In one of my education school classes, I had to read an article called "thinking about thinking", which encouraged teachers to expressly model and instruct metacognition to their students. We were supposed to make our thinking processes transparent, so that students could start to understand and recognize how they store and access information. It's a good idea and lets students and teachers reflect on how they learn and use the information that they pick up.
In the swirl of medical school, I feel fortunate when I have time to think about the thinking that I am doing for my classes. Dogged effort and limitless patience for fine textbook print are considered prime qualities of the medical student, not necessarily reflection or measured responses. So when I read an article from the Brown alumni magazine about Christine Montross, a writer and medical resident who recently published a book about her first year experiences in the anatomy lab, my first question was how did she have time to write anything down during her first year? Shouldn't she have been studying? How did she pass all of her classes when she was spending so much time reflecting on mortality and her cadaver? Owen joked that if I were to write a reflection about this year, it would be a study schedule, punctuated only occasionally by a run or conversation with him. His jab is not far from the truth, and therein lies the problem. Maybe Montross' time writing about her first year made her a better student, more focused, and motivated. It's not that I want to become a writer in the next two years, but taking the time to sift through the piles of information that are tossed upon me, and the myriad experiences in health care settings that I am experiencing at lightening speed would make for a more thoughtful medical school life. Whoever wrote the unexamined life is not worth living could extend their moniker to the unexamined education is not worth undertaking.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Mining the Portfolio Project
For our most recent reflection about med school, we were asked to write a letter to our best friend describing the experience of being in gross anatomy lab. Here is what I wrote:
Dear best friend,
We are now six labs into Gross Anatomy during our M1 year at UIC, and I can’t say that I love it, though [hopefully] I am learning a lot in the process. Lab occurs every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from around 4-6:30. The lab facilities are located on the seventh floor of the College of Medicine building and sport the gruesome tagline “where the living learn from the dead.” All 185 of us change our clothes in an overheated, formaldehyde-drenched locker room across from the bodies and the changing process is an interesting corollary to the dissection room: hundreds of hot, live bodies as opposed to tens of cold, smelly ones. It vividly contrasts the living and the dead.
Once you enter the dissection laboratories, a rush of chilly corporal preservative smells greets you. The bodies lie on metal tables, enclosed in thick white plastic bags. Each time we go up to dissect, we must unzip our bag, lay out our instruments, and unfold the skin and superficial layers of muscle and bone that we have already looked at. It’s the body as a book, and we must turn past the pages that we have already read.
The actual appearance and tone of the flesh is much different than in real-life—most color has faded to a muted yellow-tan-white and most things that we touch, the lungs notwithstanding, have been firm. The homogeneity helps you to forget that it is a person and also frightens in its distance from personhood. That dichotomy is the hardest split to navigate in the lab. On the one hand, this experience is supposed to teach us to be avid students of human anatomy, dispassionately scrutinizing every nerve and muscle as a potential site of therapy and intervention. You simply cannot think too much about the humanity of a person when your scissors are cutting through their heart muscle. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one must keep the ultimate end goal of helping live people in mind as corpses surround you. It is challenging to hold both of these perspectives in mind (and in body) during a two or three hour dissection.
Finally the dynamics of cutting through a body with a group of people is interesting because the eyes and action of five other people mediate your experience and emotion. There are the overeager, though misdirected scalpel-wielders who jump at the chance to look for a structure embedded in tissue or fat if it means hacking their way in the body. There are the readers, who want to keep the dissection on track by referring constantly to the dissection guidebook. And there are those who carefully and tenderly poke into the body cavities when their turn to hold the knife comes around. I am some combination of the two final lab personalities, and my tablemates display different proportions of each of the dispositions. Thus dissection has its own body politic and share of human drama. This is, I surmise, a nice corollary to the teamwork that we will do as physicians, as each health care professional will bring their skills and attitude “to the table” and somehow or another we will have to learn enough about the patient to treat them.
Dear best friend,
We are now six labs into Gross Anatomy during our M1 year at UIC, and I can’t say that I love it, though [hopefully] I am learning a lot in the process. Lab occurs every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from around 4-6:30. The lab facilities are located on the seventh floor of the College of Medicine building and sport the gruesome tagline “where the living learn from the dead.” All 185 of us change our clothes in an overheated, formaldehyde-drenched locker room across from the bodies and the changing process is an interesting corollary to the dissection room: hundreds of hot, live bodies as opposed to tens of cold, smelly ones. It vividly contrasts the living and the dead.
Once you enter the dissection laboratories, a rush of chilly corporal preservative smells greets you. The bodies lie on metal tables, enclosed in thick white plastic bags. Each time we go up to dissect, we must unzip our bag, lay out our instruments, and unfold the skin and superficial layers of muscle and bone that we have already looked at. It’s the body as a book, and we must turn past the pages that we have already read.
