January 28th, 2009 by Chris Eng

I’ve kept to-do lists on and off for year, and while I haven’t used them in any organized fashion in the last year or two, I thought if I was turning over a new leaf this might be the time to do it. What I need, I thought, is a pocket-sized book—preferably one divided up by days, in case I need to make notes in advance. Yeah, a day-planner, but which one? There’s plenty out there.

The first consideration (it being January and all) is one that’s on sale. The second is one that’s tasteful. The third is one that’s going to survive all year being tossed around in my bag. The winner? The Moleskine 2009 Pocket Diary—specifically, the one with a separate page for each day of the year:

It’s got an elastic to keep it shut tight and a ribbon bookmark to keep your place. Plenty of room on each page to jot down what I need to do (it’s divided in hourly gradiations, but I don’t use them for that—I’m not that anal), plus phone numbers, emails or whatever else needs jotting. It cost me $9 on sale (at 50% off), but I’ll happily be paying full price for it next year.

(And yes, that is a Sleater-Kinney sticker on it, because A) notebooks need stickers, and B) S-K are still teh awesome. For additional radness, check out Carrie Brownstein’s music blog Monitor Mix on the NPR site.)

January 25th, 2009 by Chris Eng

Yoda: “I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.”
Obi-Wan: “He will learn patience.”
Me: “Obi-Wan, you’d better be right, because my impatience is slowly creeping toward the far end of the spectrum.”

Just one of the many problems that Generations X-onward have had to contend with is that we’ve never had to wait for anything. Ever. That doesn’t sound like a problem, I know, but it means that we’ve been gifted with an extremely stunted sense of proportion. In the days before cell phones, if you wanted to talk to someone you had to wait until they were at home to call. No instant messaging, no texting, no emails. Before downloading, you had to wait until something was available to the mass market before you could listen to/watch/read it—assuming you could find a store in your area that carried it. If you wanted to buy a house, you saved for a down-payment and talked to a loan officer at the bank.

Things have changed. Now we live in an age of immediate wish fulfillment. You want to talk to your friend? If they’re even slightly plugged-in, you can probably have everything but their precise GPS location at a moment’s notice—and maybe that too. Looking for that new album/movie/book? It’s as close as minutes, even seconds away online—less time than it would take to put on your shoes and coat if you were going to look for it in stores. And, up until recently in the States, you could write your own references for a mortgage with no money down. Why wait for anything? The world never stops rotating, and your life shouldn’t be dependent on things like the rising and setting of the sun. We’ve beaten the system; the rules no longer apply to us. In short, we want—and get—everything now.

I made a monumental life decision a few months back: to move out to the sticks and learn to garden and live naturally—so why don’t I get to do any of that immediately? I know I set a five year goal to own property, and it seemed reasonable at the time, but I want to be doing it now! What’s the hold-up?

Okay, I understand I can’t afford the property, but why can’t I go out and garden?! Oh yeah. The seasons. Right.

I learn skills primarily by doing. I love to read, but if I’m learning something physical I need some hands-on experience. And consequently, if I want to learn how to, say, garden, I have to get out there and work the soil myself. If I’m not doing that—if I’m just reading about gardening, I feel in some regards like I’m not doing anything at all. It’s not the most reasonable perspective—there’s a hell of a lot of information out there that I could be assimilating and keeping on file—but having chosen my new path, I want to set it into motion. It’s more than a little unfortunate on the timing front, though, what with planting season still another few months off. Still, I’m trying to set the prejudices of a generation and deal with the fact I’m not going to be learning much horticulture until the spring.

Which brings us back to patience. The world doesn’t stop spinning, but it does rotate on an annual clock and my constantly stimulated North American, 21st Century, ‘Net savvy self is going to have to get used to the cycles of the year again, because when I plant my first crop (wherever that may be, I don’t have a yard at the moment), I’ll have to wait for the plants to sprout, then grow, then ripen. And if I haven’t shored up my expectations by that point, there’s going to be a rude awakening—one I’m sure I’ll end up texting you about.

