have the capacity to have vocabularies where we don't need to use foul language on a routine basis. I always find it interesting when I meet someone for the first time and they proceed to answer a routine question (such as "Do you have a can opener I can borrow?") with at least three foul words and they aren't even distressed!

I remember when I first started commuting for student teaching with my man vs wild friend and I found it strange that he never cussed. Now he will use abbreviations, such as g.d. or such but I have yet, in over the year that I have known him, heard a single foul word out of his mouth. Something that I used to find so rare, I now completely appreciate about him. Thus it's from individuals like him and from my students themselves that I had to take a deeper look at myself and attempt to use better language choices. However it's interesting how sensitive it makes me to the use of those words out of others mouths, and unfortunately when I hear foul words it tends to turn me off from what the speaker is saying. A practice that I find at times even in the blog community. I can think of a couple of blogs that I really like but because of the fact that the writers cannot post without using cuss words instead of intelligent words to describe their opinion about a fairly serious and educational topic, I find that I no longer have any interest in reading what they are posting about. Maybe I'm becoming a snob or maybe I'm just wishing that more people would think of what they are saying......something I also need to continue to remember.....

Creating Balance

One of my courses from this term includes a project in which we have to choose, monitor, and change a health behavior toward an improved health lifestyle. Something I have always wanted to achieve yet have had difficulty in so doing has been creating balance in my physical, emotional/mental, spiritual, and social health realms-as to me true health occurs when all aspects of a healthy lifestyle can be balanced. Thus my goal for this project has been to create and maintain balance through monitoring and creating subgoals for these four areas.

Creating goals motivates individuals to be mindful of and to work toward change. Although our goals may change along the way, we still have something toward which we are moving. While at times I am opposed to the idea of trying to live a "mapped out" life, I do think it is important to have ideas for what we want and to think of the means in which we must navigate in order to ahieve our ideas. It always surprises me when I meet people who have goals, yet have never thought of how to achieve them as they just expect for them to happen.

Thus my project has been overly beneficial for me. I am doing something positive for myself and getting a grade for it. So far it's two weeks in and as a result of moving to the city my physical health has improved immensely just from all the walking I do now. As part of my emotional/mental health I am taking time to write in my journal, to create at least a weekly blog posting, and am attempting to organize my plans, thoughts, and surroundings before going to bed at night-something that greatly lays my mind at rest and prepares me for the day ahead. My goals for my social health focus more on remaining connected to the individuals that mean the most to me and in limiting the social activities that I engage in otherwise. Sometimes creating balance equates to placing limits in some areas and growth in other areas. The hardest yet most beneficial goals for me pertain to my spiritual health. Nothing makes me feel quite so peaceful and able to give up control than when I am in the Word or in prayer on a regular basis. Yet for some reason this area is the hardest for me to focus on as well.

The idea of participating in formalized goals and monitoring activities is that eventually the behavior and its benefits become normalized. You no longer have to think about doing the behavior because it becomes standardized. While I can see how these activities will change as my life changes, going through the monitoring and goal process allows me to recognize how important it is to have and what it takes to create balance within my life.

And the best part is that with my project and with my time away to the coast this weekend, I actually have some free time to think, to knit, to really relish my surroundings. Time management and goal work-what beautiful things for stress reduction.

What goals would you like or what behaviors would you like to change or implement in your life?

Finding the Humor.....

Some moments are all about how you look at them. This weekend I went away to the family beach house for some quiet moments to sleep, to think, and to get caught up in my work as the next few weeks are more full than the rest of the term. I tend to get caught between needing/wanting to be overly organized and wanting to be free-spirited, but I have to admit that organization does help when I am in school. However a friend of mine from home came and joined me for Saturday and Sunday while I was there and we had quite the entertainment on Saturday evening.