The actual appearance and tone of the flesh is much different than in real-life—most color has faded to a muted yellow-tan-white and most things that we touch, the lungs notwithstanding, have been firm. The homogeneity helps you to forget that it is a person and also frightens in its distance from personhood. That dichotomy is the hardest split to navigate in the lab. On the one hand, this experience is supposed to teach us to be avid students of human anatomy, dispassionately scrutinizing every nerve and muscle as a potential site of therapy and intervention. You simply cannot think too much about the humanity of a person when your scissors are cutting through their heart muscle. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one must keep the ultimate end goal of helping live people in mind as corpses surround you. It is challenging to hold both of these perspectives in mind (and in body) during a two or three hour dissection.
Finally the dynamics of cutting through a body with a group of people is interesting because the eyes and action of five other people mediate your experience and emotion. There are the overeager, though misdirected scalpel-wielders who jump at the chance to look for a structure embedded in tissue or fat if it means hacking their way in the body. There are the readers, who want to keep the dissection on track by referring constantly to the dissection guidebook. And there are those who carefully and tenderly poke into the body cavities when their turn to hold the knife comes around. I am some combination of the two final lab personalities, and my tablemates display different proportions of each of the dispositions. Thus dissection has its own body politic and share of human drama. This is, I surmise, a nice corollary to the teamwork that we will do as physicians, as each health care professional will bring their skills and attitude “to the table” and somehow or another we will have to learn enough about the patient to treat them.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Stealing from School
As many of you know, I have started medical school in Chicago. This has put both the year of-no-buy and my blog on hiatus over the past weeks (although there is an arguement to be made that the blog is on permanent semi-hiatus) as I get settled into the new world of medical science, cadavers, and classmates. As I am back to no-buying and blogging, I will defer writing about moving for no money, and making new friends for little money, and instead post a school assignment. We have to keep reflection portfolios about our development as physicians at school. Here is my first installment, with more to follow as the portfolio grows:
I have answered the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with the response, “a doctor” since people have asked me that question. At age five, this may have been because the possible answers were limited to doctor, lawyer, professional athlete, astronaut, and confusingly, President of the United States. (I always wondered why there were enough slots in most professions for people to enter those fields, whereas there can only be one president every four year. Your individual odds are terrible). As I grew older, and my convictions that medicine is the best field for me deepened, I, paradoxically, felt freer to explore other interests and passions. While I contemplated majoring in biology in college, my advisor told me to do something that I would never be able to study again, so I opted for French History and Literature. Not the most career applicable major, but I loved the very personalized course of study that I followed and support that I received from faculty and advisors. I learned how to think critically and write (and write and write and write) in my major, which are two skills that served me well on the MCAT, at least on the verbal section.
Within the first six weeks of medical school, my suspicions about there being science medical students and non-science medical students has borne out. I have come to think of myself as a humanities leaning science person, and thus despite the deluge of information pouring over our heads, I make time for the New York Review of Books and a John Updike novel. I would not be me if I was not reading something currently and I am determined to make literary reading a part of my life during both medical education and practice. The other divide that I sense in medical school is the difference between people who are fresh from college and those who, like myself, are several years removed from their undergraduate days. The younger ones are young, tend to be quicker on the knowledge uptake, and also faster on the party circuit. My group of friends are all over the age of 25, and we are all adjusting to being students again, especially students of medical learning.
Now, on to perhaps the most important question of this first reflection: Am I glad that I am here, finally beginning my medical career? The answer, despite the fact that the clinic seems impossibly far away from my current life, is an unequivocal yes. Once the application/interview/decision cycle was completed, I harbored a tiny sliver of fear that I had possibly been wrong after all of these years. What if I did not like medical school, or after interacting with my classmates, professors, and medical staff understood that I made a bad choice? I don’t know what I would have done then because mercifully I still feel shivers of anticipation at the thought of being a practicing physician. I admire several of our course heads for the clear, level-headed introductory courses that they are providing for us, and have been impressed by the doctors on staff of UIH that I have come across. A friend of mine from college who is an M3 wrote in an email several weeks ago that “at some point during the first two years everyone [meaning every student in a med school class] falls in love with medicine itself.” I am lucky to count myself among those who fell hard and quickly.
I have answered the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with the response, “a doctor” since people have asked me that question. At age five, this may have been because the possible answers were limited to doctor, lawyer, professional athlete, astronaut, and confusingly, President of the United States. (I always wondered why there were enough slots in most professions for people to enter those fields, whereas there can only be one president every four year. Your individual odds are terrible). As I grew older, and my convictions that medicine is the best field for me deepened, I, paradoxically, felt freer to explore other interests and passions. While I contemplated majoring in biology in college, my advisor told me to do something that I would never be able to study again, so I opted for French History and Literature. Not the most career applicable major, but I loved the very personalized course of study that I followed and support that I received from faculty and advisors. I learned how to think critically and write (and write and write and write) in my major, which are two skills that served me well on the MCAT, at least on the verbal section.
