Purging the plastic

Confession: in high school, I worked for part of a summer in a plastic bag factory. In my defense, I was desperate for a job, the hours were okay, and the pay was great. I don't know that I could do this again, though, knowing what I now know about plastics, as well as being even more aware of issues with plastics in the world. I still feel a bit like I sold my soul.

In general, I (and every environmentally concerned person I know) avoid plastics, and especially the one-use kind that get thrown away so quickly. But, so many things in our lives are made of the stuff (largely because it's cheap, reasonably durable, and fairly easy to work with), that it's difficult to avoid. I haven't yet completely gotten around to getting plastics out of my home - my stored water is all in reused plastic bottles, because they were free, and because I'll likely have to move I haven't spent a lot of money on a system that I can't take with me. But I'm even looking for alternatives to this method that eliminate plastic from the equation and, overall, I'm taking some time to try to cut down on plastic in my home as much as possible, both by bringing in less and finding better ways to replace it as needed.

If you're interested in purging the plastic from your life, you certainly don't need to buy anything fancy, and probably don't need to buy anything new. This can get expensive, especially if you have a lot of plastic to replace, and you'd probably be better off saving that money for other things that are less easy to find. Also, buying something new is still a use of resources, even if it is less harmful, or longer lasting. So, its likely worth looking around to see what's already around that can fill the void or, if there is nothing, what kind of alternatives are available.

- use whatever you have that's plastic (other than food containers) as much as possible until it can't be used anymore - plastic bags (both shopping bags and produce)are especially important here

- consider reusing jars that your food comes in - although you can't preserve food again in almost all of them, lidded jars make excellent alternatives to buying more plastic containers for pantry items, things that go in the freezer, or even temporary leftovers in the fridge

- buy or make reusable bags - this includes shopping bags, but should also be expanded to include produce bags - these can be easily sewn or knit

- when plastic things eventually break, look for simple non-plastic alternatives - replace a plastic shower curtain with a fabric one, or a plastic jug with a glass one

If you are looking to pick some things, consider checking out second-hand sources first. There are a lot of great reusable products that are easily found there - they're incredibly useful, and you're using something that might otherwise be thrown away. Many of the mason jars in my pantry came from the thrift store, as did my tiffins - stacking containers with a handle for multi-part lunches. I have a large collection of lidded pyrex from yard sales which work great for leftovers, and my two sigg bottles came from an end-of-year lost and found sale at the university. The university tends to wind up with a lot of bottles that students have left behind after classes, and they sell for cheap.

Happily, many of these things are better made and longer lasting than their plastic counterparts. Pyrex won't warp if left on the heat, mesh bags rip less easily than plastic, and cast iron won't warp is used for many years. Admittedly, plastic doesn't break in the same way that glass and pyrex do, but this is likely a small price to pay.

Now, plastics are an environmental issue, but they're also a health issue as well. There are a number of studies that suggest a range of health concerns around plastics, especially with regards to reproduction, but I'm also of the opinion that they just haven't been around for us to truly know what's going on there.

There are also apparent issues with other things like non-stick coating, especially when it scratches, and related coated kitchen products. If you can, it's worth avoiding these as well. A few big copper, stainless steel, or iron pots and pans and pyrex cookware are also pretty easy to find second hand, and frequently very cheap. In contrast with man-made components that leach possible toxins into food, iron pots actually leach...well...iron, which is good for you. By eliminating plastics and other questionable compounds from your home, you're doing the environment a favour, but you're likely doing yourself one as well.

New Year Resolutions

I have to admit, I'm not really one for resolutions, at least not in the traditional sense. Using the new year as an excuse to start exercising, write every day, keep my apartment, and just generally turn over a new leaf doesn't really work for me. It's nice as inspiration and all that, but I just do that whenever I need to. Why wait for January first when there's a whole string of Mondays throughout the year that are just as good symbolic starting points?

But, with that said, I'm thinking that this year I might try to set up some goals to work towards that are more specific than I'd normally go for. They'll probably change over time, but right now, this is what I'm thinking of.


1. Come close to finishing my dissertaton - I feel like this needs to be done so I can really become sustainable - it take a lot of time and effort, but even more than that it leaves me feeling like I'm too much in limbo to do set up the life that I want here and now.

2. Set up a garden on the patio - I have many of the materials that I think I need, I just have to actually do this. Happily, I can start on this now, since it's time to buy seeds, and I finally have some catalogues to work from.

