Focusing Attention (or how on Earth am I supposed to choose between all the good causes that I could work towards?)

It is a distinct possibility that I am the most indecisive person on Earth when it comes to choosing a vocation. Possibly my biggest anxiety over choosing a career is that I’ll pick wrong and focus my energies into areas that I was not so keen to be in as others.

Despite a recent certainty that I would apply to become a paramedic, I am realising, having watched a bunch of Ted Talks over the last couple of days, that paramedicine is probably not the career for me. Granted it has all the aspects of helping people, being hands on, useful for volunteering abroad etc. that I am looking for in a career, however I can’t really say that it is the area I would like to be involved in. The whole purpose of my life, as far as I can see, is to serve others. There are so many issues that concern me greatly such as people-trafficking, particularly for sex slavery, education and inequality, discrimination, especially on the basis of gender and sexuality; healthcare and poverty and well pretty much anything that needs addressing. My ability to help, I feel, would be best focused in addressing healthcare and poverty, and those are the areas I particularly would like to work in.

Healthcare and poverty issues go hand in hand through out the world, even in developed nations such as the USA. It is such a truly global issue, the neglect or mishandling of which has such enormous ramifications for work forces, family life, education (young children being out of school to care for sick parents being just one aspect of that) and more, all of which can be viewed as social issues, vital to the quality of life of citizens and the economic development of a country.

Now, contrary to how this post started, I am not writing about my own career angst, but rather am attempting to comment on the larger issue that many people face throughout life. That of having multiple passions. I’ll admit to being a bit of a bleeding heart sometimes, but I am practical if nothing else. I realise that I cannot, as much as I might like, do everything. No one can sadly. But no matter what a person ends up doing with their life, there are always opportunities to be involved in and support the other causes that deeply important to oneself. Being the guilt-ridden liberal that I am, having watched all of the talks I have recently that cover so many topics, I look at my life and wonder what I could get rid of, or reduce, to allow me to support those making great changes in the world. I won’t use the word sacrifice, because there’s very little that I could get rid of (bar the essentials) that would actually constitute a real sacrifice for me.

In the UK, if a person owns and uses a television, they have to pay a licence fee.* Which sounds ridiculous, and I’ve often thought it strange to have to have a licence for something that isn’t a weapon or in some way dangerous (if we side step the issue of TV and sedentary lifestyles). But the licence fee pays for the BBC, which is a brilliant source of news, educational programmes as well as some for pure entertainment. I do have a television, though it is not used. Everything I could want to know or view is available online sooner or later so I’m not too fussed. Which is why, although I was planning to get a TV licence so I could be more like a ‘real’ person, I have decided to continue to not use the TV and instead put that money towards a good cause.

The point I’m trying to make is not that I’m an amazing person, because I am far from that, it’s just that there are small, easy non-sacrifices to be found in many areas of our lives. And if you have a cause that you’re passionate about, something that makes a tiny difference in your life, can easily be done to make a humongous difference in the lives of those who need it more. And just to complete the circle here, I won’t feel guilty about working in one area where people need help, because I won’t be neglecting the others. There will always be some small thing I can change to help people who need it more than I do.

*I used to find it really annoying when I was younger that Americans don’t have to pay a TV Licence, then someone pointed out their healthcare system to me and I realised we have it sweeeeet over here. Ner ner.

Putting Oneself First (or taking care of yourself before trying to take care of others)

There is a great conflict in my mind over putting my needs before those of other people (where the other people are actually in need, not just in the queue for the toilet or something). For the longest time I’ve struggled to reconcile the idea that a person needs to take care of themselves before they will be fit to take care of others. In the past I’ve tried to fight this notion, or rather truth. Consequently I agreed to be a part of organisations and take on roles that were beyond my capacity, in that I didn’t really have the energy or time to dedicate to them but blundered on forward convincing myself I would be OK giving a little more time here and there. They just wound up eating into my sorely needed down time. In the end, I was more of a hindrance to these groups than a help, but I always told myself I would definitely be OK doing these things because they were for other people and not for me.

As things currently stand, because I didn’t give myself enough time to get well and didn’t acknowledge my limitations, I graduated from university with a degree class far below what I should have obtained. Now that degree is quite a big obstacle to my ultimate dream of becoming a doctor, rather than the boost it should have been. Despite recognising that I direly need to get myself sorted out and do absolutely everything I can to overcome and (as much as is possible) control my depression, I am refusing to stop trying to move forward. In less than two weeks I will be sending off applications to various universities to study to become a paramedic. Classes wouldn’t start until September, so I’ve nine months to make some good progress with my state of mind, and I shall be talking with admissions officers to determine if I can defer a year should I not feel ready when September rolls around.

