Some thoughts on Changing Lifestyles

I bought this book new in 1991, read it a couple of times then lent it out to anyone who was interested. Somewhere along the line it didn’t come back and I added it on to my list to re-buy when I saw it (along with Shockwave Rider, The Dispossessed and Ender’s Game). When Amazon came along I looked for it on there. I don’t know when it had gone out of print but it wasn’t even mentioned and for a long time it wasn’t in the secondhand section either. And then, joy! Not only was it available but there were a number of copies.

It arrived a week or so ago when I was reading Sandi Toksvig’s ‘Valentine Grey’. Given the need to scramble to get work completed I was losing the plot of VG repeatedly and so I put it aside to read over Christmas and picked up Changing Lifestyles, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t grip me in quite the same way. It turns out to be an excellent book to read whilst struggling with a heavy workload. The chapters are short, the language is simple and the ideas are not new, but I found a piquant pleasure in reading his exhortations to the extent that I had to ration myself to just a chapter before bed.

For many years I have enjoyed the writings of those who have recently been redefined as grumpy old men/women. Lawrence D Hills and John Seymour typify the category. They were not grumpy so much as opinionated. Lawrence Hills, founder of the Henry Doubleday Research Association (now Garden Organic), seems to have all but disappeared from popular culture but John Seymour’s Self Sufficiency seems still to be around and has stopped him falling into total obscurity.

I’ve been giving some thought as to why the highly opinionated (environmental) writer appeals to me. I think it’s because, although I believe in the urgent need to change our actions, and though my work involves raising awareness of environmental issues for businesses, I am not evangelical. It’s just so lovely to read someone who says it plainly and obviously lives his ideals. And so, John Seymour.

I first recall coming across Seymour in my teens. My father, a reluctant gardener but great dreamer, had a copy of ‘The Self Sufficient Gardner’, I think from his book club. I have no idea whether he chose it in a moment of enthusiasm or whether it turned up because he didn’t cancel it. I think he passed it on to my uncle, a man interested in gardening for food production rather than simply avoiding censure. Before it disappeared I spent some time reading it, loving its downright instructions and beautiful illustrations although I felt no call to put its advice into practice at that time.

I was a teen in the 70s, a time of flared jeans, cheesecloth shirts and a dawning awareness of potential limits. Limits to Growth was published in 1972. There had been electricity blackouts during the 1972 miners’ strike and again in 1974. The oil price shock of 1973 meant that the school cruise I went on didn’t go to Dubrovnik because the cruising speed was lowered to save fuel. A further oil shock happened in 1979. None of these issues were caused by real shortages but we became aware, for the first time in the post-war UK, that our modern systems were not invulnerable. Then, of course, there was the Good Life and Jimmy Carter’s ‘cardigan’ speech. At my first election I voted Ecology Party. In other words, I was environmentally aware and not averse to the whole idea of living more lightly.

Changing Lifestyles was published in 1991, when my son was just walking and I was expecting my daughter. It didn't change my life. I was already the breastfeeding mother with my babies in terry nappies, cooking wholefoods and heading towards educating otherwise. It wasn’t life changing but it was lifestyle affirming. He wrote about energy, transport, work and homes, rubbish and recycling, the land, farming and food. Twenty years on and there is nothing that he was saying that couldn’t be said right now, although he thought that by 2012 we would be safely post-petroleum. 

Reading it now it is really difficult to find something surprising to say about it. We should turn down the thermostat, we should drive less, we should find meaningful work that supports our communities, we should grow much of our own food and buy what we can’t grow locally, we should eschew processed ‘dead’ food, we should step back from the precipice and save ourselves. There have been twenty years worth of books saying the same thing since Changing Lifestyles, although a great deal of what we come across these days is so based on emotional manipulation that it wearies me to even begin to read it, and much is a call to action for everyone else, whilst making no effort to reduce the author’s own impact. Al Gore is the quintessential example. This book was written by a man living his beliefs and, as he notes,  ‘this book is about quality of life.‘  

I determined some time ago thatI wasn’t very happy with my own quality of life. I needed some sort of meaning. God does not really provide that for me. Shopping doesn’t do it either. John Seymour’s vision of a life lived to the full, a life of hard but meaningful work, of food made with natural, local ingredients, of making a difference, speaks to me in a way that so much of the modern lifestyle and the recent calls to action do not. 