3. Join the local food co-op - it's not too far, and it will serve as a good way to start to get involved in local food issues.

4. Reduce costs - find ways to cut down on spending even more, so I have money for my own projects, as well as more to donate to charities that really need it right now.

5. Further reduce waste I've done almost everything that can be done fairly easily, so I suspect it's time to dig deeper, and start getting into deeper ways of reducing energy (and possibly living expenses too.)

6. Seriously declutter my home - this will serve to make it more functional as it is right now as well as a way to make it more of what I need it to be for TEOTWAWKI and a way to make it easier to move if I have to get myself elsewhere for any reason. I suspect this is going to be the toughest one for me though, as I try to stockpile things I need while trying to not pick up too much.

7. In general, devote time regularly to projects to finish them. Too often I have great ideas that flounder halfway through, and I'd like to be better about getting done things ranging from my dissertation to setting up a garden.

That seems like a good list for now and, in the spirit of motivation and getting started, I'm off to turn on some music and get myself tidying around here.

New Year Themes

Rather than setting up resolutions for the new year, one thing I've tried to do in the past is set up a theme for the year. While I have set up some specific goals for this year, I also wanted to continue with the theme as well.

This last year has felt somewhat crazy for me. In addition to my dissertation work, I started teaching, and also had a few other important things come into my life (this project is perhaps the biggest one.) These things are all hugely important to me, and I love them, but it's a lot to manage, and I find myself oscillating a lot - between extreme rest and extreme productivity, from one idea to another, and from incredible calm to great turmoil. And so, while things are getting done over here, they're getting done in ways that perhaps aren't as efficient or as healthy for me as they could be.

With all of this is mind, this year's theme is going to be sustainability, which I think is applicable in a few different ways. I'm still musing through this, though, and will likely have more to say (and more to say in a way that's more coherent) as I go.

In terms of work, I'm hoping focusing on sustainability will help me to balance teaching and research so that I don't get burnt out, and become more effective at both. I want to ensure that I schedule time for both so that I'm working regularly but not crazily. This balance will also mean that I can work more efficiently and more regularly on other projects, rather than the fits and starts that I'm prone to now. To this end, I'm going to try to schedule my life just a bit more, and follow a regular enough routine to make it possible to maintain my work in a way that doesn't so drastically affect my life.

I want to balance sustainability at work with sustainability in my personal life. In part, this means taking more regular time for me, rather than lapsing into two days of TV watching as I occasionally do when I'm burned out. Included in this time for me is the desire to make my health and emotional well-being more sustainable. By setting up a stronger work schedule so I have less excessively busy periods, and less times when I have no energy, I'm hoping I will have more time to exercise regularly and to take more time for me in things that ground me, like yoga and meditation. I'd also like to make sure that I work harder on the relationships in my life, which feel more important than ever.

Finally, I'm hoping that these more individual expressions of sustainability allow me more time and energy to work on sustainability within the world at large. I have many projects that I want to work on, and I'd feel better if I felt capable of putting more regular efforts into them. A garden, solar energy, and possibly setting up a tiny house can all require a lot of those who choose to use them, and I'm hoping that by making my own life more sustainable, I can do things that are more sustainable for the planet as well.

Making technology serve

I'd already been thinking about this a bit, but Sharon Sharonrecently had an interesting post on Obsolete Technologiesobsolete technologies that got me thinking a bit more.

I have to confess, I have technology. I just (literally yesterday) bought a new laptop. A new, high-end, very expensive laptop. It took me a long time to get it - almost 8 months to finally bite the bullet and just get it, and even then it took a lot of hand holding to get me through. I put it on my credit card, but I have the money, and have been saving for this for years, but for some reason this doesn't tend to make spending the money any easier for me. I always debate purchases like this, and then debate them some more. But, given my academic research (virtual worlds and the like), my old four and half year old laptop literally couldn't run the programs I needed anymore and was causing me a lot of grief. It felt like a worthwhile investment to get a new one. Now, I could probably have done this cheaper, or with a less nice computer. But the plan is that this one will last me a long time and will, with any luck, get me through the dissertation faster which will be cheaper in the long run. And so, here I am.