Even to me, this seems like it is probably a little mad, but I think the fail-safe of having another year to take off to get well justifies the decision. The thing is, I simply cannot stand the idea of stagnating. Of course recovering from illness is not standing still, but it is just so hard to convince myself to focus solely on that when in my day to day activities such as going to the supermarket, taking care of household stuff aren’t too badly affected. I feel like I ought to be out there making myself useful to others right now. Like I ought to be moving towards my aim of helping people in emergencies and taking care of others.

Part of why I feel the need to study and help people professionally is that I know there are so many places around the world where people need help. It irks me to know I live so comfortably while so many go without basic requirements and medical care. Sure I can donate a little money to various charities, but I so desperately want to give time and my (future) skills to those who need them. I know that unless I can get myself to a place where I can function well enough to become competent in my chosen field, I am useless to these people. This is why it is important to put oneself first. *

Yesterday I said today would be an outline of my grand master plan for 2012. Obviously this isn't it, but I felt it was necessary to talk about this first, because, considering that this is a blog** about ethics, humanity and making the world a better place, my grand master plan for the year might seem a little self-centred without context. Of course it’s entirely possible I’m just paranoid because I have this concept that my life will be without value if I am not in service to others and felt the need to justify having plans for the year that include learning to play the guitar.

*Even parents, who are their children’s life line and support, need to take some time off occasionally to recuperate. Luckily we invented babysitters.

 **Blogger's spellcheck was trying to convince me that 'blog' is not a real thing. Never have I known a website to be self-loathing. 

Preparing for Spring (or collecting plastic bottles and dirt for my nefarious purposes)

A few days ago I started watching TED talks obsessively. For those not familiar, TED organises conferences around the work discussing different themes and has some amazing speakers come and talk about their work, prospects for the future, life, poetry, science, EVERYTHING! They are amazing. I'd known they existed for a couple of years but never watched any, until the other day. And now I'm hooked. It's my new morning routine. Breakfast or a cup of tea and a TED talk. It's a great way to start the day as they generally leave me feeling inspired and revved up to take on the world.

By far one of my favourite talks was given by Britta Reilly of RNDIY.org. It concerned the development of systems for growing vegetables and plants in small indoor spaces, particularly flats and studio apartments. I would absolutely recommend anyone check it out, even those of you with your own out door spaces to grow, just for the pure joy of seeing the inspirational and innovational approaches being developed as a collaboration of everyday people across the world who live in cities but want to grow their own food.

This is basically an arrangement of plastic bottles with good soil in them being used to grow things. A pump system is used to get water to flow through the soil and provide nutrients. As more people are collaborating and sharing their designs (which is what has really driven the development of this project and allowed for enhancements in energy requirements and carbon outputs etc) the systems get sleeker and better and could really make an impact.

So this is my challenge for 2012 though it starts now: collect as many plastic bottles as possible (without giving money to bottled water companies on account of they're stupid), start a small compost pile somewhere, decide what to grow, collect materials to construct the frame and build the thing!

What an exciting way to take my first steps into homesteading. If I can achieve any measure of success with this, I will be over the moon and able to integrate growing my own food with some of the plans I have for the next decade or so of my life before I have my own land.

Thoughts, comments and concerns welcomed as ever. I'm really keen to hear what people think about this. I'm sure there's some aspect I'm overlooking.

Here, Have My Job (or how my not being employed will benefit the world)

Just a quick post today to share a point I read on Early Retirement Extreme, a blog about gaining financial independence. Part of what worried me about the idea of homesteading was the thought that I'd not be contributing to society. A point was made on ERE that, especially at the moment, with unemployment so high, removing one's self from the work force actually reduces competition for jobs, so in that sense it's good. This really helped resolve my issue, because I realise I can still be a valuable and productive member of society even if not employed. I can run my own business, volunteer, develop some useful hobbies, focus on the homestead. By not being formally employed, I'd be giving my job to someone else. If I was then running my own business, I could maybe even employ someone else. That's two extra people employed than before!

My gift to someone else.

Also I want to say thank you to all the new readers and followers. Actually I'd like to thank the older ones too.I didn't realise until I had a flick through this blogs stats the other day but there have actually been quite a few folks coming by, including in the first month a lot from Romania and now from Russia apparently. Interesting and hello. Special thanks to Stephen and Phelan for sending people this way.