Within the first six weeks of medical school, my suspicions about there being science medical students and non-science medical students has borne out. I have come to think of myself as a humanities leaning science person, and thus despite the deluge of information pouring over our heads, I make time for the New York Review of Books and a John Updike novel. I would not be me if I was not reading something currently and I am determined to make literary reading a part of my life during both medical education and practice. The other divide that I sense in medical school is the difference between people who are fresh from college and those who, like myself, are several years removed from their undergraduate days. The younger ones are young, tend to be quicker on the knowledge uptake, and also faster on the party circuit. My group of friends are all over the age of 25, and we are all adjusting to being students again, especially students of medical learning.
Now, on to perhaps the most important question of this first reflection: Am I glad that I am here, finally beginning my medical career? The answer, despite the fact that the clinic seems impossibly far away from my current life, is an unequivocal yes. Once the application/interview/decision cycle was completed, I harbored a tiny sliver of fear that I had possibly been wrong after all of these years. What if I did not like medical school, or after interacting with my classmates, professors, and medical staff understood that I made a bad choice? I don’t know what I would have done then because mercifully I still feel shivers of anticipation at the thought of being a practicing physician. I admire several of our course heads for the clear, level-headed introductory courses that they are providing for us, and have been impressed by the doctors on staff of UIH that I have come across. A friend of mine from college who is an M3 wrote in an email several weeks ago that “at some point during the first two years everyone [meaning every student in a med school class] falls in love with medicine itself.” I am lucky to count myself among those who fell hard and quickly.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Up and at 'em to Chicago
The scoreboard is on and Owen and I are about to head out of this piece and begin our westward migration. One major tip regarding cost free moving is to schedule your move just after a group of friends have moved and then take all of their recently minted boxes. The other takeaway from this experience is that if you put things on the sidewalk, generally people will claim them quickly. Though I must admit my green office chair has been out there for almost two days. Even the used candles went faster than that. Other than whipping up some broccoli and onion pizza (both vegetables are far beyond their normal lives), the only major task left is to shred the receipts of the past two years. Oh all the trips to Costco, Save-A-Lot, Giant, and Whole Foods; how funny it is to look at your artifacts in retrospect and think about the immanence of life. This year's receipts are a much slimmer pile indeed...
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Craigslist scams
Owen and I are hoping to push no-buy in a new, deeper direction by getting rid of both of our cars before we move to Chicago. Maybe being sans vehicle in Arctic winds will teach us a lesson, but right now the prospect of being carless is a joyful one. Both of our universities give out "u-passes" which allow students to travel on all public transportation for mere pennies a day. This is exciting because I have never been a big public commuter (no need in Portland and no real possibility to do it in Baltimore) and I look forward to the challenge of bus schedules, large bags, and strange seatmates. Something new at least. The sole detractor from all my car-free reveries is the hassle of selling a car, namely on Craigslist. What is the deal with all the scams? Why do I have an inbox full of Nigerian wire transfer offers and sketchy people who want me to drive the car to Columbia (the town in MD, not the country) because they just moved here from a foreign country? Finding renters for the house was so pleasant, and this is just so bizarre. I just want a nice person to hand me some cash and take my bruiser of a vehicle off my hands so that I can start drooling over the Chicago Transit Authority route maps and schedules.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The No-buy birthday
Dudes and dudettes--
I have officially attained quarter century status, as of 10AM MST on July 16, 2007. It's actually a pretty momentous occasion. Usually, when people ask the mock-serious question on your birthday: "so, do you feel any different, any older?" I respond with a smirky, snarky comment. But this year, I really _do_ feel different. I am 25% through a typical 100-year old life. I break that down into 0-25 childhood/major education, 25-50 career and family rearing, 50-75 begin retirement/self-enrichment, 75-100 waiting for the bell to toll for thee. In that frame, I have completed the phase in which I could plausibly be called a child. There's no turning back now, I am officially, and unequivocally an adult. The next step is just the baby in the baby carriage (and maybe marriage before that, if you want to be proper about things). To complement this momentous birthday, my family did a stupendous job of adhering as closely as possible to not buying things as gifts/buying very meaningful things. My sister Katie redeemed a free Victoria Secret underwear certificate and graciously sent me the receipt for verification. And the undies even have little pencils on them. Ironic because I was a teacher and am about to become a student again. My father continued to outfit my nascent kitchen supplies with a top-of-the line Japanese dicing knife. He says that it is the best knife in the world, and my father should know, because he cuts a lot of things up, including his own fingers. My mother thrifted a stunning near-floor length black down jacket (sleeping bag) from the [in]famous bins of SE Portland's Goodwill outlet. She says the jacket will make me look like Jackie Kennedy. Owen says I look more like Cruella Deville. Nontheless, I will be warm and bundled in Chicago. Owen made/is making a recipe binder of all the loose recipes I have collected over the past three years. It's amazing how much I like lentils. This is reflected in the fact that there is a "lentil" section to the book. In all of this using things up mentality, no one takes the cake like my grandmother though. Not only did she make me napkins out of the same material as hers and my father (what a lineage!) but gave me a book of daily meditations from the Dalai Lama called "Reaching Tranquility." I call it my "daily lama." To all my birthday peeps, big ups. You did a perfect job.