A laptop isn't all that I have. I have a TV and a VCR, both of which I inherited when my grandmother died, as well as a $40 DVD player that was a gift from my sweetie. I have a cell phone, which is a hand-me-down from my sweetie and soon to be on a cheapie pay-as-you-go plan. I also have an iPod, which was a birthday gift four or five years ago from my ex. I have a digital camera (which may be used for some photos here soon), but that I bought for myself, also with the intention of it lasting a number of years. Now, I do like most of this technology - love the iPod, the cell is handy in emergencies, and the TV is nice for cheap entertainment and vegging out in the evenings. But, truth be told, I'd be fine without any of it, but looking at the list, it's all been passed along by someone else.

Other than the laptop and the camera, all of this technology has been giving to me. And, when I look around, I realise that most of what I've bought for myself and what gets used regularly are not the fancy technology options. I have my grandmother's 1950s electric sewing machine, but I frequently use that without power and just hand crank it instead. I have a hand-crank radio that I listen to when I'm working around the house. I love my little spring-loaded chopper, my hand-crank grain mill (as coarse as it grinds), and kneading bread by hand before it goes into the oven.

I sometimes feel as though I live in two worlds. Because of my research, I participate regularly in a high-technology and high-energy world just by virtue of my research (although I am working on some papers dealing with energy consumption and social justice issues in the hopes of somehow redeeming myself.) But, when I'm at home, I slip into a rather domestic, rather low-energy space where I cook from scratch, knit, bake, sew, try to grow things, and use whatever obsolete technologies I have that I enjoy.

But lately I've been thinking about these high-level technologies, and wondering how I might be able to make them work for me a bit better than they are now. How, for example, can they serve as tools for this low-energy, sustainable life that I'm looking for? How can they serve me other than academically? At the same time, I'm also looking into how I might be able to power a laptop long term, and might see if a friend of mine at 3M could help me set up a solar rig for the new laptop, since it has lower energy needs than the old one.

I haven't quite worked it all yet, but here are a few ideas that I'm looking into.

1. Learning and teaching - with the availability of podcasts and videos now, I'm trying to build up a library of materials (especially now that I have a much larger hard drive) that will be useful for teaching and learning. Thus far, I'm looking into subject podcasts, like history, science, and social studies, as well as language lessons. I'd also like to get together a bunch of videos showing things like bike repair, building a chicken coop, milking a goat, playing a guitar, and anything else that might be useful to know. I'm also pulling together a library of PDFs with the same information - books and articles, printouts of web pages, musical scores - really, anything that might be useful.

2. Entertainment - I love my guitar for entertainment, and have many shelves worth of books around my apartment. But, sometimes it's nice to just sit down and watch a movie. And, while learning takes priority, I haven't ruled out the possibility of using a laptop for some music or a film when the urge strikes.

3. Warmth - Okay, this might be stretching it a bit, but once I realised that my old laptop threw a lot of heat, I made sure to use it in bed with me. It warmed up the bed a bit, and felt rather nice. My hot water bottle is just as effective and less prone to breakage, but I'll take whatever I can get right.

I'm still thinking this through, but would be happy to take on any suggestions that others might have about how they're using their technologies.

Ecological footprint

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night, and so I sat up for a bit with some ecological footprint calculators. I knew going into it that the numbers wouldn't be pretty. In the past six months I've flown to England (for a wonderful summer program and, while I regret the ecological implications, I don't regret the program at all), as well as to British Columbia (ostensibly for a family wedding, but more to see my Nanna, who's been rather ill for the last year - better to fly out for a party than a funeral, I think.) But, they were even less pretty than I hoped, and for the first time I sat down and actively tried to figure out why that is.

Part of the issue is that I live alone. No matter how much I reduce my consumption, use less energy and less water, and change all of the small details about how I live, living alone hurts my footprint, even in a medium-sized apartment. Another part is that I use the bus a lot, not just to get to school, but to go see my boyfriend, who lives over 500 km away. I've pretty much eliminated flying there, which is a good thing, but the travel is still not such a good thing, although I'm hoping that can be remedied soon. The trouble is, at this point in time, these are things that are difficult for me to change, much as I would like to. I'm working on it, but it is slow.

The other thing (although not the biggest by quite a stretch), and the one that's probably easiest for me is food. I'm vegetarian, but I am rather fond of cheese and eggs, which ups my numbers. I also don't live all that close to a farmer's market, and most of my food comes from the supermarket, which isn't always known for its local food options. But, out of all the things to change, this is the one that I can start immediately and most easily, so I took food on as my afternoon project.

