Week One

Hey guys! So my first week of technology-fasting/garbage-avoiding/water-electricity-saving is over and I must say that making these sustainable choices are not as frustrating as I expected. Of course, it was inconvenient at times, but you kind of just have to re-wire your mind to find all the loopholes. Thus, I might have just came up with a new hobby...creative loopholes to living sustainable! I think my best one for this past week was taking a dish rag to every single one of my meals in the Commons this week. I can be a messy eater at times and can use a very large amount of napkins. I wasn't very fond of thinking of something to do with my dirty napkins so I turned to my own makeshift cloth napkin instead. It actually turned out to be quite humorous. At first I was embarrassed to lift the washrag out of my lap to wipe my mouth, but then I remembered why I was doing this in the first place. My pride that came from saving all those napkins soon overshadowed my embarrassment. Gum was a very tricky issue for me as well. Also, I eat a Nutri-Grain bar every morning I have classes and the wrappers turned out to be very difficult to conserve. I resorted to carrying them around in my backpack for the two days:/ I'm not sure if those can be composted or not...
Conserving water and electricity wasn't that bad. Like I said, you just have to become consciously aware of what you're doing at all times so that soon it becomes habit. My windows were open to a beautiful day on Wednesday and Thursday last week and only turned on my desk lamp at night when I needed to do some homework. It's also fun to see how fast you can shower. I must say I did beat my record last week...
The technology fast was more inconvenient than anything. Most of my leisure time is spent on some sort of technological device. Nevertheless, I read a lot for fun last week. I think that hurt the most was not being able to listen to my iPod at the gym. I settled for their radio music. The lack of cell phone was decent. I almost had to eat lunch by myself because I couldn't find/call my friends I usually eat lunch with.
I'm hoping this can become much more easier over the next couple of weeks:)