I have officially attained quarter century status, as of 10AM MST on July 16, 2007. It's actually a pretty momentous occasion. Usually, when people ask the mock-serious question on your birthday: "so, do you feel any different, any older?" I respond with a smirky, snarky comment. But this year, I really _do_ feel different. I am 25% through a typical 100-year old life. I break that down into 0-25 childhood/major education, 25-50 career and family rearing, 50-75 begin retirement/self-enrichment, 75-100 waiting for the bell to toll for thee. In that frame, I have completed the phase in which I could plausibly be called a child. There's no turning back now, I am officially, and unequivocally an adult. The next step is just the baby in the baby carriage (and maybe marriage before that, if you want to be proper about things). To complement this momentous birthday, my family did a stupendous job of adhering as closely as possible to not buying things as gifts/buying very meaningful things. My sister Katie redeemed a free Victoria Secret underwear certificate and graciously sent me the receipt for verification. And the undies even have little pencils on them. Ironic because I was a teacher and am about to become a student again. My father continued to outfit my nascent kitchen supplies with a top-of-the line Japanese dicing knife. He says that it is the best knife in the world, and my father should know, because he cuts a lot of things up, including his own fingers. My mother thrifted a stunning near-floor length black down jacket (sleeping bag) from the [in]famous bins of SE Portland's Goodwill outlet. She says the jacket will make me look like Jackie Kennedy. Owen says I look more like Cruella Deville. Nontheless, I will be warm and bundled in Chicago. Owen made/is making a recipe binder of all the loose recipes I have collected over the past three years. It's amazing how much I like lentils. This is reflected in the fact that there is a "lentil" section to the book. In all of this using things up mentality, no one takes the cake like my grandmother though. Not only did she make me napkins out of the same material as hers and my father (what a lineage!) but gave me a book of daily meditations from the Dalai Lama called "Reaching Tranquility." I call it my "daily lama." To all my birthday peeps, big ups. You did a perfect job.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Pantry Efficiency
One of the challenges of moving to a new city is trying to use everything up before you go, so as to ensure minimal pantry packing. Coupling that mandate with not buying has made for some interesting meals of late. I would be curious as to meals or dishes that people have made in the throes of pre-packing insanity. Is everyone else as crazy as I am about using everything up? Last night, for example, I made squash soup with old apples, 6-month old chives, corn relish (purchased 4 months ago at Sav-a-lot), and dried coconut from macaroons that I made with my sister last summer. That dish was a coup for me, but I hope that the best of pantry efficiency is yet to come. If you have brilliant suggestions about how to use everything up, comment or send an email. Otherwise, look for more tales of tomato juice polenta (tomato juice from 8 months ago during a misguided attempt at healthy breakfasts) and Rice Krispie treats with Crater Lake marshmallows from circa July 2006.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Ownership is Burden
When I was younger, my grandparents would tell me sayings in German, in all their long full guttural twists and turns. I either promptly forgot the German words all together or made up some crazy personal version of the saying that usually translated to a phrase such as: "all small cows drink blue trees" or something of that nonsensical vein. For that reason, I decided not to even attempt the German version of the saying "ownership is burden." Of all the pearls of German wisdom dropped on my ears as a child, that was the one that stuck with me most strongly. Especially in our modern era of owner's manuals, one million features, planned obsolescence, and digital overload, it is just plain _hard_ to take care of all of the things that we buy. In my estimation, avoiding new ownership burdens was one of the best parts of not buying anything for a year. Unfortunately, we have not been able to escape even this pleasure thanks to the "free" bookstore of Baltimore. Take all the books you want and you don't have to leave a penny. In fact, the Bookthing would prefer that you leave nothing and take much. Be greedy! signs urge browsers among the stacks. Greedy I was, as I built my American feminism bookshelf, dabbled in French plays, amassed a collection of Dover Thrift editions, and bombarded the house with various other bits and pieces of literature and non-fiction. Faced with a move of 1000 miles, the prospect of moving 1000 books along with it is daunting. We could give all the books back to Bookthing, but they have been carefully gleaned, and it is hard to divest yourself of the sentiment that you may read each and every one of John Updike's novels someday. If I could accurately translate phrases from English into German, I would say to my grandparents: "Even things freely acquired bring burdens in the end!"
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Monday, July 2, 2007
What is it good for?