At the end of his book Seymour looked at where we were and what options were open to us. He delineated a continuous growth scenario, a palliative scenario and a radical change scenario. He concluded that the only possible choice was radical change. I would suggest that, since 1991 we have attempted to paper over the cracks of continuous growth with a little bit of palliative action. I’m no different. Maybe a bit more palliative than continuous growth but not by much. And not anywhere near radical change. 

We are still discussing what, if anything, we should do to pull back from the brink of disaster, as the edge crumbles under our feet. As Seymour says, ‘in the end each one of us has got to take responsibility for what we do, and what we don’t do. There is only one person in the universe over whose actions I have complete control and that is myself.’ And yet. I am so weak. I know what I could do and I don’t, because I’m trying desperately to pass for normal. I think perhaps I should spend some time returning to this book where the issues are clear, and remind myself that I have control over my own actions. 

Disappointment pending...

2012. I’m living in the future and it’s not at all what I had hoped for. Despite the lack of rocket pants, however, and the fairly constant low level anxiety, I remain relatively content. 

We’ve had a lovely holiday. Christmas was a family day (without my kids but with Mum, my sister Sue, Robin and Callum and, of course, Ian & the Queen). On the 29th we drove up to Scotland for Ian’s niece, Kirsty’s, wedding. This was jolly fun although I wasn’t convinced by the symbolism. They each lit a candle and once the words had been said, together lit a big central candle. How lovely! And then they, together, snuffed their individual candles. I’m beginning to think I’m spending far too much time worrying about symbolism. At a talk some time ago I suggested that the speaker stopped ‘arming’ their audience with information and began sharing information. These ideas do not endear me. I should shut up. 

Fran, John, Laura & Lady Godiva

New year’s eve was with Julia and Doug and a host of lovely fans. To describe it as a feast rather undersells the whole thing. The food was amazing (who would have thought that beetroot mousse would be so yummy) and the presentation was fabulous, both the food and the lovely handpainted 'tapestries' courtesy of Julia and Sally. The only problem now is that of finding anyone brave enough to try to host next year’s celebration. We can comfortably seat eight but there is no way I could find the money, time and kitchen space to produce such a banquet. Wow! Sheffield fandom will be subsisting on the leftovers for some time to come. Of course there will be a follow-on extravaganza in May when the wedding of the century takes place in the Daly-Spencer household.

Over the holidays I spent two mornings on the allotment disinterring large quantities of junk, watched three TV progs (the Big Fat Quiz of the Year (tick good), Dr Who (tick vg) and Sherlock Holmes (tick excellent)) and listened to a number of radio programmes. I failed to finish a book (any book) and bemoaned the dearth of blogs and cartoons although  I did spend an inordinate amount of time reading postings on ‘Do the Math’. More on this sometime soon. I ate too much of too rich food and drank far too much. And all the time that vague low level anxiety hovered. Maybe more on this sometime soonish too.

So, it is the evening of new year’s day. Despite my best intentions I did not clear and clean the house - we entertained instead. I did, however, put my resolutions into play. I didn’t, despite the temptations still hanging round the house, ingest any refined sugar and I only had a share of one bottle of really quite splendid Amarone whilst eating my frugal dinner. There have been rather more photos taken of me than usual, given the additional festivities, and it was difficult to ignore the somewhat ample girth displayed. So, sigh, the following resolutions:

I will not drink alcohol on my own and I’ll limit myself to a share of one bottle of wine

I will not eat or drink refined sugar (goodbye hot chocolate with cointreau)

I will live within my means (because I so haven’t this month)

Yeah, I know. Every new year I intend to do the same old things. Get thin, get rich, get organised. I’m still ample, poorish and messy. It’s a tradition. I’ll see if I can get to February before I give up this year.

  

What is 'Anyway'?

