WTS Day XXXII

A very uneventful day today. I am turning into a hermit; there is a word, I have heard, for the opposite of hibernation. It is estivation. That is more or less what I am doing. I had agreed to mind my neighbour's dog so picked her up yesterday evening and this morning we went for a walk down by Blackrock Castle. We were there at half-seven and that is the time to be there. At times I could see no other human, but it was not so deserted as to feel unsafe. The tide was mostly in and the sun was out. It was lovely and I felt very privileged to live so close to the sea and to such an amenity. The sound of the cars heading towards the tunnel added rather than detracted from my enjoyment, as it brought the fact of my being on holidays into focus. 

I brought the dog with me to Mahon Point market, parking in the covered car-park. I always park there anyway: it wasn't just because I had the dog with me. Plastic-free July continues apace. I brought the plastic bag my strawberries came in last week and reused it. The punnet was the only new plastic I acquired: all my veg came loose or in brown paper. I bought pesto in jars and a take-away salad in a compostable container. Like I said before, it's easy to go plastic free in the summer when I can go to the market. This is excuse-making as there are other markets I could frequent that operate on Saturdays. 

The dog's owner collected her at lunch-time, and all I've done since is get my eyebrows threaded and buy Parmesan (wrapped in waxed paper) and a cotton shirt for work (12.95, bargain). Then I had to make a work-related phone-call (less than fifteen minutes). It wasn't for my main job, but for a tangential unpaid hustle. That hustle has been worth every minute of unpaid time I have spent on it. This is advice I would give to anyone: you have to give to get. Not so much as to make yourself an eejit, but you have to invest more than you would think for even modest returns. 

That was my day. It was fine, but I have nothing lined up to do at the weekend. That is worrying and I must investigate what is on and what I could go to. I went to the cinema on Monday on my own. Going to the cinema was on the "43 before 43 list" that I wrote at the New Year and I only got to it this week. But I got to it. I'm getting to lots of other things as well. Because this is how the summer works. It is not like a fortnight's holiday or a really long weekend. Things go very slack, and that is when possibilities emerge. 

WTS Day XXX

Win the Summer is 30 days old today and to celebrate, we are opening a Twitter account and attempting to get some views.
I realise now that I should have started a whole new blog for Win the Summer. I didn't think I'd really write every day. Well, I didn't. If you're reading this and you recognise me, can you please inform me? I have been writing this blog in the supposition of anonymity, as there is little point otherwise. I am careful, but only up to a point.
What is Win the Summer?
Win the Summer is a personal project. I am a teacher who is off work for the holidays and realises that she did not make the most of previous summers. I am determined that this summer will be different. The main difference is that I am going about things intentionally, rather than drifting. Another difference is that I am following, as best I can, Hal Elrod's "Miracle Morning" routine. Had I picked up this book in my local Waterstone's (it's there), I would have dismissed it as just another self-help book that promised the world but is hard to stick to and ephemeral in its benefits. However, I downloaded it onto my Kindle Fire having heard it recommended on Twitter by people I hold to be sensible. The book itself is quite skimmable and there's a good summary of it here by Philosophers Notes. (Brian Johnson does good summaries and his blackboard presentations are much easier to take in than the usual animated book summaries that proliferate on YouTube).
So far, I can recommend it, as it works very well for some-one who is temporarily without much structure and who doesn't have to be in a particular place in the mornings. Would I recommend sacrificing sleep and getting up at half-five to do it? Totally not. I plan, when I go back to work, to get up a little earlier and incorporate elements like five-minutes meditation in my morning, but that's about it. Not that I am planning too much for work at this point. The summer is still young.
That is, relatively young. There are around seven weeks left of my mini-sabbatical. A mini-sabbatical is how I see it. For ten years I did not take this break, but instead earned extra income by correcting exams. What a mistake that was, but I can't go back now and change things.
Along with the Miracle Morning (can I stop capitalising that?), I have a couple of other projects on the go. Right now, I am attempting Less Plastic July. I have also started a #26habits ....what? "Practice" sounds absurd, but maybe that's the closest. This is inspired by Emma Gunavardhana's excellent podcast on the-pool.  I am still on the first one...Staying out of TKMaxx, and am due to start another one next Monday.
The other main thing, in fact the main thing, is that I am taking time this summer To Do Some Serious Writing. I know I am building this up to be too big a thing. How is this going? On the one hand I am writing every day. On the other, this is on various desultory, embryonic scraps of wittering rather than anything substantial or even fictional. And I am not spending enough time on it. Still, I must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I am doing a bit. There is progress. Still, progress doesn't get you there, just on to the next section of road that's indistinguishable from the other. To put this in perspective, I style myself as a fiction writer, but my current output averages out at one short story a year. In seven years' time ( I currently have three I consider presentable) I'll have enough for an anthology.
I feel there is more I could be doing. This feeling is in itself a sign of progress. How have I lost other summers? Through half-heartedness and not pushing through. Through not taking up opportunities, through going to events but not speaking to people and going home early, through failing to prioritise, through attempting to live some-one else's life and doing things merely because they were expected of me.
This year is different. Even so far, it is different.

