I haven't posted in just over two weeks, and it feels like it's been even longer. Hopefully you haven't missed me too much. Like many bloggers I know, I've been struggling to find that delicate balance between work, home life, and blogging, and for the past couple of weeks I've allowed work and home to win that battle. We're making a lot of changes for the better at home, and I've pushed my office to take a huge step toward sustainability starting next year, so I've had plenty to do around here without blogging.
It doesn't help that I've made blogging somewhat difficult for myself. In my roughly three months of blogging, I've signed up to participate in no less than seven challenges, including my sister's growing challenge , green bean dreams' bookworm challenge (parts 1 and 2), chile chews' quit now challenge (parts 1 and 2), 'burban mom's weekly challenges on going green , and farm to philly's one local summer challenge. Five of these are active right now, and I have to admit that at this point I just can't keep up with reading others' blogs, keeping up the garden, working on the various challenges, and writing about them. I just don't have enough hours in the day to get all that done.
So my apologies to the inspirational organizers of these great challenges, but I'm officially dropping out of one local summer and the bookworm events for now. Rest assured that I'm still eating about 50% local food, with a goal of bumping that up to 85% before long. I'm also reading books from green bean's list - I've finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Omnivore's Dilemma, and am reading Living Like Ed right now. But for now, I won't be posting weekly updates about local meals or writing up book reports. I hope you understand...
I promise updates on my various projects and the remaining challenges soon.
July 16, 2008
No, I haven't fallen off the face of the planet!
April 25, 2008
Begin at the Beginning
I've been procrastinating about this first post for quite a while now. I have many excuses - I need to learn html first, I'm too busy with work and the garden, I don't have all my goals for the year ironed out yet, and so on. Finally I've just decided to get it over with, begin at the beginning and move forward without worrying whether things are perfect along the way.
My name is Lori and I live with Rob, my husband of eight months, in a small St Louis suburb called Webster Groves. I moved from Seattle to the St Louis area to attend graduate school more than eight years ago, and I never thought I'd stay here this long. Things change, economies change, we need new people (that's you, Rob!), priorities change, and I'm still here. As I recently began to read my sister's blog, I realized that I'd been using my location in the Midwest to take the easier path when it comes to sustainable living. Somehow in the midst of the last eight years I managed to ignore much of my left-leaning, tree-hugging, planet-loving roots, and I want to find them again.
When I decided to start up my own blog, friends asked me "what will you blog about?" This seems like an innocent enough question, but for me this was curiously hard to answer. Here's what I finally came up with.
- I will establish my goals for sustainable living, document my progress, and share the trials and tribulations I expect as I reduce my ecological footprint;
- I will help other people, even in some small way, understand why living more sustainably not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do; and
- I will use this blog and my relationships with other bloggers as a support-network, a fall-back, if and when I find myself slipping backwards or at a loss for how to move forward.