You may, or may not, recall that some time ago, inspired by Sharon Astyk’s Anyway challenge I had decided to tackle my own life. You may wonder if I’ve achieved anything. Hm. More on that later. Perhaps when I’ve achieved something.

But let’s take a step back. Let’s begin with 'The Theory of Anyway’. This is Pat Meadow’s theory, popularised by Sharon and it makes absolute sense to me. Many of the things I do cause my friends and colleagues to wonder. Why take public transport, for example, when I could get where I am going more easily (sometimes) by driving? My often-incoherent answer is made up of various points that come down to, ‘I think it’s the right thing to do.’ The component thoughts that lead to this conclusion for this particular choice are these.

If I need to travel I should pick the option that emits the lowest amount of carbon dioxide. Climate change is cumulative and my decision will not, on its own, make a noticeable difference but it contributes to the problem and it’s the right thing to do anyway.

Similarly for transport congestion. Going anywhere by road in Sheffield is unpleasant because of the huge numbers of, mostly singly occupied, cars on the road. The car advert where a couple of gorgeous young people speed thrillingly along empty roads through glorious countryside is a dream. The reality is lines of little boxes on wheels, some shaking with heavy bass, containing grumpy unhealthy people, inching forward enshrouded in a miasma of their own exhaust fumes. Again, this is cumulative. One car on the road could get anywhere in the city in minutes. When everyone tries to do it unpunctuality ensues. Getting out of that collective misery takes away only my small contribution to gridlock but it’s the right thing to do and I do it anyway.

Then there is effective use of resource. I am struck by this when I look at the clutter of close-parked cars occupying all conceivable curb-side positions, and some frankly inconceivable ones, around where I live. During the day the street doesn’t clear, although there are fewer cars. The value in terms of money, embodied energy and resource tied up in these machines is vast. I know. I sold my car to pay for a kitchen. It’s not just the capital cost either. It’s the ongoing cost of tax, fuel, insurance and maintenance. If we owned our means of transport collectively think of the money and space that could be freed up. The road I live on is a tetris of steel, plastic & glass; without cars it is spacious, quiet, safe – a place for kids to play and adults to sit around chatting. Once a year when we close it for the street party. I can’t do anything about my neighbours’ choices but I can choose not to own a car myself. It’s the right thing to do; I should do it anyway.

The last two things are clear positives for me. One is exercise. For some years I used to drive to the gym, work out on the treadmills and steppers and bikes whilst watching MTV and then drive home again. ‘Like the doped white mice in the college lab.’ Being inherently lazy and having a certain amount of sense I have always struggled to exercise with the only aim being getting fit. My radical idea is to combine travel and exercise. Instead of walking to nowhere on an exercise machine I can walk outside, see the seasons change and arrive somewhere new, if only at work. Walking or cycling to my (fairly local) destination is the right thing to do for my health and wellbeing.

And finally, the time issue. I can get somewhere faster by driving, all being well and assuming no one has had an accident anywhere on my route. (I occasionally listen to Sally Traffic on a Friday afternoon just to remember how horrid driving can be.)

I’m not saying there are no delays on trains. Obviously not. But during the delays you can still get to the toilet, get a cup of tea, catch up with your mail etc. And if the delay is longer than an hour you can get a refund of the fare. But that is only one aspect of the time issue. In terms of actual time spent in travel, public transport requires more, but what you can do with that time, the quality of the travel time, is better on a train. You can read, write, work, knit, sleep, chat to your fellow travellers (or hide in the private aural world of your iPod), eat your lunch, drink a bottle of wine or just gaze out of the window. I am prepared to ‘spend’ a little extra time on public transport in order to enjoy the time I spend travelling. For me it is the right thing to do.

You can see that I am little short of perfect. Except last week Julia dropped me off at college and Doug gave me a lift home from Julia’s after a particularly fun evening at her house. This weekend I made Ian take me to a garden centre to buy two pots and two bags of ericaceous compost for planting blueberry bushes into. The first two trips were pure lazy indulgence, the last could not have been done without a car. What I am hoping to achieve is a minimisation of indulgence trips.

