Captain Planet, He's A Hero (Environment Seminar Blog)

I'm melting, melting, melting! Or in this case, slipping.

Let's just say this hasn't been the best of sustainable weeks for me.

I was blessed with midterms and projects galore this week; unfortunately, the busyness and stress made me lose sight of my sustainability goals. Granted, though, it's not actually as bad as I'm making it sound. However, I don't want to be comfortable with slipping up a little bit and keep doing it more and more until I'm not even trying to be sustainable anymore.

I ate meat twice this week instead of the allowed one time but, as I said before, I don't want to get used to falling off track! I definitely bought more plastic wrapped snacks than I had last week (my bad...) and the lights in my dorm room were on longer than they should have been. What I need to learn and am hoping I can learn is to be able to sustain my sustainability even while under stress. That's my biggest fear. I'm afraid I'll be able to keep up with my goals fine until I get swamped with work and then I'll just return back to my old ways.

But, do not fear, this week was not just a black hole of unsustainable practices. I remembered to bring my towel to dry my hands off with but it's still something I have to work on; I'm pretty forgetful about that. To my surprise, though, my laptop usage went down this week (only by an hour but, hey, that's a start right?) and I was able to keep up with my "shower early in the day" plan. The mid-day shower helped me relax and there are three things that helped me lower my laptop usage: studying, baking and tribal fusion bellydance. Yup. You just read that. Dancing with the belly in a fusion style that is tribal. But let's break this down one by one.

Studying, obviously, kept me glued to my papers and in study groups instead of glued to my computer screen; I never thought studying could have helped me with my sustainability. Baking is an activity I only do when I'm at my Aunt's home. Speaking of which, I've been limiting my trips there lately in order to lower the amount of driving in my life. However, as we speak, I am with my family but this is probably going to be the last time I see them this school year. Whenever I'm here, though, I always like to bake cakes, brownies or cheesecakes. Now, I know what you're thinking, unhealthy right? Yeah, that's definitely a strike against me. In my defense, the last time I was at my Aunt's I made some organic salsa; Yalda can dig healthy eating!

Back to the subject of baking, I just want to note that I'm surprised at how many vegan/vegetarian ingredients there are. Relatively cheap, too. They may have always existed and I'm just too out of it to notice, but I never thought the cheapest ingredients would have been vegan/vegetarian! Go figure, huh? Aside from baking, the other activity that has kept me occupied is my tribal fusion bellydance class. I take it every Tuesday but find myself practicing a lot in my own spare time. It's a great workout, fun, and keeps my away from my laptop. Even though I'm not the best at it (I suck), it's a nice activity that keeps me away from the electricity guzzling technology.

Bottom line of this week? I need to learn how to manage my sustainability and my stress at the same time. I'm not completely unsustainable when I'm busy but I do face some difficulties. I aim to learn how to deal with it all and I need to learn soon, especially with finals coming up. Eek!