It's always entertaining for someone to watch me make dinner just because it's never the same and never exact (something I'm sure I get from my mother)-however in the midst of my pasta sauce making madness something even more entertaining was occurring. We had put some laundry in the washing machine and it was about this time that we realized that the machine was just cycling through the dial without actually washing the clothes. I had washed a couple of loads two days before without too many problems, so I decided just to try to take a few items out and rerun the machine a couple of different ways. However as this didn't work, we got to embrace the history of our grandmother's ways. We wrung out the clothes, transferred them from the washer to the bathroom, rinsed the items in the bathtub, wrung them again, and took them back to the dryer-where it took an enormous amount of non-earth friendly time to dry. We then got to use pitchers to empty the water out of the washer that would not drain and the whole time as I'm busting up laughing, I'm wondering if my friend feels the same way. However all in all, it probably was the most memorable and fun weekend I've had in a long time and just demonstrated once again---that it's all in the way we look at it! Hope you all had a good weekend!

Expressing Gratitude

Yesterday I tried out a new church since I am in a new environment and I was struck by the challenge that the pastor left us with for the week. He was talking about gratitude toward God for all of the little things that we are given and that we generally overlook without mention or even notice. To put it differently he was actually instructing us to be mindful of our surroundings and attribute them to gifts from God. Thus his challenge was for us to be mindful of all of the little things and to give thanks where thanks is due.

So here's the start to my list of all the things I'm currently grateful for (and that I know come from God):
For the falling leaves and the piles that happily crunch under my feet
For my legs that allow me to walk as much as I currently have been doing
For the clean air that I am allowed to breath and my lungs that expand as I intake it
For the discovery of a park at the top of my street with a glorious view of the city
For a roof over my head and a comfortable home
For my neighbors that responded kindly to my asking for quieter nights
For 99 cent ear plugs
For the nuts that fall in my neighborhood
For the smile that I shared with the homeless woman I walked past today
For the rose that I stopped to smell in the park blocks
For all of the cute squirrels that always remember to have fun
For conversations with family and friends
For the lifting of my cold
For light and heat when I need it
For the gentle rain that watered my city this morning and the sun that warmed it this afternoon
For the calmness that settles on my soul when I look out the window
For so much more than I can express....

What do you feel gratitude for?

Environmental Health

So I'm taking an environmental health course and two weeks ago we were discussing the carrying capacity of the planet, including some of the side effects of the environmental strain that we are inflicting due to our population increase. So there I was in one of the most "green" cities in the nation and surrounded by about fifty future public health workers, with at least half my classmates not caring about carrying capacity. Their argument was that we, as a human race, have always been capable of adapting and we will adapt to meet our needs with any future events. Issues such as using biotechnology to manufacture food, and many other technological "helps," were offered as potential ideas to counteract the negative side effects of too many individuals and too little resources on our planet. Now, I'm sorry, but the idea of eating food developed through biotechnology just makes me want to go hungry—which might truly be my only option anyway if we do reach carrying capacity in my lifetime.

A major catch phrase of the public health field is that of "prevention" and so I couldn't help comment to my fellow classmates that we should be about prevention on all levels (including environmental health) rather than treatment orientated in one particular field of public health. If we're going to say that we're about prevention then we need to mean it across the entirety of health care. Because truly what one element interacts with our health the most? Why yes, that of environmental health! How can we be healthy without clean air, clean water, land that is able to produce food, food without contaminants, without a habitat that allows for our body to function as it should?

Another major issue that always comes up in grad school is that of ethical research practices. A key component of that is not engaging in experiments that you know may be detrimental to the health of your subjects. However I can't help but continue to think that really that's what we all are doing in our everyday life. We are involved in one major experiment from our governments, from our corporations, from our technology, and from our products…and we have no way of knowing truly how everything we interact with on a daily basis is impacting our health. Consumers are not even aware of half of what they are consuming because even the people that are making items are not always sure of the impacts those products will have. We have so many chemicals in so many items and we are not always told or generally are not aware. Every year thousands of new chemicals are developed for use, yet the research can't (and especially not time tested research) keep pace with their implementation. (Side note here: some cancers take 40 years to develop after a single exposure to some chemicals.) Did you know you have potential hazardous chemicals in your beauty products, your food, your furniture, your bedding, and the list goes on. So how ethical is it that we all are involved in a major experiment without signing up for it? Birth seems to equal participation. Scary thought……