There are many other choices that I apply ‘Anyway’ to. Generally, like the issue of transport choices, they are built on a number of reasons. Why eat seasonally and locally? Why cook from scratch? Why eat at non-chain restaurants and cafes? Why make my own clothes? Why grow my own food? Why work for a small environmental consultancy? Why have a store of food in the house? Why be polite to people? Why try to form my own picture of what is true and important? Some of the reasons are based on a perception of environmental limits, on a sense of fairness, and some are just because I enjoy my choice but all come under the heading of ‘It’s the Right Thing To Do’, and that I should do it Anyway.

Budgeting blues

Balancing my budget is a major part of my Anyway Project, an attempt to live a more sustainable, more meaningful life. It’s certainly not the most exciting part of the project but it’s essential as an enabling requirement. Without finding a way to live on less money some of my other aspirations cannot be considered. Having a comfortable home and a productive garden both require some input of money but more importantly they require me to have more time. Until recently I have been very short of time; work absorbed an inordinately large amount of time and energy. Now, however, I have an extra day a week for doing non-work stuff.

When times were especially hard at work, eighteen months or so ago, I (and the rest of the staff) was paid as if I were working a four day week. It kept the company viable. Some time ago we finally made it back to full salary and I found that I had plenty of money left at the end of the month. I talked to my boss and we agreed that I could go back to being paid for four days and actually only work four days. What a fab idea! So that’s what I’m doing and I’m loving the extra day each week.

One of the things I’m using my extra time for is to travel up to Ian’s once a month. Travelling off peak means I can go by train for around a third of full price. Ian reckons a round trip to see me costs around £120 with recent petrol prices. At around £30 for me there and back by train it not only saves him a lot of money, it saves a substantial amount of carbon. The extra time also means I can see more of my sister, Sue, whose work pattern means she has some Fridays and Mondays free too. And I’ve got time to do housework, cook and garden. It’s all good!

The only slight problem is the budgeting. Over the last two months I’ve been pretty slack about keeping my spending under control. In January I spent 25% more than I had budgeted for. Oops! It’s not the end of the world though, I was paid at my full time rate at the end of December so there was some slack available. There won’t be next month.

The budgeting method I use is from Zen Habits. It’s terribly simple and based on my income.  I split my income up as follows; 60% for living expenses. This includes utilities, food, clothes, contributions to kids university expenses, insurance, charitable donations etc. As much as possible of this is paid out automatically on monthly standing orders or direct debits. When I first took my pay cut I went through all my direct payments. I took out about a third of my charitable donations, mostly those that had been ‘sold’ to me by charming people, and retained the most important ones. Practical Action and Womankind are among the charities I kept on. I got rid of my contact lenses, cut my insurance payments down, got a water meter slashing my water bills by two thirds and turned my thermostat even further down. I also started buying my bulk food from Lembas, saving a substantial amount of money on Waitrose prices.

So, 60% for living expenses, 10% for short term savings, 10% for long term savings, 10% towards a pension and 10% for fun stuff. That last means that I don’t have to feel guilt for going to the pictures, eating out or buying a couple of bottles of wine. The short-term savings are supposed to be used. They are the way of dealing with the large payments that are scattered through the year including Christmas, birthdays, household maintenance costs and large purchases. Currently I am taking out more from my short-term savings than I am putting in. This is, of course, unsustainable. It should come to an end when my short-term savings reserves are exhausted or, preferably, before.

My long-term savings and some of the 10% for pension goes into my ISA, which is paying a paltry amount of interest right now. I am not contributing to a regular pension at the moment and haven’t been since taking the initial pay cut. I’m not sure quite what to do about this. I suspect that by the time I am able to retire there won’t be a pension scheme paying out anything I could live on no matter how much I paid in now. This is something to think about. In the meantime the money is as safe in a building society as anywhere.

If this system is used in its simplest form my salary goes into my current account, all regular payments are made automatically, including those into savings accounts and I should withdraw my fun money and living expenses money, and keep them in separate envelopes. I should never use my debit card and I should stop spending when I get to the end of the cash. This is a very effective way to cut down on spending. Actually handing over notes and coins and seeing the dwindling amount keeps you focussed. I think that is what I will do next month, keeping a small amount in the bank to pay for train tickets and maybe one book a month from Amazon.

