My Secchi Disk

Some friends have complained that I haven’t written anything on my blog in a while, so here’s an update… on the entire fall I guess.

I’ve been pretty busy, with finding a job and some lifestyle changes. Not much to say on the former at the moment, as I’m still a bit paranoid about the interplay between work self and free self, but I really like my new job, it’s something I believe in, and is only 30 hours/week. It’s also downtown, which is a fun commute: 20 minutes by bus with headphones on, or 15 minutes by bike, almost all in bike lanes.

The largest of the lifestyle changes was giving up my car at the end of the summer. I think “giving up” is the right term because it really did feel like a sacrifice. I agonized over it for a month or more and then when I knew I was going to do it, I spent the last few weeks driving around like crazy spending oodles of money on all the things that would be difficult to transport without a car. I’d just spent most of the summer cleaning out my cupboards, and then I got freaked out that there would be a blizzard and I’d starve over the winter, so I went and stocked them all up again.

Back then, I’d thought I’d write about the complexities of being carless, but then I realized that:

a.) most of my friends don’t own cars, and I was just being a wimp.

b.) there’s plenty of information already online about going car-free.

I used to only drive my car once a week anyways, but still there was some sort of security in having it parked on the street outside. Security, but also a burden. I’m the type of person who likes to be busy all the time and I tend to overschedule. If there are 3 really neat events going on in one night, I’ll have to hit them all. Well, traveling by bike, I’m a lot more limited (at least until I become super fit). I now have to pick and choose what I’ll attend based on distance from home/where I already am, and this is actually nice. I like having a better sense of how things relate to each other in my urban landscape. Like the Cub Foods on Lake Street seems really far, because Lake Street is such a different neighborhood, but if you’re already at North Country Co-op (near home), it isn’t that far at all.

I’m not sure how this relates to the biking, but I also found that I’m spending way more time cooking that I used to. Some days I don’t cook, but most days I do, and on those I spend about 2 hours cooking and doing dishes. This is a lot of time! I think while I was in school I was more lax with my expenses, so I probably ate out more, and that accounts for the change. All this time in the kitchen is part of what’s prompting me to consider sharing housing with friends again, as it’s much more fun to cook in a group. Some friends and I got together for a bunch of cooking the day after Thanksgiving, and delicious dishes just kept materializing out of the kitchen with very little effort. The potlucks I’ve been having with my Empire 101 class since it officially ended have been great too.

So as I said above, there’s enough online already about getting around by bike, but seriously, figuring that out is what I feel like I’ve been doing all fall. I finally managed to get to enough thrift shops to find clothes that: a.) are comfortable on a bike, b.) are warm enough for winter biking, and c.) I like

… and then I had to go and get a job that requires me to wear “business casual”! That almost made me have to start all over again. So there’s enough of an update for now. I’m still reading and philosophizing of course, so I’ll have to get some of that up here eventually.