Since I was heading out anyway, I first decided to go to the Goodwill bookstore up the street. Happily, I came away with a copy of "Putting Food By". It's an older one, so I'm going to double check the canning standards, but I'm excited about having instructions and recipes for preserving foods now.

I then wandered over to the grocery store. At best, foods are labelled with their province or country of origin, so I decided to stick to those grown in Ontario. It's not a perfect solution, but better than nothing for now. I wound up with a large cabbage, 10 pounds each of potatoes, yellow onions, and carrots, and a bag of empire apples. Other options were squash, rutabega, and turnips, although I left those alone for now. I found it harder to go with local foods when I was working on my food stores. I picked up peanut butter, a large bag of cornmeal, and brown rice, none of which are local. They'll be added to my food stores for future use.

I don't know if this was entirely a success. Some staples - like pasta and peanut butter - seem to be a lot harder to find locally grown. I haven't started looking for eggs or cheese yet, since I have rather a lot of that in the fridge from a past grocery shopping trip. I'm sure it's not impossible, and I'm going to look harder, but I was hoping for better. Fresh stuff, however, seemed to be relatively easy, so long as I was willing to walk past the citrus and less hardy greens at the front of the store. I'm going to keep looking, but in the meantime, I'm going to settle in and make myself a barbeque potato and carrot casserole where at least half the ingredients are local.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Daharja at Cluttercut has asked about changes that people have been making for the better in their lives, especially in terms of saving money and doing things ourselves.

I've always been pretty frugal (some would say cheap), so I have a lot of habits that I don't even really think about more that probably date back to my days in undergrad, if not earlier. While I've always lived within my means, those means have never been huge (especially now with grad school funding), and so I've tried to find ways to not only live within my means, but to live well within my means.

One thing I started doing early on was shopping at thrift stores. Now, admittedly, when I started I was pretty excited by the prices, and did wind up buying some things that I probably didn't need, but overall I did save a fair amount of money. I still always check out thrift stores when I need something, and have bought everything from clothes and shoes to book and dishes there, all at very low prices. Money stays in my pocket, I get to support a charity, and things stay out of landfills.

I also started figuring out what I could do without, or do with less of. A lot of vanity products got scrapped on this one - hair goo of various types, nailpolish and remover, fancy moisturizer. Dinners out got scrapped to - I now only eat dinner out when out of town friends are in town, and even then I've cut it down more by offering to cook at my place. I started getting basic haircuts that grow out well - I can now get my haircut close to home by a lovely woman who charges me $15, much less than half of a salon haircut (which always felt like a huge rip-off, given the simplicity of my hair.)

I don't have a car. Now, admittedly, this one is sometimes a pain, especially when hauling groceries. But I don't need one - I have a bus pass, a bike, and good walking shoes, which seem to do me just fine. For grocery trips I also have a bundle buggy (one of those little wheeled wire carts) that I found outside the trash at my apartment building.

I eat low on the food chain. When I'm away from home or out for dinner I'll eat some fish. But, other than that, I eat primarily vegan at home. My version of vegan is high in whole grains and fruits and veggies. I eat little dairy, which is pretty expensive, and not much in the way of processed foods either, which are also expensive. While not quite the cheapest of all meals, I am concerned about health, and am willing to pay a bit more for good, wholesome food. But, overall, it's pretty cheap. Where possible, I buy local or organic, and grains and beans I buy dry, so as to not have to pay for shipping the water that usually comes along with them.

Finally, I look for activities that are cheap or, better yet, free to keep me busy (although it's not like I have all that much free time.) I've started playing my guitar again, I knit (not exactly free, but very practical), I attend free concerts, movies, and lectures at the library, I go for walks, and I hang out with friends. It's low key, but it suits me, and it means a minimum of travel and expense. And, in some cases, I'm even building up some useful skills.

Of course, there are things that I'm willing to spend money on, especially if I can't find them second hand - good tools, truly useful books, quality materials, organic food, and things that will last me a long time. But overall these purchases are pretty rare, and I think my other efforts more than make up for them.

So, I ask the question to you now? What changes are you making?

The decluttering saga

In all the talk about peak oil and sustainable living, there's a lot of talk of things that we should have on hand. I'm totally on board with this perspective, and am working on my own list of things that should probably be making their way into my life. But one of the things that has me worried here is where I'm going to put it all. While I think it's hugely important to think about the things that we're likely to need, I think it's equally important to think about where we're going to put it all.