Green Energy (or how much should we sacrifice for the sake of our values?)

The dilemma: how much should we sacrifice, or ask others to sacrifice for our values? Particularly if the others have different values than our own?

I've been struggling with a decision recently. Not a massive one, but given my current situation a fairly important one. The decision? Whether or not to sign up for green electricity, given the increased cost.

The reason I've struggled with this is that I'm currently unemployed, again, and thanks to stupid depression, that's not likely to change in the near future. The budget is tight, and I'm not the best at sticking with one at the best of times.

While I'm living on minimal income, I've been constantly wavering between going for the cheapest option to make life easier for myself, and picking the slightly more costly option that is commensurate with my values. For several weeks I've gone back and forth depending on my mood and outlook, but finally a couple days ago I settled on doing what I feel is the right thing.

Deciding to go for a green energy scheme, I signed up for Equigas from Ebico and electricity from Good Energy, a 100% renewable energy company.

Now, there were other companies, notably nPower, who also provided certified green energy schemes that would match my electricity usage with 100% renewables and cost a fifth less than Good Energy. So why Good Energy?

nPower are primarily using non-renewable sources for electricity and just topping up with renewable to match my demand.

Good Energy use 100% renewable energy sources and have smaller generators spread throughout the country in hundreds of different areas. Local generators support communities and provide jobs across the country. In addition, Good Energy's hydroelectric power comes from small watermills as opposed to damns which have a questionable environmental impact.

For me, I like the idea of supporting a company that is dedicated to developing green electricity usage and local projects and exclusively uses renewable sources. To paraphrase from their (obviously biased but still valid) literature: it's more like buying from a farmers' market than a supermarket.

As for gas, this is a tough one and still not quite resolved.

I signed up the other day for (non-profit energy provider) Ebico's Equigas. This provides gas at a low flat rate regardless of payment method or usage, which for me as someone using a prepay meter and little gas compared to the national average is very attractive, plus it has a positive social impact by providing more affordable gas. The downside is that there is no mention of the source of the gas on their website, nor of any projects to increase renewable gas production.

Enter Ecotricity. They produce a large volume of their gas from waste products and are developing technology to produce it en masse from natural algae. The downside is the cost is 1.5 times that of Ebico for the amount of gas I would use. Spread over the course of the year that's not the end of the world, and the sums involved wouldn't typically be seen as wallet-busting. However as someone who is striving for financial independence in the long run but who's values drive him to lean towards Ecotricity for it's renewable gas projects, the conflict of ideals is challenging.

My mind is still changeable though. While I am inclined to pick Ecotricity, I am waiting on Equigas to get in touch with me regarding the exact sources of their gas. That will be the clincher either way.

One day I'll be off grid and all this will be a thing of the past. But until then I am struggling to balance my responsibility to the Earth and society, with my responsibility for helping ensure that WIB and I can afford to live while we try to get stable.

Any thoughts, comments and opinions are more than welcome.

Ethics of Homesteading (or will the world fall into chaos if I grow my own food?)

WARNING: LACK OF COHESION AHEAD. THIS POST MAY CAUSE HEADACHES AND DIZZINESS.

I would just like to point out that I am fully intending to homestead one day and the point of this post is to explore the ethics behind my decision. I am not ragging on homesteading. :)

I’m big on society. Splitting all our essential tasks up and divvying them out between us so that each task is performed by specialists such as farmers, power companies, builders, engineers etc. has allowed humanity to develop into the flourishing, creative and high achieving species that we are today. The formation of societies wherein individuals work together for more than just protection has freed up the time of many to perform non-essential tasks. I guess I should clarify what I mean by essential and non-essential.

Essential tasks are those which cater for our most basic needs. I’m sure most people know what their basic needs for existence are but I’m going to use Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs to illustrate my point:



So according to Maslow, our basic needs are: food, air, drink, shelter, warmth, sleep and sex. While I guess sex is an important biological need, it’s not vital to individual survival so I’m going to ignore it for now. (Although I guess societies have a specialised group of people to cater to that need too).

Straight away it’s easy to see how societies have people to cater for our basic needs. Though initially I was a bit uncertain of how society provides air, I think it’s fair to say that government pollution regulations are now providing that in a sense. Catering for our basic biological needs doesn’t require the whole of the population which frees up plenty of people to fulfil our higher needs, from safety through to self-actualisation. And that’s what makes society so friggin’ awesome.
My issue with homesteading stems from the idea of removing one’s self from society. While I believe people should be able to ‘opt out’ of society, would it be right to do so?

