Back to the blog tinkering. Trying to create a bridge between what I wrote about in my first few years of blogging – and what I’m writing about now. Cue a certain amount of moving posts around, and developing new categories: including an eco one.
I’d been thinking about an eco theme for a while before I started writing in February. Reading new blogs, coming across new ideas, enjoying some of that reflectiveness that can come at the end of an old year. Â Add in a dash of what’s in the news, what friends are interested in – or grappling with – and a theme emerges.
Where it became interesting (for me, anyway) was going back to the older posts I’d written. As I’ve written on a particular theme for a month, I wanted to see whether some of the older posts could be viewed in that same light.
It’s no surprise to anyone who’s been reading more than a few of my posts that food keeps coming up as a theme. Â Reading about it, cooking it, thinking about it – no lack of things to write about. It was a category before – so it was easy to continue writing in that vein.
But had the environment been such an abiding interest over time? I wasn’t sure. Part of the reason for making my theme – a conversation with my teenage inner environmentalist – was a suspicion that I used to be keener. Â More concerned.
In part, yes. Add in a bit more money, a lot more busy, and it’s easy for the environment to be just another topic on the to do list – and one that can slip off when day to day stuff crowds in.
And in other ways…I discovered that at least some of it had been there all along. A fervent commitment to picking brambles (the subject of several blog posts) – about food, yes, but also about the environment. (As well as about childhood memories.)
Similarly, the food-swapping party – again about food, but also about the environment. Finding out how to keep food; developing community, pooling resources – and having an excuse to eat cake in the process. (I’d love to do it again, too.)
Sometimes, it was a time of year that brought a particular musing. Winter brings soup – and soup becomes all about using what’s in season, using things up. (It works quite well too alongside notions of eating more veg, and the environmental (and health) benefits of that.)
Re-exploring driving brought its own set of musings – in part because my teenage environmentalist had urged against driving for so long.
Driving trades off with a love of public transport – but also an enjoyment of walking. Yes, I don’t have to worry about finding a parking space. Â Yes, it also happens to be eco.
Sometimes the debates shift as life moves on. Â We’re still on the same topics, and thinking about them afresh, because our circumstances have brought us to doing so.
Sometimes, when we’re feeling demoralised, or that what we do isn’t making enough of a difference, it can be worth remembering that we can change. Â We’ve done it before. Â We can do it again.
And sometimes, the change is reminding ourselves that there are skills we already have that we can pick up again. Ways of responding that work for us, work for the place we live in, and the people we live with.
I started with the image of a pulse, and actually, that’s one I’d like to hold onto for eco issues. We know that our bodies work best when our pulse isn’t racing too fast, or equally too slow.
It’s not about a grand rush, and then nothing. Slowly and steady runs many an organism – including those with ecological intentions.