What I have done up to now is track what I have spent in a tiny multicoloured excel spreadsheet, a new one for each month. The most technical this gets is a little box that tells me what I have left which is fine as long as I look at that box before spending. Which, of course, I don’t usually. I did a quick breakdown on what I have spent my discretionary money (fun & non-automatic living expenses). I found it a really useful exercise. Remember that I overspent by 25% for January.  This is how the total spend broke down:

18% eating out fun

18% required travel

16% clothes (in the sales)

12% garden

11% food

9%  household (a new sheet, towels etc in the sales)

7% wood for my little stove

2% entertainment (tickets for Sally & me to see George Monbiot debate)

2% books

2% discretionary travel (buses in Sheffield where I could walk)

2% discretionary food (food I buy when travelling due to lack of organisation)

1% health (one prescription & hand cleaner for travel)

OK, January is when I do my bulk garden order and that could have come out of short-term savings but there’s already some wool (from the sales), train fares to get Sally to university interviews and Sally’s hotel at Eastercon (£216!!!) in there. And I spent lots more on clothes and household stuff because in the sales you can get twice as much for the same money. Also, the wood purchase, whilst not a one-off will not be a regular – the stove is very much a back-up and very occasional cosy evenings extravagance. Books are down to almost nothing due to joining the library.

What is quite interesting (to me) is that Eating Out Fun and Required Travel (train tickets) are by far the biggest portion of the money I spend. The other rather scary thing is that I pay somewhat less than half of the spend for Ian and my joint meals out. To some extent the eating out is because he and I have such different preferences. He’d rather eat meat and a salad and I’d rather eat vegetarian with a preference to starch. If necessary I’m sure we could come up with another way of dealing with this at home.

And that is the comforting conclusion I draw from this analysis. I could live comfortably on even less money if the need arose. It would require more thought and organisation but it would be quite possible. If the economy continues downward I could still work a four-day week and get paid for three, but only just. And below a certain level of income comfort just disappears.  

Reflections on books

When I read a good book it consumes my attention for as long as it takes to finish it. If I have to put it down in order to, say, interact with my beloved I resent it, feel guilty for resenting it then forget both emotions immediately as I dive back into the action. Meals degenerate into something that can be made in a couple of minutes and eaten without attention. Sandwiches are a mainstay of my diet when reading.  Given that I quite like my relationship with Ian and I really would like to have friends other than Miles Vorkosigan, Shevek, Tycho Potter, Susan Pevensey, Felix Castor, Sam Starfall et al, I don't read nearly as much fiction as I used to. There have been times, far distant now, where I would read all through the night to finish a book and zombie through my work the next day. I can't afford to do that either. 


Another feature of my reading style is that I have no memory at all. Oh, some books I have read so many times that I remember them wholesale but I do my best to avoid that happening. I love being able to re-read a book and only encounter a faint feeling of familiarity. It means I don't have to buy so many books though sometimes I read something not worth a second read because I've forgotten the mediocrity of it. I should really have re-homed some of my books.


Of course my memory problem has a positive side. I can't hold a decent grudge because I don't retain the vehemence of my emotions, and sometimes even forget the cause. I can occasionally find notes around the place, often used as bookmarks, reminding me of important things. These are seldom effective but luckily some things stick from being thought so many times. I can remember, 'Don't trust Tony Blair' and 'I really shouldn't have had the second bottle of wine'. Over the last dozen years, as I've mentioned before, my backup has been rereading my old fanzines. Given that I've now got a big hard-drive and Time Machine makes backing up easy I thought I might try to keep some sort of log of what I've read and whether it might be worth a second reading in the future. I'd backdate it but, other than 'I Shall Wear Midnight', 'The Downhill Crocodile Whizz' and the five Liadan books I read over the Christmas break I can't really remember so I'll start my list with 'Moonfall' by Stephen Baxter.


I shall also attempt to put the books that I don't love in the 'Ready for Fostering' box.

