Looking Back

Have you ever taken the time to look back on your life, just to appreciate the road that brought you to the current point in your life?  I've been doing a lot of that.  Some of it is to prevent making the same mistakes I've made in the past.  Some of it is to truly appreciate the good moments in it all.  Right now it's more in wondering how things could have been different.

For the past year I've really been working on creating a new reality in my life.  In some places that's been harder than others.  I've been trying to do little things to make a difference in the world, but some times it's not so easy.  I've lived in places with no recycling.  I've lived in places where I can't compost or line dry.  Because of this, I've had a lot of challenges when it comes to living in a more sustainable way.

It wasn't until yesterday that I really stopped to think just how off track I've gotten.  I was starting to make progress, one little step at a time.  It may not have been much, but every little bit counts, right?  I'd been making a difference in the world around me.  In some places I've lived, one step was the easiest, so I focused on that.  In other places, it was another step entirely.

Now that I'm starting to find myself on footing that I hope has become stable, I really want to try to bring all of those elements together.  At my last house, sustainability wasn't so easy to focus on, but homeschooling really took off for a while.  In the house before that, homeschooling was a challenge, but we were able to start composting and were finding other ways to be a little more sustainable.  Before that it was all focus on saving electricity in any way possible and conserving water.  I need to start bringing elements of all of those together so that I can move on to a more sustainable, happy home.

I know I can't focus on it all at once.  I need to take little steps at a time.  There's already one easy step with the ease of recycling here.  That's always a bonus.  Homeschooling should be pretty easy to swing back into, as soon as we have a place clear to work on for projects, arts and crafts, and workbooks.  I need to get back into actually knitting, rather than bumming around on the computer and doing other things when I've got a little bit of free time.  I've got plenty of yarn to make socks with, that I intended to make for the whole family, a shawl to make, and some longies for the baby.  I need to get them done so I'm one more step removed from regular consumerism.  Saving electricity is so much easier in a house with such ample natural lighting, and such a beautiful set-up to spend the afternoon sitting outside while the children play in the yard.  I'm trying to limit how many showers I take, and for how long.  More often than not I just need a quick rinse of my body.  Perhaps we can even start composting for a sustainable garden or something of the like.  It shouldn't be too difficult here.

Looking back I feel like I've really let my life get off track.  I keep doing this dance with sustainable living, and have since I was nineteen.  Every time I take a step closer it seems I just want to drift away again.  It's frustrating to look back and see all the lost opportunities in my life.  It's even more frustrating to see all the times I've blamed someone else for making it too challenging for me, instead of embracing the challenge and using that as an opportunity to try harder.

There's a lesson to be learned in all of this.  I can accept all the guidance and helpful suggestions under the sun, but that's not going to give me the answers on what I need to do.  Friends and family can all try to help.  I can receive messages from the divine about what paths are open to me, but in the end, I have to decide what path I'm going to take.  More importantly, when I decide what I want to do, I need to commit to it fully, no matter what the challenges, and start making permanent changes in my life.