Caught your eye, didn’t it? I know it caught mine. And no, it’s not what you think.
Like most Portlanders I tend to have an eye toward conservation: I take public transportation to and from work, I combine trips when I’m out driving around, I recycle, I even compost.
In the first part of May, MINIGirl and her family took a trip down to Southern California so I had the opportunity to “sublet” her parking spot in the garage next to our office building for a week. In the two and a half years I have worked in that office I hadn’t once driven myself to work. In fact I frequently extolled upon the virtues of taking MAX to work daily, and for the most part those still hold true.
After the week was over I gave MINIGirl her parking pass back and went back to my daily commute on Max. I hated it. I’d had a taste of freedom and now I was locked back in to the schedule that the MAX set for me. So I began to think to myself: “What if I drove to work everyday?” But logic hits me upside the head noting all the money I save by taking the MAX, and how virtuous for the Earth it is. So I quietly take my seat on the MAX and contemplate what another few months of light rail commuting would mean.
In between podcasts I looked up at the posters that line the walls inside the car and I see one from TriMet: “5 Dirty Words: POLLUTION. Fact: 4.2 tons of smog-forming pollutants are avoided every day by leaving our cars at home and riding TriMet.”
GUILT. Pure and simple. How selfish of me to want to shave ten to fifteen minutes off of my commute home and contribute to global warming.
If you would like to read the rest of TriMets 5 Dirty Words look here.
Showing posts with label other people's advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label other people's advice. Show all posts
Monday, May 24, 2010
Friday, October 16, 2009
You Can’t Transition-Proof Your Life
I’m beginning to learn more and more each day that life is about transitions, and how I deal with the transitions is what shapes me as a person… as a functioning adult in today’s world. I still think that it’s strange to refer to myself as an adult. I know I am of that age group and actively functioning as one, but part of me still feels fresh out of college barely prepared for the responsibility handed to me. At what point does someone transition from a “punk college kid” to a “makin’ it in the world adult”? Does the Mary Tyler Moore theme suddenly erupt as you’re walking in to your office one Monday morning? Does it become really truly adulthood when you buy your first new car? Make your first mortgage payment? When you have your first child?
Like a lot of things being an adult is a state of mind, one that needs to be transitioned in to. Here in the U.S. you can drive at 16, help decide who runs our government and be sent to war at 18, and drink legally at 21. The rates on car insurance go down at 25 and you can join AARP at 55, retire and collect social security at 65 and then what?
In the past two weeks the reality of the working during a recession hit my company, and for the first time I experienced companywide layoffs, gracefully masked as a “reorganizing”. Fortunately for me I was spared the pink slip but returned to the office missing the 15 people that had been let go. Talking to one of my coworkers who works at another office in Arizona that lost 27 people, a large majority of their office staff, he compared it to grieving the loss of someone to death. Suddenly they’re gone and the reminders of them are everywhere but you have to pick up the pieces and move on. It is a horrible thing, but you learn from it and hopefully your company is better for it, and you all transition together to making it work.
Like a lot of things being an adult is a state of mind, one that needs to be transitioned in to. Here in the U.S. you can drive at 16, help decide who runs our government and be sent to war at 18, and drink legally at 21. The rates on car insurance go down at 25 and you can join AARP at 55, retire and collect social security at 65 and then what?
In the past two weeks the reality of the working during a recession hit my company, and for the first time I experienced companywide layoffs, gracefully masked as a “reorganizing”. Fortunately for me I was spared the pink slip but returned to the office missing the 15 people that had been let go. Talking to one of my coworkers who works at another office in Arizona that lost 27 people, a large majority of their office staff, he compared it to grieving the loss of someone to death. Suddenly they’re gone and the reminders of them are everywhere but you have to pick up the pieces and move on. It is a horrible thing, but you learn from it and hopefully your company is better for it, and you all transition together to making it work.
Friday, June 5, 2009
What's the opposite of a "Pity Party"?
I am feeling full of deep thoughts this morning. I think it may have something to do with the big thunderstorm that rolled through yesterday evening. It seems like it hit all of a sudden, and after a torrential downpour, thunder & lightning and perhaps even a little hail, by the time I had finished cooking dinner it was all done.
Hubby's dad (MusicMan) has been doing something daily that I find intriguing. I guess he's been feeling down about the housing market and the balance between work and life so his business coach advised him to get up a little earlier every day and do something he loved before he started going through his routine of getting ready for the day. So MusicMan has started emailing every morning his thoughts on life. He started out with a group of ten or so people and Hubby tells me that MusicMan is now up to 50 on his list. Hubby forwarded the emails to me (MusicMan is titling them "Passion Party", the opposite of "Pity Party") and I read through the first 9 of his emails this morning. WOW. They are really simple observations on life, but you can tell that he's pouring his soul in to them.
I hadn't really thought about it much, but I think that I have my own little "Passion Party" every morning when I water my garden. It was still raining this morning so I didn't water my plants when I let Cleo out... & I kind of was disappointed about that. Like I said, I hadn't realized that watering my plants is kind of like a morning meditation for me - doing something I enjoy before I get my day started. And I do it every morning.
I hope you're doing something for yourself lately.
Hubby's dad (MusicMan) has been doing something daily that I find intriguing. I guess he's been feeling down about the housing market and the balance between work and life so his business coach advised him to get up a little earlier every day and do something he loved before he started going through his routine of getting ready for the day. So MusicMan has started emailing every morning his thoughts on life. He started out with a group of ten or so people and Hubby tells me that MusicMan is now up to 50 on his list. Hubby forwarded the emails to me (MusicMan is titling them "Passion Party", the opposite of "Pity Party") and I read through the first 9 of his emails this morning. WOW. They are really simple observations on life, but you can tell that he's pouring his soul in to them.