January 14th, 2009 by Chris Eng

If I could spend all day fucking around, surfing the ‘net and reading, I would. This isn’t an exaggeration—I’m a world-class procrastinator. If there’s something that needs to be finished in a timely fashion, it can wait until I’ve finished the next Castlevania level or get caught up on Battlestar Galactica. I’ve tried various methods over the years to motivate myself and get things done early, but none of them have ever worked. As a result, I remained an undisciplined slacker past the point I thought it possible to get away with.

But the winds of change might finally be blowing. Over the past month or so, two things have occurred to shift the balance of power toward motivation. The first is simply the will to change. I’m tired of the way I’ve been living and I want to get more done. Continuing the way I have been isn’t going to give me the time I need in order to complete everything I need to work on and learn, so obviously a change is in order. Which is fine as far as it goes, but wishing for change isn’t gonna do jack unless there’s a plan to back it up—luckily I’ve got one.

Half of you may start rolling your eyes when you read this, but here’s my simple plan (which has worked so far, I might add): get up at 7:30am. “Chris,” you say, “you want to grow and raise your own food. That’s what a farmer does. If you were a farmer you’d have to get up a hell of a lot earlier than that.” This is true. The crucial difference is I’m not a farmer; I’m a freelance writer and comic shop employee at the moment, and getting up early doesn’t automatically mesh itself with those lines of work. But I’m taking care of the dishes and laundry on a daily basis, as well as studying and getting my writing done—all of which can be accomplished by noon if I get up at 7:30. On the days when I’m at the comic shop it means I can have everything done by the time I have to leave for my shift. On the days I don’t, my afternoons are free to do chores or whatever other projects I have going on. Which is pretty awesome.

It feels good too. I have more energy since I started my new schedule and I’m genuinely getting more done. It’s not like the urge to screw around isn’t there anymore, but I’m able to put it in its place thanks to a positive routine. And sure, some days it takes me until afternoon to get everything done I wanted to, but I figure that happens to everyone sometimes. I’m getting a lot done aside from that; the bar is leaning much more heavily toward productivity than it was last summer.

Do I feel slightly smug about my newfound drive? I think I’m entitled to a little of that. But in the interests of politeness, I’ll just keep it to myself. If you need me, I’ll be over by the sink, drying dishes and chuckling quietly with self-satisfaction.

*heh heh* Awesome.

January 12th, 2009 by Chris Eng

My grandpa passed away this morning. He died doing what he loved doing—sitting in his chair, reading a book.

In a blog about trying to figure out how to live a sustainable and environmentally sound life, it might not be immediately apparent why I’m discussing something so, well, personal. But it’s because my grandfather was inspirational to me.

He grew up on a farm in rural Alberta and came of age during the war. In fact, he lied about his age and enlisted the first chance he got, looking for a chance to get out of the Prairies. He got it—he was sent to the front lines of Europe where he served his tour, managing to make it out with nothing more serious than deafness in one ear from the falling bombs. He never talked about the war; that wasn’t something he liked to brag about—it was something he did because it had to be done. He honoured those he fought with later in his life, though, by mounting and displaying their medals. This past Remembrance Day, a selection of those he’d mounted belonging to female freedom fighters was displayed in the lobby of the Provincial Museum. He wanted to make sure they got their due.

And it was that kind of tenacity I hope will guide me through the rest of my life. His drive to do the right thing, embodied, in this case, by making sure the next generation appreciates the sacrifices of the previous ones. As well, he clung to his passions with an intensity I hope I will be able to match. He bicycled around New Zealand in his 70s and kept biking until his arthritis got too bad. His love of the outdoors never waned. And he never gave up his love of reading. Maybe that’s genetic.

Two months ago I got my first new tattoo in the better part of a decade. Its of a WWII-era pin-up girl with the motto “Touch not the cat bot a glove.” The motto is Clan McIntosh’s—my grandpa’s side of the family. The girl is based on the wartime tattoo my grandpa got on his forearm. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the fact that he never got to see it before he died—I was planning a visit to show him at the end of the month—but I’m glad, at least, that my mom told him about it. It’s important that, although we never really shared that many heartfelt moments, at the end he knew I was proud of him.

Goodbye, grandpa. I miss you; I love you.

Colin McIntosh, R.I.P.