Recently, as in the last month, I have been lax on No-Buying rules. So much so that I decided to call June the month of Greatly Reduced Buy. I have my reasons and rationalizations (vacations, celebrating the end of teaching, no buy fatigue) but deep down I know that it is laziness and self-indulgence that have caught up with me lately. Therefore, beginning July 1st, I rededicate myself to this project, to thinking deeply about the connections between consumerism and personal/environmental/social well-being, and to pushing myself to plan ahead even when I am tired and just want to give in to the ease of buying. As a beginning to our redoubled efforts, Owen and I went on a cooking blitz yesterday, making 15 bean soup, brown rice for the week, and a loaf of prune/chocolate bread. Baking bread has been one of the great joys and new discoveries of the past six months. For that reason, I proudly present a picture of our very first successful loaf from this January. Behold the culinary masterpiece.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Transgressions
As an officially retired Baltimore City school teacher (crying tears of joy), I plan on blogging on a near daily basis about the no-buying adventure. But first, let's clear the air. There have been some transgressions on my part, and Owen's part that we feel the need to discuss. At the beginning of this project, the term necessity was nebulously defined at best, which has led to occasions when we play loose and fast with the rules. For example, does grocery store purchasing allow for impulse buys? Twice this year, I have decided to go to the Aldi (German discount grocery store) close to my school and buy flavored water, yogurt, and cheddar cheese rice cakes for lunch. Is that allowed under the purview of no-buy? It's unclear. On the one hand, those things are grocery items, some might call them staples, and they were purchased at a discount food retailer. On the other hand, they were not premeditated, and they were in small, single serving sizes (i.e. not bulk grocery store purchases). I'm not sure that this koan has an answer, nor that I am particularly looking for one, but this grocery store dilemma is just one of many situations that we have bumped into along the way. It doesn't exactly make me feel guilty to list the rest of our "questionable acts" and I don't need to be absolved, but I do it just to show everyone that we have struggled and given into temptations and twisting of logic. Here is a detailing of our lapses in no-buy purposely written without names to avoid blaming the innocent:
all vacations: Paris, Chicago, Eastern Shore, Portland
BWI: Mama Illardo's pizza
Houston-Hobby: Wendy's Frostee and beer
Aldi: rice cakes, Reese's Pieces, yogurt, flavored water
Urban Outfitter's in Chicago: $2 shirt (in lieu of coffee)
work:stealing from the office coffee fund to buy a Dr. Pepper
Eve: nine and five course meal with drinks
last week of school: drinks and bar food
There you have all of our transgressions. We sincerely hope that you still love us.
all vacations: Paris, Chicago, Eastern Shore, Portland
BWI: Mama Illardo's pizza
Houston-Hobby: Wendy's Frostee and beer
Aldi: rice cakes, Reese's Pieces, yogurt, flavored water
Urban Outfitter's in Chicago: $2 shirt (in lieu of coffee)
work:stealing from the office coffee fund to buy a Dr. Pepper
Eve: nine and five course meal with drinks
last week of school: drinks and bar food
There you have all of our transgressions. We sincerely hope that you still love us.
Friday, April 20, 2007
The non-issue issue
When we decided to do this year of no-buy Owen and I were both concerned that it would take a
lot of effort and will power to follow through. Surprisingly, this resolution has been a large non-issue for us. I'm not sure if it is because of the general hustle of this year or because if non-consumption just genuinely does not push us. Whatever the reasons, the first third of the year has passed in relative calm with few shopping and desire pangs.
lot of effort and will power to follow through. Surprisingly, this resolution has been a large non-issue for us. I'm not sure if it is because of the general hustle of this year or because if non-consumption just genuinely does not push us. Whatever the reasons, the first third of the year has passed in relative calm with few shopping and desire pangs.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Disengaged
In the crush of figuring out grad school next year and finishing Hopkins work, neither Owen nor I have been particularly engaged with our No-Buy Year. In one respect, it is interesting how quickly many of the tenets of the year have entered our lives. I never think about going out to meals anymore, par example. On the other hand, the project is getting a little fuzzy around the edges and we recognize that. Shopping at Costco this weekend, I bought a berry smoothie at the prepared food counter. I did not think much of it at the time, but looking back that may be a violation of the No Buy year. But who knows, because we have yet to define the exact parameters of our experiment. With this thought in mind, we promise ourselves and you that we are going to develop a precise definition of "necessary" and "groceries" soon. Just give us until the end of March.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Snow daze
Friends--I do not know if news of our mercurial weather has reached all parts of the country, but let me inform you that it is a regular Ice Storm 2007 here in Maryland. Schools have been closed for two days and I'm hoping for a third day just to make it a clean sweep. In my time off, I have been watching the Wire, reading, and baking. It all sounds so Amish, doesn't it? Except the part about the Wire of course. Owen and I have become quite adept at kneading and rising up delicious loaves of bread, many of which I have pictures of on my trusty digi cam. One day I will upload them and ye can marvel at the variety, from Victorian milk loaf to rye-walnut bread. Truly bread baking is a gift from the gods, a chance to reconnect with earlier times, and an inexpensive form of therapy. I love it, I love it, I love it.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Beginnings
We've just returned from church this afternoon. We have attended the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, on Charles in Mount Vernon, just south of the Walters Gallery, since sometime this fall. Although our attendance began rather spottily, we now go regularly and decided to enter the "Beginnings" class for those who want to learn about the church, what it means to be Unitarian, and what membership entails. In our first meeting today we shared our stories, explaining our religious history, our beliefs, and what brought us to the church. Sophie, as you might expect, was eloquent; I found it hard to speak, which surprised me. Bear with me as I attempt to explain how this all relates to the no-buy adventure.
