Anxiety, Authenticity and Balance
It's been nearly six months since my last post. Not for a lack of commitment to this year-long project but owing more to reasons in the title. My anxieties about writing stem mostly from my fears about authenticity. The internet is full of windbags with nothing to say who setup blogs and devote endless words and lists to a gospel created by them and for them. This has made me skeptical of even the most sincere authors. In the era of the influencer it's hard to just write without smacks of insincerity.
The fight to save our home is the most pressing issue of our time, and it is a fight that is of the upmost importance to me. In the past five years I've eliminated animal products from my diet, turned 180 degrees in my views on busses and public transit, switched my bank, abandoned any capitalist leanings and spent the last 11 months not buying anything new. Despite all this I'm not an expert, I can't say with confidence that the daily path I walk is any better than most other peoples. I don't write this blog to set myself up as something to aspire to, a light to the world, or anything like that.
In my first post on this blog I stated my reasons for going a year without buying anything new. Perhaps. I should have had clearer reasons for writing the blog in conjunction with my year of not buying:
- Catharsis: I think I had hoped that writing my experience would bring about some kind of catharsis and that maybe I'd learn something from this year. Although, I have learned a LOT this year as the previous paragraphs illustrate this blog has been anything but cathartic!
- Extending my voice: I don't have a very large platform, I'm not famous, I'm not in a position to influence very much, and my current location makes going to marches difficult. I hoped that by starting a blog I would be able to add yet another voice into the already gigantic chorus of voices shouting for change, demanding it of corporations and governments around the world. I wanted that voice to be as loud as possible, limited though my reach may be, the very act of putting something on the internet makes it accessible to far more people than I could reach individually.
Balance. The last reason I haven't been blogging. I have a wife and a two year old I spend every waking moment that I am not working with them. After my daughter goes to bed while my wife has some downtime I may get 30-45 minutes a night to work on personal projects, whatever they may be, writing a blog post is not generally the top of my list of things to do and so it gets pushed, one month, two, three. Finally, six months later, I'm looking back on year of very little consumption and very few blog posts.