Now I know that many homesteading families have at least one member still in employment and so are still contributing to society in that fashion. However, I question the effect of their reduced economic input. Spending less money on food, which is often a reasonably significant portion of their expenses, means less cash flow. How negative is the impact this would have? Probably not very at all.
But what if a large number of the population decided to homestead? Perhaps the cash flow would simply shift; rather than going to supermarkets and corporations it would move through local markets and farmers, growers and breeders. But it would never be as much as if all food were to be purchased through the supermarkets, due to the nature of homesteading, i.e., seed-saving and breeding your live stock to replenish those slaughtered.

Of course the reality is that only a tiny fraction of the population homesteads, or has the desire to, so the overall economic impact is tiny. Even if there were vast numbers of people looking to homestead, there’s a natural limit due to land availability. Although there is more than enough land for every family to own an acre in the UK, and a few acres in the US, not all of that land is farmable. Even if it were that would deprive us of the space and man power needed to sustain society as we know it, full of the luxuries and benefits that we enjoy and are hardly likely to give up.

Thankfully that’s not going to happen.


So what was the point of this post? Well, it is an introduction to the big-picture impact of homesteading. In coming articles I am going to address aspects of homesteading that include: a more detailed look at economics, energy, responsibility to the less fortunate, responsibility to society, and society’s responsibility to homesteaders.

I apologise for the weird flow and lack of focus in this post, I’ll probably write a more coherent revised version in the future, but for now this will do.

Liberal guilt (or 'Why, oh why did I throw that plastic bag in the bin?')

Hi any and all of you who might have found your way here.

The move is still in progress, sort of. I've got most of the necessary stuff, but still need to get more and have been out walking up and down streets looking for jobs.

I've been thinking the last few weeks, because I've not got much else to do, about how far is reasonable to expect people to go in terms of recycling, reusing etc. In my current situation, I have no counter-top box for food waste because for whatever reason, my normally excellent local council hasn't sent me one yet. For all my food waste then, I've lined a plastic bag with newspaper and been putting peelings, and leftovers in there to eventually put in my building's communal food waste bin outside.

Now I know lots of people who wouldn't bother. They wouldn't want the possible smell, or the hassle of any drips of food-waste tea that escape the bag. But for me, it just seems like the obvious thing to do. My waste bag (which thankfully hadn't started smelling) was half full so I took it out to empty it. I was left with an empty, dirty carrier bag. Which after a moment's thought I threw into the large general rubbish dumpster. It's been playing on my mind whether I should have held onto it and rinsed it out to use it again. The more I've been thinking on it the more I feel like that's what I should have done. I think when I go home I'm going to grab it out of the dumpster (which was full so it's on the top - I'm not going dumpster diving for a carrier bag) and wash it out and save it to use again. I hate that I have any plastic bags in my house right now, but I've not got my hefty-reusable bags with me at the moment either.

Anyway, to actually make a clear and concise point here: was I wrong to throw the bag away? Is it reasonable to expect people to clean and reuse dirty (with food waste, not like dog mess or something) bags when the only effort is running water and hanging it over the bath to dry? How far does or should the normal social expectation go in that sort of situation?

My major thoughts on the topic are to do with the fact plastic bags are awful for the environment, use up oil (especially important in our time of nearing peak oil) and the fact that I threw away something that could have been useful to me at least several more times.

OK, I'm now wracked with guilt. Even if I had to dumpster dive I would get that bag back now.

Hopefully I'll be back again soon. For now, take care.

Covered in Mud (or Immediate results are the best)

Today I've been out in my parents' garden, weeding the flower beds. From such work I derive a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. It's nice to have instantly visible results after putting in effort. As a result my hands are stained with mud, which has worked itself around my nails. I'm hesitant to scrub it all off, because it's a nice reminder of what I've done today. However, I habitually pick at my nails, so I'll have it all out in a few minutes.

Working outside today in the fresh air and with the ground has reaffirmed my decision to pursue a life homesteading. The problems with that decision, at least for me, are that I will find it difficult to spend time doing something that only benefits myself and my family. For as long as I can remember I have had the inbuilt need to have my life be contributed to improving the world around me. Somehow I will have to find the balance between fulfilling that need, and achieving my dream of living off the land.

But that is the topic of my next post, which will be about the ethics of homesteading.

Until then.