Breakfast: Miracle of miracles … whole-wheat toast with jam and a sliced apple.
Lunch: A little bragging … toasted tofu w/ marinara sauce, grilled tempeh burger, mesclun salad
Dinner: Backsliding … leftover pasta and a salad with too many onions
Cravings: Cake, cookies, brownies, cupcakes, muffins, Danish or really any kind of baked good with more then 300 calories.
Mood: Still cheerful!
My time as a Freegan is drawing to an end and while I can’t say I’ll be craving tempeh burgers anytime soon, I can admit that I’m going to miss this blog. I’m panicked that I’ve missed a whole set of vital concerns. What I do know is that I’ve glossed over the whole Freegan work ethic. According to Freegan.info, their stance on employment is as follows:
“By accounting for the basic necessities of food, clothing, housing, furniture, and transportation without spending a dime, Freegans are able to greatly reduce or altogether eliminate the need to constantly be employed. We can instead devote our time to caring for our families, volunteering in our communities, and joining activist groups to fight the practices of the corporations who would otherwise be bossing us around at work.”
I have two beefs with that. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% in favor of more time to care for my family. I’ve been trying to carve out a space for volunteer work and well, I can’t join an activist group because I have to stay fair and balanced. My problem is that "accounting" for food, clothing, housing, furniture and transportation takes a lot of time … a lot of time. Trust me. If you go the Freegan way (and I am sincerely not discouraging you), you’ll need to find about 30 extra minutes for everything just to be on time for things you have to be on time for. It’s not the dumpster diving, I’ve been assured by both my Frentors that once you get the hang of it, you can knock out your “shopping” in about 30 minutes a week. It’s everything else! But the rest of the stuff--scrupulously recycling and composting, foraging for wild plants, posting on Freecycle.org, dropping off things, picking up things, finding furniture and all that yadda yadda can be a full-time job if you let it. I spent thirty days eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly and pasta because when I come home from work, I just didn’t have the energy to make something from scratch. On some nights, I would have opened negotiations with Satan for a Lean Cuisine--how pathetic is that? That’s the problem with convenience--it’s hard to go back, even if it is destroying the planet. And convenience gives me more time for the Husband, the BFF, my Parents and all the things I love like crime TV, novels and my garden. And I just can’t conceive of not needing to work. I guess I could cobble together some freelance work and maybe do some odds and ends but that seems a lot more work then just showing up here everyday. My parents would testify on a stack of bibles that I don’t like to be bossed around. When I was 13, I melodramatically offered to drink Drano rather than load the dishwasher (yeah, I was that kind of teenager.) But I’d vote for a single boss over hustling for a few bucks any day.
And another thing, I like my job. (Warning: Sad story coming.) Right before I started at Newsweek, I got dumped. I started at my job here 6 months later as a shadow of the woman I am now. And while time helped (as did the realization that that guy was a total schmuck, more fit to date a toad then a fine woman like myself), my job gave me back my self-esteem, ambition, drive and most importantly, the ability to focus on something other then myself. So while I understand that some people feel oppressed and abused by their job, I believe in work and career. Call me corny or a pawn or even a fool but don’t tell me that the only point of a job is being bossed around and making the things that keeps global warming ticking. And honestly, we can’t all be unemployed. I don’t worry about the economy. The economy seems to take care of itself; but I do wonder what the world would be like if no one worked. Or to put it more bluntly, I don’t wonder because it’s an impossible idea. Every human, even the ones in communal villages such as the Amish, needs something produced by the sweat of another human’s labor. We could set it up a different way, no wait, we did that with slaves and indentured servants and merchant guilds. Paying people a living wage to do something you won’t or can’t do seems alright to me. And that brings up the whole sustainable issue. If Freegans live off our waste, what would we live on if we all became Freegans? I’m not trying to poke holes out of meanness, I just wonder if there’s some other kind of way of meeting our needs as a species that I don’t know about. Because if there’s not, then the Freegans need to find one because while Americans can definitely cut some waste, we’re not going to stop working. Of course, my Frentors know that. But they don't care--perhaps because they assume they will always be a small minority--as they say; "We believe ultimately that our consumption practices, while important and even revolutionary if practiced en masse, must only be one small thread as we weave the fabric of a new society and mend the garment of the old.”
On the good relationship front, I have to declare the Husband, THE BEST HUSBAND IN THE WORLD! He bought me a pack of Skittles. When he gave me that rainbow of flavors, I was so happy, so grateful, so overwhelmed that rather then thank him; I locked myself in the bathroom and ate them in a single sitting. That ain’t the Freegan way; but that’s what 22 days without processed sugar does to a person.
Good News: Fall is here!!! If you don’t know New York City in the fall, come visit!
Bad News: For the first time in my life I’m looking forward to the Fall TV season. This can only mean my brain is turning to rice pudding.
Worries: I’m already sick of that trailer for Across the Universe and I’m running out of ways to get those Beatles songs out of my head … Blackbird singing in the dead of night!