WTS Day XXVIII

Slept in a bit late this morning. Tomorrow will start on the Dorothea Brande schedule, such as it is. Today is the first day of July, so therefor the first day of Plastic-Free July. I won't be going Plastic Free, but am going to take the following actions:

-use my Thinx and purchase more of them.

-I already use bar soap rather than liquid hand soap, but will extend this to showering as well. I thought about switching to solid shampoo but this is hard water area. That is my excuse anyway. Although I suppose an experiment would do no harm. 

-I already use real butter rather than the gunk in the plastic tubs. This is a good example of how eco-switches almost always result in a better-quality experience. 

-cooking my own food and eschewing ready-meals in plastic containers.

-buying cheese in Iago's, where they wrap it in waxed paper. 

-bringing bags to the market to buy vegetables. Seeing if I can find a string bag. 

-eating more things like eggs, that are minimally packaged.

-not buying soft drinks multi-packs that are covered in plastic. This will incur a cost as it is cheaper to buy the multi-packs with the plastic. At least Diet Coke can now be bought in 24-pack cardboard boxes. 

-switching to powder for biological detergent.

-at some point during the month refilling my non-biological detergent bottles. I really need to do this only once a year and think I still have plenty of last year's to go. 

-giving up single-use small water bottles. I know giving up bottled water is the low-hanging fruit of using less plastic, but I got a letter from Irish Water telling me there is lead in the tap water. Things I can do include buying bigger bottles of water and using the filter in the gym. Of course, I could buy a filter. Or not take any notice of Irish Water and their scare-mongering. 

-stop buying synthetic clothes. 

-go to the Quay Co-op and see if there's anything there that could help.

-switch to non-plastic cotton buds. I don't use a whole load of these anyway, but sometimes nothing else will do to fix wonky eye-make-up. 

-bringing reusable containers to the fish counter. 

None of this is too hard during the summer,  when I have time to shop in the market and the inclination to cook. I have no excuses really during the winter either. Of course, not having a baby represents the greatest plastic-saving of all. Other people are using my quota of course. And it wouldn't stop me. It'd be better to have a baby and donate to organisations tackling over-population. I do think over-population is a thing. I think people who decide not to have children for this reason are being responsible, on the condition that it's a unanimous decision between a couple. I doubt it is. I mean, I think it's unreasonable to expect your partner of whichever sex to deny themselves offspring and parenthood for no other reason than altruistic environmentalism. 

All really posh people are environmentally-friendly because there are rewards from that way of living. What about flying? I have to laugh at the zero-wasters on Youtube who are flying here and there and packing their bamboo toothbrushes in their carry-on. LOL.