I find myself intrigued by people who live differently than the mainstream in various ways, and it certainly has affected the way that we live. The internet is really such a good resource for things like that, opening my eyes to ideas I never would have thought of or never would have realized people do. This could cover a very large range of topics here but I’ll try to keep it brief.
Really the crux is living intentionally, and choosing to live a certain way rather than just doing what is normally done because you don’t bother to decide for yourself what you want. (How very Thoreau-like, isn’t it?)
The sort of ‘natural living’ concept is awfully broad and full of individual interpretations, but I’d say we try to be somewhere in there. I’m still figuring out where I think we should be and how we should do things, and of course as life changes the choices we make change too. I’ve learned to set very little in stone, because what works at one time may not work at another, and we learn new things and try new things it all changes.
I was reading about this family that lived without electricity for over two years and all the things they learned to do without. They now do have it, but grow most of their own food, trade services with neighbors to get things they need, etc. Like I said, I find this sort of thing intriguing. I don’t think I’ll ever be at that point, but some of those principles I think are very admirable and I like to incorporate them somewhat.
Reading about Waldorf philosphies and the idea of having natural materials (wood, cotton, silk) in toys for children really resonates with me. I cook a lot of food from scratch, though that varies with how much I feel like I can handle at any given time. It’s just a process, and it’s interesting to me how when I read about things some of it just feels right. I suspect this interest somewhere deep in me to do things a little out of the mainstream comes from my grammom through my mom, both of whom have their own cool things they do out of the mainstream. (My grammom, for example, does woodworking and has an awesome wood stove to heat her house, which she designed and built. And the idea of cloth diapering came from my mom, who did it in varying degrees with all of us.)
Anyway, all that said, we’re not really ready to go too far out of ‘normal’. When we moved we didn’t get cable as an experiment, and we do sometimes miss it. So we’ll see on that one. And I may try to eschew TV and such (my feelings on media could be a very long post that no one wants to read, and I don’t want to be so opinionated on that anyway), but then the phone or internet (well, internet on the phone) is omnipresent. And, honestly, I like nice things. I think the people who live in old farmhouses are cool, but I could never do it. I like clean and the conveniences of the modern world. Like washing machines. So am I contradictory? Probably. Who isn’t? But maybe it’s a matter of incorporating principles more than adopting full lifestyle changes? I don’t know. We’re working on it. And someday, maybe, we’ll arrive where we want to be. But of course like many things the point (the growth, the aim) is in the journey, not the destination.



