So, one of the things I've been working on recently is decluttering my apartment. While a concern for storing more things is in there, there are a really a few reasons for this. First, I've just been feeling like I have too much stuff - it's been getting a bit claustrphobic around here. At the same time, I also have it in my head that someday I'd like to own my own tiny house, and the amount of stuff that I have will just never, ever fit. Finally, I've also been feeling like I don't have enough room for things that are most important, both in terms of activities and things. It's hard sometimes, especially when everything is both cluttered and untidy, to find room for yoga, or to get my guitar out, or even to have friends over if I haven't cleaned.
In addition, with all of this stuff around, I don't have as much room for the things that are becoming more important, like extra food, cast iron pots, or the grain mill that I want to buy.

So, I've decided that, in terms of my stuff, I want to clean out a bunch of things, and then want to replace some (just some!) of the somewhat frivilous with that which is truly necessary. I've already pulled together one large pile of things - large enough to fill the back of my folk's small SUV this weekend, with seats folded down, when dad was visiting - that has already made its way to the local Goodwill donation centre. In this load, I gave away clothes that just won't ever be worn by me (which came from the thrift store in the first place, so I don't feel so very bad about sending them back), impractical books, dishes that are also too impractical to use (tiny juice classes and baby sugar spoons come to mind), and a whole lot of other things that are just taking up space that could be better used by me and possibly a few things to make my life a bit more sustainable.

Admittedly, with the pile gone things already feel a lot better. A three by five foot pile of boxes and garbage bags in the middle of the floor takes up a lot of space, which didn't really add to my feelings about the state of my living space. But theres a bit more room now, and a few less things out now that there's space to put them away. I managed to clear enough room in my closets that I no longer need a freestanding unit to house all of my sheets, and enough books made their way out the door that the remaining ones all fit on my shelves properly.

I know that I still have a lot left to do - there are more books that should be out the door, as well as kitchen things (exploding pyrex, anyone?), odd and unworn clothing, and goodness knows what lurking in the corners of my apartment. But this feels like a good start. I'm looking forward to spending more time in my home, and in hopefully having people over for pot lucks, hearty dinners, and low-energy activities like board games and cards. And once I have more space, I'm looking forward to figuring out a few carefully researched and well made goods to bring into my home to help me live the life that I want to lead. I have a few ideas here, but I'm thinking that that wish list should be an upcoming post.

What the heck is this all about?

Part Two

So, back to Van Morrison again.

By the way, if you don't know "Dweller on the Threshold," there's a good performance of it here.

So, the other reason the song spoke to me was because it seemed to articulate, in a rather roundabout way, some of my concerns about a wide variety of current issues. As I said in my first post, I'm trying to think about how these issues and changes are going to work within my academic life. But I think the idea of the dweller on the threshold also speaks to peak oil, climate change, food security, and a whole host of other issues in a more general way, and one that's probably relatable to a bunch of people beyond me.

Now, clearly the song doesn't deal specifically with these issues. It's a song, after all, and a bit of an older one, and I'm sure Van likes to sell his records and not depress his fans too much. I am, however, about to go vaguely literature interpretation on you with some of the lyrics, thanks to that BA in English, but I'll try not to get to heavy,

In any case, the song deals with a lot of similar themes - waiting in darkness, moving from darkness into light, having to move through doors, the loss of illusion, and seeing without perceiving. These are all issues I think we're having to face now. Our world is changing rapidly, and we're having to come to a lot of really difficult conclusions about the impact that we're having on a whole host of things we depend on - weather, the environment, oil, water, food, travel, and how we fundamentally live our lives. We're losing the illusions that we've held onto for years and being, in at least some cases, forced through the door and into the light.

In some ways, I feel like we're talking about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" on a grand scale (good grief, I hope this works, since it just came to me now). For those unfamiliar with this work, it's essentially a tale of a number of people chained in a cave, facing the back wall, and lit from behind. All they know of the world is the shadows that are projected on the wall that they face, sinc ethat's all that they can see. But eventually, one of these people is dragged away from the cave, so he can see the actual world, and not just the shadows. And it hurts. The sunlight hurts his eyes (and, if we're talking post-ozone, might even burn his skin). He has a difficult time equating the shadows of the cave with what he can now see of the real world. Everything is new and strange and damn scary.