Finding a balance

Over a year ago now I took a two-week permaculture design course. It was fascinating, traumatising (who knew I had so many issues around the word ‘home’?) and, I thought at the time, life changing. And then I came home and fell immediately into default mode. Sigh…


I have a few issues with permaculture, and with Transition that grew out of it. It’s nothing to do with the ideas, which I think are useful and fundamentally sound. It is the monetising of it and the branding. Some of this may also be because I am not a belonger. In my life I have been involved in a lot of organisations, in some cases giving a lot of my time and energy to them, but I’ve never felt any real sense of belonging and the associated obligation that comes with belonging. The closest I come to it, outside of my family, is to fandom but, for me, fandom is Not a way of life. I regard it with wonder sometimes, amazed at the generosity of its component parts, the occasional infighting, the passion and the energy (in some cases) but perhaps because it feels like a huge extended family, I can take or leave the obligations. Recently I have thought that maybe I’ve wandered too far away from fandom because of the huge amount of time and energy work is consuming. Time to reconsider.


So, yes. Where was I? Changing my life. I have continued to do stuff but it’s not to a plan, to a design, and as a consequence, it tends to drift into triviality and pointlessness. Given that I spend most of my time in systems management I am a big fan of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle but, despite my best intentions, I’ve never even got to the ‘plan’ stage. I’m not even sure that I’m having much of a positive effect at all due to my lack of organisation (how can I save the world if I can’t define what that would mean (or find my keys))? I’ve got a list of objectives. I’ve had them for two years. I’ve made no progress.


So, with a small amount of enthusiasm, I am looking at being part of Sharon Astyk’s Whole Life Redesign Project! Sharon identified seven areas she aspired to change. There are clear matches with my long ignored objectives.


Sharon’s suggestion - Domestic Economy
‘This is the territory of home life. Here's where we start thinking about what we want our home life to actually be like. For me, the critical requirements are less cluttered, less disorganized, a home that functions better in relationship to what I actually do and intend to do at home. I'd like to set up the house in order to be able to bring people here for some of my teaching projects, and also to use some of the space for farm projects.’


My version of this was ‘Comfortable Home’. Well, if I’m going to be totally honest it was ‘Home for Gracious Living’ but anyone who has been to my mildly squalid terrace house in Sheffield will know that it is unlikely that I could actually aspire to gracious living there. I’m a lazy housekeeper and I’ve not got huge quantities of cash available to transform it. I could, however, work towards the less lofty objective of a comfortable home.
As Sharon notes, clutter and disorganization make for both a less comfortable and a less thrifty home. I occasionally buy things knowing that, somewhere in the house, there is a perfectly adequate resource of the type I’m looking for, I just can’t put my hand on it. I’ve been in my house since June 2007. I still haven’t unpacked my last boxes. Part of the problem is that I accumulated a lot of stuff in the large marital home. I’ve moved to a much more modest house but not divested myself of all the trash I’d accumulated.
I mentioned this to Claire Brialey some time ago and said I was going to get rid of some books. She looked at me aghast. Once started on that road where would one stop? The Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare? And yet I have many books that I will never read again and would not recommend to anyone else. Why keep them? Ah yes, but the last time I got rid of a dreadful book, The Tides of Lust by Samuel R Delany I found a couple of months later that I wanted to quote from it in order to demonstrate how awful it was – beautifully written but really rather nasty. Similarly, Vivia by Tanith Lee. Tides was replaced – a friend sent me a copy. Vivia never left. I think perhaps what I should do is get rid of the mediocre books and keep the well-written trash. And yet, and yet…
I am truly a packrat in the traditional fannish way but I could really do with simplifying. I’m thinking of starting to actually use the library again rather than keep so many books. It also helps keep books in libraries relevant.
I made a start last weekend when Ian was in Washington. I assembled some more bookcases and got most of my books finally out of boxes. Once they’re all out I’ll start winnowing. James Bacon and John Dowd have a fostering service set up to place unloved books. I may well make use of it. This is a very big project but one that I would like to start on.


