...shipwrecked...

Shrinking my big, fat carbon footprint...first step...

It has finally happened. After living in the UK for 8 years, I'm officially a daily train commuter. After the big move to Surrey, I was driving more than an hour each way to get to work - and that was in ideal conditions without huge traffic jams which have been common. Not counting the time and drama of fighting traffic on the M4 twice a day, it was looking to cost close £400.00 in petrol money (for the US readers that's about $650.00 a month). Beyond that - I was racing up and down with the world and his wife running the constant risk of being caught in the traffic jams which apparently only require a strong wind to happen. And at the end of the day, then there's the environmental impact of continuing to drive the car all over the place every day.  Filling up my gas tank every three days brought that impact into stark clarity.

What's a girl to do? Give up the car and catch the train of course! I've never been a big fan but I've now decided I love it! I catch a train to very close to my place of work and a free shuttle bus to my office. Easy...cheaper...and best of all...WAY more environmentally sound! I love my car...but I love knowing that I'm doing something good for the environment even more. Yes - initially the motivation was the impact on my wallet but the whole exercise has made me consider the concept of carbon footprints and ways to do more than just recycle as a way to lessen my impact the environment.

Do you know your carbon footprint? I've done one calculation before the big commuting change and it came to the idea that I'm currently living my life as if we had 3.53 planets to live on. And the carbon footprint? 18.46 tonnes of carbon per year!!! YIKES! And I always thought that I was fairly environmentally conscientous! Try it...it's a good exercise: http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ And now I've recalculated given the change to trains and buses for getting to work...and if I'm honest, I had hoped the difference would be more dramatic. I'm now down to 3.24 planets and 14.46 tonnes of carbon.

Hmmm...I'm signing up for the WWF email now to learn about what else I can do. What are you going to do?????

"Shipwrecked" redux...

In thinking at length about the philosophical concepts around being "shipwrecked" vs. the literal and more negative meanings of the word, I realised there is a key component which I haven't mentioned.

So...what would you do if you were shipwrecked on a island somewhere tropical but devoid of modern life and physical companionship? Would you know instinctively what to do to survive? Probably not - and certainly not at first. You would have an enormous period of adjustment coupled with a process of trial and error to determine the most successful methods to find and store fresh water, hunt and/or forage for food, maintain shelter, create fire. Assuming you find coping strategies for these more immediate concerns, they would likely be followed by exploring creative methods of marking time, for studying ways of escape, for not just sustaining life but finding ways of enhancing it as well.

Similarly, in my newly "shipwrecked" life, I'm very much in a period of adjustment and trial and error. It seems self-evident that being literally shipwrecked you would learn a great many things about your internal self while also learning an enormous number of day-to-day coping skills, new routines, new habits, new creative outlets. Therefore, at the beginning of thoroughly enjoying and evolving into the life I want by embracing being philosophically shipwrecked, I am researching a few tools of the trade, methodologies and specific types active changes to put into place which [hopefully] will have the knock-on affect of developing new interests, hobbies, habits and coping strategies. Such new approaches will then provide the learning that can bring about the happily shipwrecked life.

Like any good shipwreck, it's as much about the journey as it is about the arrivals and departures...

Redefining "shipwrecked"...

 

Definitions of a "shipwreck":
* to ruin utterly; "You have shipwrecked my career"
* to suffer failure, as in some enterprise
* a wrecked ship (or a part of one)
* an irretrievable loss; "that was the shipwreck of their romance"
* an accident that destroys a ship at sea

My husband DAC and I live in the country. Not just close to the country or on the edge of the country but truly 100% in the English countryside. There are about 10 or 12 houses around us. There is no post office, no off license or shop, and no pub. Apparently, this is called living in a "hamlet". The closest pub is a half-hour walk over road and a bit longer if you go through the fields. This week has proven to be a very interesting one where living in the country is concerned. After two years of joking with people about how we are now living in 1882 [with a nod to Clarion and her obsession with M*A*S*H*], we have finally arrived in the 19th century.

For geographic perspective, we live almost across the street from the Uffington White Horse:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-archaeology/w-archaeology-places_to_visit/w-archaeology-uffington_white_horse.htm.

The photographs on the link really show off the White Horse Hill very well. The photo I've included here in this post does not. It does, however, show the White Horse Hill on Thursday [05.Feb.2009] afternoon. Trust me...there is a hill AND a white horse in the image...even if you can barely tell the sky from the land. I've included another image which is the view over the valley from the Ridgeway escarpment [http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/Ridgeway/]. It's beautiful but we've been cut off from the 21st century for a week now.

Anyone watching or listening to international news this week will have heard about the insane amount of snow and ice deposited across England, Scotland and Wales. Our cottage in the Oxfordshire countryside is basically in the middle of this snow and ice storm. It began to arrive on Sunday, 01 Feb 2009 and as of today [Friday] it is still not finished. DAC has been off work from school snow days almost all week. I've been "working at home" for the publishing job as much as possible. And I'm relieved to say that I've accomplished more than I thought I'd be able to do which is good news. We did manage to dig out the 4-wheel drive car yesterday for a pub lunch and some siege mentality shopping. Of course, last night we had several more inches of snow and ice arrive and haven't been out yet this morning.

So - what on earth does all of this have to do with the word "shipwreck"???

Well - it's a philosophy in development, one which has gained a great deal more substance in light of our being "shipwrecked" in the countryside by snow, ice and bad driving by people who only see this level of snow once every 20 years. This philosophy in development formed the spark for this blog and it is my intent that this new philosophy will inform 2009 and my life to come beyond a single year. As you will have seen at the beginning of this post, there are numerous definitions to the word shipwreck. As someone who is studying the environmental aspects of actual shipwrecks [http://warningphdinprogress.blogspot.com/], the idea of shipwrecks is ever present in my life. I have learned, among many other things, that a shipwreck is a transformative process and not a static event. And a transformative process, by the very definition of those two words, is something ongoing and changing, something that evolves and changes with time, something which takes an original construct and completely alters it for a new outcome. An outcome which is itself then capable of being further transformed through time and the expenditure of energy.

The definitions at the beginning of this entry are all very negative in their connotation. But I'd like to think that a shipwreck can also be seen as something positive. Therefore I'm redefining the word shipwreck to suit my needs and all of the English majors in my life will need to adapt...

SHIPWRECK = a transformative process which takes the philosophical outlook and the way of life which a person has been living and then forces change. It is the vehicle through which they create the life they've always wanted or a least of version of that life which is open to constant change and personal evolution.