Again, we've got a dark to light transition, a movement from one way of being to another. And we also have a sense of the pain that maybe, just maybe, comes up in "Dweller" in the ideas of crossing the burning ground, and then of drowning. Now, we too are being hauled out of the cave, en masse. I certainly feel like I've been dragged out, especially with regard to issues around peak oil and food security. For some, I'm sure it's a more difficult transition than others.

But, there can be a happy ending. In Plato's allegory, the person who is dragged away from the cave adjust, and even returns to the cave to try to convince ther others how wonderful non-cave life is. They, of course, do not believe him, since they need to experience it themselves and work through their own fears and deal with the changes themselves. But it is possible to grow used to it.

I think there are a lot of reasons that we've lived so long in what only now seems to be the darkness. It's been comfortable and, until now, has been relatively easy to go along with. In addition, it's been even easier because the powers that be - those who have a vested interest in keeping us working, buying, and living in particular ways that tend to support capitalism - have led us to believe that this is the best way. That's not to say that we're dupes. I think that far too often the tendency is to assume that people are dupes of the system. But, we're talking about a system that's been around for awhile, and one that's so normalized and expected that it's just plain difficult to get away from enough that it can be questioned and confronted on any large scale. But, we're being pulled far enough away now that we can begin to see these things - sadly, it seems to be much easier to question the system when it's difficult to afford fuel, or food, or housing. As a result, we're being forced into a position where not only our ways of life our changing, but our assumptions and illusions about them are as well. And so, we're all, in a sense, dwellers on a threshold, whether we know it or not yet, and we need to figure out how this transition is going to work for us.

This turned out a bit more general than I wanted it too. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm the only one who feels like Van's dweller on the threshold, or the guy hauled out of Plato's cave into the glimmering and shiny world. But I suspect a lot of us feel like this. That a lot of us are making this transition and trying to manage the pain and shock and confusion of moving past the dark and into this new light. I know it's not always a picnic over here, and so I'm going to write about it. Yeah, I want to think about integrating my domestic life a little better with my academic life, but I also think these issues and means of dealing with them are worth thinking about on their own.

What the heck is this all about?

Part One

Really, this is a question that I get a lot, although especially from my family and boyfriend. I suspect the only question I get more is, "what the heck are you wearing?", but that usually comes from my dad. It's almost a running joke. Almost.

In terms of background, I live in a fairly small city in Canada, on my own, in an apartment full of books and other assorted things (yeah, shoes too, I admit it). I'm a doctoral candidate finishing my third year and working on my dissertation. My research isn't really important here - suffice it to say that it's markedly removed from...well...most of the stuff that I'm hoping to work on and work through here.

So, then, what am I doing here? And what's with the title?

Well, the title is borrowed from a Van Morrison song, and I've posted the lyrics here. I started listening to it a lot recently, and thought it would make a great blog name, but it also seemed like it worked well with some of the things I was trying to puzzle through in terms of my life-at-large (as opposed to my life-as-academia.)

I sometimes feel like a dweller on the threshold, although I'm not always sure of what that threshold is. I do academic research, but the ivory tower is, in many ways, so far removed from other elements of my life, especially given my specific focus. So, I exist somewhere between these two worlds, one where I do academic research on fairly technological subject matter, and the other where I have a baby garden on my patio, knit socks for myself, cook vegetarian food, and concern myself more and more with environmental and food security issues.

To a degree, I've supressed this latter part of my life. Academic takes up so much of my time, and tends to come first. But more and more I feel like my interests here (fromerly dealt with only in the summer and those odd moments when I don't have things immediately due) need to be addressed in some way. They certainly won't take over from my academic life, but I think they need some more inclusion, because right now they're so very separate.

Of course, this isn't to say that these two things have to be mutually exclusive. It's just that I feel the divide very acutely at some times, and I'm not always sure how to reconcile it. Some of these concerns are making their way into my academic life a bit more as time progresses, but the divide is still there. I don't even think that I can work it out through here necessarily, but I at least want to give voice to these things and give them a bit more actual rather than just theoretical space in my life.

So, although I'm not as metaphorical as good old Van, I guess I feel like a dweller on the threshold of something new in my own life, or at least of something that's an increasingly source of concern and focus. And I hope, at least in some small way, to figure out what this is that I'm dealing with, and how I can better integrate it at least into my world, if not into my work.