Sharon’s suggestion - Household Economy
‘This is the territory of making ends meet and meeting financial goals. My goals here are to up the portion of our personal economy that comes from barter and personal exchanges, to drop our expenses by 20% and transfer the money to savings and to infrastructure like insulation that will cut expenses in the longer term. I want to have a plan for dealing with money and benefits cuts that we expect on Eric's end.’


Strangely I didn’t have anything like this in my objectives despite the fact that this is one of the areas I have been working on quite hard in the last couple of years. It makes sense to add it in and I’ve called it ‘Economic Viability’.
Attaining economic viability has been a long hard struggle. I took ten years out with my children and when I finally went back to work it was for the same salary I had started on as a graduate many years before. It took a lot of hard work, hard nosed pushing and a master’s degree to get me back into the salary level that I could survive as a single parent again. When David and I separated and I moved to Sheffield I was quite comfortably off as long as I cut out all the luxuries I’d used to enjoy. I cut. Things were fine.
Then the Crash and the struggle. In order to keep the company viable we all took a 20% pay cut. I cut out half of my charity donations, I stopped using contact lenses, I stopped impulse buying, I stopped buying lunches, and I started using Zen Budgeting. This turned out to work very well, to the extent that I found I could live quite comfortably within these limits. Given that I have enough money but hardly any time I have decided, now I’m back to full pay, to work a four-day week. Should everything go horribly wrong again I would be hard pushed to live on a 40% cut though. That’d mean getting rid of the TV, Demon, the rest of my charities etc. This is definitely an area that I need to monitor.
(I should also mention, in this section, that we benefit from the Ian subsidy – for which I am very grateful, and which means I drink much nicer wine more often than I would otherwise.)


Sharon’s suggestion - Resource Consumption
‘This is the territory of what we use. Our lives are enhanced when we use less, and so are the lives of others and our environment - it is as simple as that. We've seen some creep in our energy usage, and we need to get it back down. Right now our family of six is using less than 1/5 the US average (and most of those are based on household numbers with the average US household being 2.6), but I want to get back closer to 1/10th which, while not a fair share, is a lot closer. We need to get back in the habit of accurate bookkeeping on our energy usage as well.’


My version of this was called ‘Living Lightly’ and I’ve been very poor at achieving anything. Last year I started on the Riot for Austerity but didn’t get very far with it. I found trying to convert everything a pain and I never took the time to set up a proper spreadsheet. This year I joined Sheffield’s CRAG, the Carbon Action Rationing Group. I have found this simply fascinating. As my friends would attest, I keep my house on the chilly side, use public transport all the time (except when I go somewhere in Ian’s car) and don’t fly and yet my carbon production to date this year is 1293kg. The UK per capita average is 4500kg so you’d think I was doing quite well but this was set up by financial year and there has only been temperate months so far. Also it doesn’t include carbon impacts generated by my business travel. Admittedly my house is old and draughty but there must be lots of people out there who never have the heating on and go nowhere in order to generate an average of 4500kg. Another one to make more effort over. I’m replacing my old leaky front door and hope that will help. I’ve got plans to insulate the floor. We’ll see.


Sharon’s suggestion - Farm and Subsistence
‘This category may be more relevant to us than some people, but everyone does some subsistence work. For us, we want the farm to be the center of our lives, and to integrate ourselves more into the farm - that is, we want as much as possible my work and our lives and the farm to be one thing. For a long time we've used Eric's work to subsidize the farm, but now it needs to be self-supporting, and that's part of that equation, while we also expose what we're doing in low input agriculture to other people. We'd also like to up the degree to which our subsistence activities teach and help others. Most of all, I want to do a full evaluation of all our projects, both so that others can begin to understand them, and also to make sure that we are doing everything we do as well as possible.’


This doesn’t have a real equivalent for me. I have no farm and no real interest in having one. I could make this ‘Productive Garden’ and try to do a better job of dealing with the slugs. This has been my intention anyway, and may be a good use of my extra day a week.