Over the past year much has changed for Sophie and me. I feel like we've begun to slip truly into adulthood; college, with its turmoil and its sense of open vistas and possibilities, seems far away. We have both begun to succeed and thrive in our jobs; we are also facing the changes that Stage Two -- graduate and medical schools -- will bring. What has surprised me is how focused and self-enclosed I've become: for me there is only time and energy for Sophie and mathematics. For both I feel a passion and single-mindedness (perhaps double-mindedness?) that overwhelms me at times. After spending a long day dwelt in abstraction -- mathematics is a realm that I can't help but explore, and yet there is nothing visceral or easily rewarding about it, and it's a rather lonely place, of which there are few fellow explorers, and we each tend to follow our own paths through it, shouting our individual discoveries to our near neighbors across a distance -- after a day at work I return home to the warmth of home, time spent with Sophie. Too often this past year other aspects of myself have disappeared: we didn't cook, rarely exercised, and I only read math. The year of no-buy has reopened me. Over the weekend we bake bread, which has brought a lot of joy into my life, and cook. When we see friends (Sophie wrote about this last week), we don't spend half our time watching a movie or television. Instead we talk or work together. We are also reading more, because time has been liberated from the easy consumption of movies and cafes and restaurants. Somehow, although cooking takes more time, that time feels more open, is more easily shared with Sophie, and is more rewarding personally. In my soul I feel tectonic shifts; I feel the pressures of temperament and age reshaping me in ways I never expected or aimed for.
Church is part of this general trend. It is a clear sign that we are moving towards the rigors and rewards of adulthood that we want and savor a day spent ruminating beyond our own lives and joining a community built around the desire to contribute to our city and to share our struggles. When I was in my teens I pushed back against my parents' church, not finding it compatible with my aspirations; but this church, for all its seeming fluffiness and over-eager welcomingness, feels right. No-buy is giving me the time and shape to open myself to the possibilities of adult life, just when I need them most. At work, for instance, I feel like I have finally contributed something worthwhile and people want to understand my research. I feel obligations that were inconceivable even a year ago, and it's tiring to try to fulfill them. When I return home and share my time with Sophie, the year of no-buy has led us to renew ourselves in better ways, to spend time together in more fulfilling ways, than we had when we turned to the easy, quick solutions.
I'm rambling almost incoherently now, which isn't exactly unbloggish. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, although I battled against Sophie's idea for this year at first, no-buy has contributed to an unfolding of our lives that I think is necessary and is helping me to become the person I ought to be, even if it isn't the person I thought I wanted to be. My friend John told us yesterday that he seeks to simplify his life and to remove temptation not because he is put off by things like television or frozen foods, but because if he removes in a drastic manner the options that he finds easy and appealing, he opens space for the things he really wants -- like reading and thinking -- that get blocked out by the barrage of options and information that our society provides. Americans think they ought to face temptation directly and then berate themselves for failure; John's approach is wiser and ultimately easier and more rewarding, even if it seems less glorious to cut out temptation completely rather than face it squarely. Life as an adult seems to be a matter of finding effective coping strategies, strategies like no-buy or drastic simplification that are workable and that arise from admitting the bent of one's temperament and acting in response.
Over the past year much has changed for Sophie and me. I feel like we've begun to slip truly into adulthood; college, with its turmoil and its sense of open vistas and possibilities, seems far away. We have both begun to succeed and thrive in our jobs; we are also facing the changes that Stage Two -- graduate and medical schools -- will bring. What has surprised me is how focused and self-enclosed I've become: for me there is only time and energy for Sophie and mathematics. For both I feel a passion and single-mindedness (perhaps double-mindedness?) that overwhelms me at times. After spending a long day dwelt in abstraction -- mathematics is a realm that I can't help but explore, and yet there is nothing visceral or easily rewarding about it, and it's a rather lonely place, of which there are few fellow explorers, and we each tend to follow our own paths through it, shouting our individual discoveries to our near neighbors across a distance -- after a day at work I return home to the warmth of home, time spent with Sophie. Too often this past year other aspects of myself have disappeared: we didn't cook, rarely exercised, and I only read math. The year of no-buy has reopened me. Over the weekend we bake bread, which has brought a lot of joy into my life, and cook. When we see friends (Sophie wrote about this last week), we don't spend half our time watching a movie or television. Instead we talk or work together. We are also reading more, because time has been liberated from the easy consumption of movies and cafes and restaurants. Somehow, although cooking takes more time, that time feels more open, is more easily shared with Sophie, and is more rewarding personally. In my soul I feel tectonic shifts; I feel the pressures of temperament and age reshaping me in ways I never expected or aimed for.