I hadn't really thought about it much, but I think that I have my own little "Passion Party" every morning when I water my garden. It was still raining this morning so I didn't water my plants when I let Cleo out... & I kind of was disappointed about that. Like I said, I hadn't realized that watering my plants is kind of like a morning meditation for me - doing something I enjoy before I get my day started. And I do it every morning.
I hope you're doing something for yourself lately.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The Bibliophile's Dilemma
As 2009 loomed around the corner I had decided to abstain from the annual tradition of having a New Year’s Resolution. This decision came mostly as a result of my own cynicism and a deep seeded bitterness that “they never really work out anyway”. In past years my resolutions have been either loosely worded with vague meaning (i.e. “I will take better care of myself.”), or something that I have been working on for a long time (i.e. “I will try to buy more organic produce.”) and would likely continue to work on it with out any though to “that’s my resolution!”. In the end, like most resolutions and attempts to better one’s own life, they work out or they don’t. So we can’t say that I necessarily resolved to not make a resolution, because that’s just silly, but the fact that it’s the beginning of a new year and the fact that I stumbled upon this article has sparked a thought in me.
It has been a goal of mine, as it is with many bibliophiles, to read the classics. I am sad to discover that I have only read a mere eight books on that list. At least four of the books were in the top ten. I want to increase the number of books on the list that I have read, but it is not going to happen easily – I am a slow reader and am part of a book group that tends to read more recent publications. On top of that it is impossible for me to read two fiction books at the same time – I tend to get the plots confused. (I know what you’re thinking how did this woman graduate from college with an English degree? Very careful planning. ) I know, I know it’s all the same excuses to not accomplish the aforementioned goal, but I didn’t set a time line on it, nor did I necessarily resolve to do it. Just because I want to at some point accomplish this, and it just happens to be at the beginning of a New Year, that doesn’t make it a resolution. Right? Perhaps purely by my say so it is not a resolution but more of a desire for accomplishment.
Now my internal devil’s advocate says, who dictated that those books find their way to the list of top 100 books of all time? I am sure that these choices were based upon some literary prowess based on style, plot development, word usage, and proper punctuation, but you have to know that someone somewhere would disagree with their choices. It looks like Time Magazine did on a few. So then, what is a book lover to do? Follow someone else’s arbitrary list, or determine one of my own?
That’s it. I know exactly what my non-resolution for 2009 will be. I will read whatever I want to read.
It has been a goal of mine, as it is with many bibliophiles, to read the classics. I am sad to discover that I have only read a mere eight books on that list. At least four of the books were in the top ten. I want to increase the number of books on the list that I have read, but it is not going to happen easily – I am a slow reader and am part of a book group that tends to read more recent publications. On top of that it is impossible for me to read two fiction books at the same time – I tend to get the plots confused. (I know what you’re thinking how did this woman graduate from college with an English degree? Very careful planning. ) I know, I know it’s all the same excuses to not accomplish the aforementioned goal, but I didn’t set a time line on it, nor did I necessarily resolve to do it. Just because I want to at some point accomplish this, and it just happens to be at the beginning of a New Year, that doesn’t make it a resolution. Right? Perhaps purely by my say so it is not a resolution but more of a desire for accomplishment.
Now my internal devil’s advocate says, who dictated that those books find their way to the list of top 100 books of all time? I am sure that these choices were based upon some literary prowess based on style, plot development, word usage, and proper punctuation, but you have to know that someone somewhere would disagree with their choices. It looks like Time Magazine did on a few. So then, what is a book lover to do? Follow someone else’s arbitrary list, or determine one of my own?
That’s it. I know exactly what my non-resolution for 2009 will be. I will read whatever I want to read.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Workin' at the Car Wash
I think everything comes down to whether you are willing to put the time and effort in to it. As I mentioned in a post not too long ago, I have a Beetle. Well, as it happens my car got dirty in the two months I have called her mine. Something I have noticed with this car is that the color shows dirt a lot sooner than my other car did. Not nearly as badly as my husband's "atomic blue" Civic though. So, after a trip to Cost-co and the grocery store we decided the weather was nice enough and would stay nice long enough for it to be worthwhile to bathe our respective vehicles.
It's been a good while since I've sudsed up my own vehicle, although it is really not all that complicated my husband likes to make it that way. "You have to spray in an up and down motion to get the dirt to run off properly, and then wash in a circular motion. Most importantly when you're drying go top to bottom in one smooth line so that it won't streak," he instructs me. I didn't realize that this process was so complicated. It would be a lot easier if I just took it to the car wash down the road.
The most complicated part of washing my car myself is that we live in an apartment complex. I suspect that our strutting around to "Sympathy for the Devil" as we go through the appropriate movements involved in washing a vehicle in the complex's shared space where we all spend as little time as possible on a regular basis can cause a mixture of emotions. I can never tell if it amuses or annoys our neighbors when we get around to doing this, perhaps it's a fair blend of both.
It's been a good while since I've sudsed up my own vehicle, although it is really not all that complicated my husband likes to make it that way. "You have to spray in an up and down motion to get the dirt to run off properly, and then wash in a circular motion. Most importantly when you're drying go top to bottom in one smooth line so that it won't streak," he instructs me. I didn't realize that this process was so complicated. It would be a lot easier if I just took it to the car wash down the road.
The most complicated part of washing my car myself is that we live in an apartment complex. I suspect that our strutting around to "Sympathy for the Devil" as we go through the appropriate movements involved in washing a vehicle in the complex's shared space where we all spend as little time as possible on a regular basis can cause a mixture of emotions. I can never tell if it amuses or annoys our neighbors when we get around to doing this, perhaps it's a fair blend of both.
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