Sharon’s suggestion - Family and Community
‘This is a big one for us - the reason we considered moving earlier this year was the desire for a closer knit community - we had that but have seen some changes over the years. But the reality is that we've been allowing those changes to frustrate us, but haven't necessarily worked as hard as we could to compensate. So our goal is to spend more time working on our community building, and bringing our far-flung communities and our local ones into a state of connection. It is sometimes hard to be so far from our family, from close friends, but if we can build better on what's near us, we can reach out through a chain of links, rather than across a wide distance.’


This is a worry for me and I had it down, rather ridiculously, as ‘Maintaining Joyful Relationships’. I’m rubbish at this. Over the years I have lost contact with many lovely friends because I don’t find time to keep in touch. The exception to this is Sally, who I live with, my lovely colleagues at work and Ian. Luckily I have some great friends who I can pick up with easily. Again, I’m hoping that my extra day will give me some time to catch up with friends.
On the same subject, many of the important people in my life refuse to live next door to me or even in the same town. I am very disappointed in them! Jack is in Oxford, my family is in Leeds and Ian is in Motherwell, at least a four-hour train journey away. I worry about how the slow erosion of wealth and energy I expect will impact on these long distance relationships. I have no answer to this predicament but think that this is also an objective that I should concentrate on.


Sharon’s suggestion - Outside Work
‘If my children were hungry, I would and could do any work necessary - there is no doubt about that. But while my family lives on comparatively little money (we qualify for food stamps in our state, although we don't use them), we also have enjoyed the fact that we have the luxury of choosing our work. In many ways, we've had an enormous luxury - my writing and teaching and farming didn't have to pay much, because Eric was subsidizing them. Now my work may have to support us, but I still want, to the extent that's possible, to make what I do the right thing to do. I am enormously fortunate, in that I can earn money doing what I care about, and that I have had the luxury of giving things - my writing, my farm products, etc... away for free. Indeed, often the return of giving things away has been greater than those I use for money - but I don't live entirely outside the cash economy, unfortunately. So I need to balance my work - find the ways to make some money doing what I care about, while reducing expenses, so that I have the luxury of keeping giving things away.’


This one I called ‘Meaningful Work’. I’m very happy that I have work that is environmentally based and makes something of a difference. I say ‘something’ because I am working with the business community and some things are not up for discussion. I spend a lot of time talking about sustainability but what the government and business mean by sustainability is predicated on an economics based on growth, a concept that is not in any way consistent with sustainability. Still, it’s more meaningful than stacking supermarket shelves and better paid. My objective is, I suppose, to support businesses in moving towards sustainability, even if it is a watered down version.


Sharon’s suggestion - Time and Happiness


‘In the end, these balance sheets have to be even for me to begin to go forward. The good thing about this is that I know how easy it is to even up this part of the equation. My husband and children and the farm and gardens, friends and family give me a deep, inner core of happiness. Whether we stay or go, whatever changes we make, whatever we do without or give up, if I have some simple things - a little dirt (and I don't have to own it) and the loves of my lives in place, I am not afraid of the future, and I am happy. The thing that buys me the most happiness is time - but it doesn't have to be free time. Indeed, the thing that gives me the most comfort in the world is knowing that Eric and I can spend an entire day working in arm's reach of one another, with the boys helping and playing around our work, and know that at the end of the day, all of us, exhausted, will have found the time well spent. Finding time and finding happiness, are not, for us, a matter of more vacation time or things we want to try - they are simply the by products of trying to bring the pieces of our lives together.’


This is a part of what I have included under ‘Healthy Lifestyle’. I find getting a balance in time use very difficult. I’m not a fast worker and I have a personal requirement to produce work that satisfies my own standards, especially when I am training. It’s self-defense really. I don’t want to be embarrassed by not doing a good job. The problem is that this eats into my own time. That and the fact that wherever possible I travel by public transport for work. It gives me more productive time (I can work rather than just drive) but it takes longer and extends my working day. I’m tired all the time. My feet hurt, I’m overweight, I’m unfit and I haven’t the time to do anything more than try to catch up on my sleep and cook proper meals from scratch. Even that I’m not doing very well. Julia Daly has cooked a couple of splendid meals for us recently, the leftovers from which have been the basis of our meals for the rest of the week.


So, a whole host of things to think about, objectives in place and targets to set. I’ll let you know how it goes.