Church is part of this general trend. It is a clear sign that we are moving towards the rigors and rewards of adulthood that we want and savor a day spent ruminating beyond our own lives and joining a community built around the desire to contribute to our city and to share our struggles. When I was in my teens I pushed back against my parents' church, not finding it compatible with my aspirations; but this church, for all its seeming fluffiness and over-eager welcomingness, feels right. No-buy is giving me the time and shape to open myself to the possibilities of adult life, just when I need them most. At work, for instance, I feel like I have finally contributed something worthwhile and people want to understand my research. I feel obligations that were inconceivable even a year ago, and it's tiring to try to fulfill them. When I return home and share my time with Sophie, the year of no-buy has led us to renew ourselves in better ways, to spend time together in more fulfilling ways, than we had when we turned to the easy, quick solutions.
I'm rambling almost incoherently now, which isn't exactly unbloggish. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, although I battled against Sophie's idea for this year at first, no-buy has contributed to an unfolding of our lives that I think is necessary and is helping me to become the person I ought to be, even if it isn't the person I thought I wanted to be. My friend John told us yesterday that he seeks to simplify his life and to remove temptation not because he is put off by things like television or frozen foods, but because if he removes in a drastic manner the options that he finds easy and appealing, he opens space for the things he really wants -- like reading and thinking -- that get blocked out by the barrage of options and information that our society provides. Americans think they ought to face temptation directly and then berate themselves for failure; John's approach is wiser and ultimately easier and more rewarding, even if it seems less glorious to cut out temptation completely rather than face it squarely. Life as an adult seems to be a matter of finding effective coping strategies, strategies like no-buy or drastic simplification that are workable and that arise from admitting the bent of one's temperament and acting in response.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
All the Lonelier for it
So one of the things that I anticipated as a problem when this year of nobuy began was that I would be lonely. Locked in my little enclave of homemade food and slowly greying clothing, it seemed there might not be a place for my friends in this barren landscape. This has proved somewhat true. I am not available in a commercial setting any more. Movies, drinks, dinners on the town, all out. If my friends want to see me, I am asking them to bend to my crazy whims and bake bread with me or go for a walk. This may be asking a lot. We are not accustomed to nobuy friendships. This will probably mean that I will not see my friends as much. But I will very likely see new people, in novel situations. And while I do not want to suggest that this is by any means an even trade, there is something valuable in reinvesting in and re-exploring my community. Sure, I attend our neighborhood association meetings now. They are free entertainment. I look for free films showing at the art museum. I'm going to the Unitarian church book group. While these low-budget, low thrill options are not how I want to spend all of my time, they are introducing me to people that I would have never met otherwise. And breaking out of my enclave into the bizarreness of Baltimore has been one of the most unanticipated delights of the nobuy.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
As you might expect, the most difficult part of not-buying-it is explaining it to others. Both Sophie and I have remarked that it imposes drastic simplifications on our lives: options, like buying that cup of coffee, are removed before they can tantalize. But explaining why we would choose to eliminate unnecessary consumption when we don't have to, such conversations are delicate. On the one hand, you don't want to sound sanctimonious. People often think you are passing particular judgment on them. (This is an annoying feature of vegetarianism, too. Not liking meat or avoiding meat for health reasons are universally acceptable; deploring the meat industry, both for its cruelty to animals and for its environmental consequeces, provokes sharp responses from many people.) On the other hand, you don't want to sound like you're a raging consume-a-holic or deep in debt. Although Sophie and I are fairly frugal, these past three weeks have shown just how freely I spent money and how frequently I indulged little impulses. Perhaps the hardest part, though, is losing certain social possibilities: on Friday some friends were going to lunch at a restaurant I quite like, people I hadn't seen in a while and want to see more frequently, and I had to turn down the offer due to not-buying-it.
I have come to rely on an analogy to fasting when I try to explain what Sophie and I are up to. One doesn't fast to save money on groceries or to shame others (of course, people go on hunger strikes, but this is not the only or predominant role for fasting). One fasts to grapple with one's embodiedness, to face hunger, to remind oneself that food isn't just about pleasure, to put oneself in communion with others who are hungry, to break up the soul's stagnancy under the routine and repetition of daily life, and to turn one's thoughts elsewhere. We're fasting the will to consume American-style, we're rediscovering that the ordinary routines aren't all there is, we're opening another region of the soul. It is both nice and misguided when friends offer to buy something for us, like a cup of coffee: you don't offer a fasting person food because they're not eating out of choice, not stinginess.
I have come to rely on an analogy to fasting when I try to explain what Sophie and I are up to. One doesn't fast to save money on groceries or to shame others (of course, people go on hunger strikes, but this is not the only or predominant role for fasting). One fasts to grapple with one's embodiedness, to face hunger, to remind oneself that food isn't just about pleasure, to put oneself in communion with others who are hungry, to break up the soul's stagnancy under the routine and repetition of daily life, and to turn one's thoughts elsewhere. We're fasting the will to consume American-style, we're rediscovering that the ordinary routines aren't all there is, we're opening another region of the soul. It is both nice and misguided when friends offer to buy something for us, like a cup of coffee: you don't offer a fasting person food because they're not eating out of choice, not stinginess.
Some ramblings on food
We are now finishing the third week of our foray into unconsumerism, and things seem alright, no hints of dissension in the ranks, no slips, no secret trips to malls or Costco or restaurants. Then again, the year is still young, and my coworkers brought in donuts every day this week. It doesn't take much strength to resist the siren call of the cafeteria when donuts of every dough, icing, sprinkles, and filling are available. What I fear most is that, after the gluttony of the holidays, when I ate tasty foods nearly every day at work, it will be tough in the afternoons when my stomach yearns for some cake or cookies and a fresh cup of coffee. I fear I'll look into my crumpled lunch bag, see only a healthy granola bar, and then my will will weaken. Food, I fear, will undo my resolve. For me at least shopping of the usual variety has never played a significant role in my daily life or functioned as a means of self-reward or indulgence. But I do love my coffee shops, my restaurants, my impulse purchases of chips or cake.
So far, though, I have enjoyed preparing lunches and dinners, which has surprised me. As an occasional activity, cooking pleased me; as a regular duty, it had never enticed me. What i appreciate about "not buying it" is that it has forced my hand on many issues. No longer do I wish I'd cooked and berate myself for simply buying my lunch at work. I just put together something in the morning and hold on till I get home. (My lunches are usually rather pathetic, whatever I can see quickly in the fridge, but I have high hopes as the year progresses. My breakfasts are improving now that we shop more regularly: omelets several days this week.) Likewise, when I stroll down the hall at work past the vending machine, I no longer muse on whether to buy Doritos "just this once." It's not an option. This not-buying-it resolution actually removes my usual challenges and stumbling blocks because where there was a decision to be made before, there is no possibility to tantalize me. Sophie and I have imposed a constraint on our lives that removes a whole range of possibilities, but in turn it is allowing me to explore possibilities that I had essentially blindered myself to and protecting me from choices that I tended to "lose."
So far, though, I have enjoyed preparing lunches and dinners, which has surprised me. As an occasional activity, cooking pleased me; as a regular duty, it had never enticed me. What i appreciate about "not buying it" is that it has forced my hand on many issues. No longer do I wish I'd cooked and berate myself for simply buying my lunch at work. I just put together something in the morning and hold on till I get home. (My lunches are usually rather pathetic, whatever I can see quickly in the fridge, but I have high hopes as the year progresses. My breakfasts are improving now that we shop more regularly: omelets several days this week.) Likewise, when I stroll down the hall at work past the vending machine, I no longer muse on whether to buy Doritos "just this once." It's not an option. This not-buying-it resolution actually removes my usual challenges and stumbling blocks because where there was a decision to be made before, there is no possibility to tantalize me. Sophie and I have imposed a constraint on our lives that removes a whole range of possibilities, but in turn it is allowing me to explore possibilities that I had essentially blindered myself to and protecting me from choices that I tended to "lose."
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Consumer Fast Begins
And surprisingly it feels good and not overly restricitve or self-denying. Not buying things streamlines choices and decisions. Should I stop at the bucks for coffee? NO Should I go into the bookstore and look for good magazines? NO Do I need another pair of black pants for work? NO It means no fuss and no weighing of options. The only option that I have when it comes to buying things is no. And that has been surprisingly liberating.
Monday, January 1, 2007
The Beginning of the End
Hello family und friends. Here we are at the beginning of 2007, a good year, an auspicious year. As things often go at 321 I have come up with a crazy project and convinced Owen to join me in it. In this year, this 2007, we will not buy anything unnecessary. Essentially meaning we will buy food, preferably at a cheapie grocery store or a marche, and nothing else. We are doing this to investigate what consumption means to us, watch how our capitalist impulses change and shift, and to spend more time on things that we care about (we'll get back to you when we find out what those things are with all of our newly freed time). We'll write when the spirit of revelation strikes. Here we go into the wild blue yonder of no consumption.
Happy New Year!
Sophwen
Happy New Year!
Sophwen
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