January 9th, 2009 by Chris Eng

Well, my goal to get better at cooking has gotten off to a good start. On New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d celebrate by making dinner for Carla (an event that happens much too infrequently). So, early on in the evening we went to the seemingly only supermarket in the city that was open (the SuperValu at 1st and Commercial) and I picked out some ingredients. We trundled them home in the snow and with just a little bit of effort I managed to put this together:

It's chorizo, zucchini, mushrooms and peppers in a tomato sauce served over rice, with oysters. I did the actual cooking but Carla hung out and helped me with the fiddly bits, like how to get the best results when frying sausage, which spices to add, and at which points to put in what vegetables. Those are the things which (in many ways) simply require memorization and which I don't have the background or experience to know. For instance, putting the zucchini in at the beginning (I did not do this) will give you a main course that is, for want of a more perfect phrase, seriously friggin’ gross-ass. Carla knows all that back to front and was happy to impart her wisdom.

And when all was said and done, it ended up pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. Still pot/pan food is kind of what I’m good at already. If it can be chopped it up and simmered on the stovetop, I can improvise with it and come up with something tasty (even if I do need advice now and then), so I wasn’t really stretching my wings too much with this one. What is really daunting to me, and which will be the focus of my next personal challenges, is the range. I want to start making broiled and baked things, both sweet and savoury. I’m going to start with a cake this month. I’ve never made a cake before and I figure it’s a good introduction to baking. I’m sure I’ll move on to gougères and spanakopita next month.

While we’re on the subject, though, I did make my first loaf of bread the other day. Okay okay, it was in the bread maker, but still—first loaf! And edible! Tasty, edible bread! At home! In, like, ten minutes (of prep time)! And I don’t have to bug Carla to do it! No, it’s not like it was ever a complicated procedure, but it’s one of those things that you have to be shown and I just never quite got around to asking. But I’m on the cooking path now and I will work my magic with the bread maker. And someday… someday I will make bread without it!

But, y’know, in the meantime I’ll whip up some cake.

January 7th, 2009 by Chris Eng

Watch Escape to River Cottage - Episode 1 in Faith Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

 
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been living my dream life for over a decade. Tired of city life and the London rat race (where he was a celebrity chef and professional food critic) he fled to Dorset in 1997 and moved into a small country estate named River Cottage with the intention of living (as he calls it) a downsized life, where almost everything he consumes is either grown or bred in a natural setting. Since 1999, he’s put out several River Cottage TV series, books and has founded his own restaurant and grocery store in the UK.

The first of the TV series, Escape to River Cottage, documents his initial transition to rural living and features several instances of earnest ineptitude. It’s not that Fearnley-Whittingstall is incompetent, he just doesn’t know his way around country life and is enthusiastically determined to learn much of it in front of the camera—an attitude which has documented him falling flat on his face in a few different ventures. It is, however, much the same as if you or I headed to the countryside tomorrow, set in our mind that we were going to start raising pigs—we would quite possibly be able to do it, but we’d make perfect asses of ourselves while learning the proper techniques. (As a side note, I’m pretty sure no matter how much of a n00b I was I wouldn’t enlist a couple of hippies with crystals to try and drive away my mouse infestation using telepathy. I would, however, use fresh roadkill as he did in one episode. I mean, if you’re raising your own meat but turn up your nose at a wild animal carcass simply because it was already dead, well, that belies some weird double standards.)

His capacity to fearlessly dive in and do what needs to be done makes Fearnley-Whittingstall the perfect role-model for people seeking a downsized or greenpunk life. It’s exceptionally daunting to look at the vast amounts of information you are supposed to know to live a self-sufficient life, and option paralysis while trying to determine where to begin could stop you before you start. Fearnley-Whittinstall takes the opposite tack, however, and simply jumps in with both feet. Anything I need to know, he seems to say, I can just pick up along the way.

Still, it can’t help but be noted (both through his general demeanor and ostentatious last name), that Fearnley-Whittingstall belongs to the upper class. He also had the privilege of being a celebrity chef before moving to the country, and as a result one wonders how much of a factor his affluence played on his ability to “downsize.” It’s easy to take risks and jump in with both feet when the only major potential consequence is you’ll have to spend more money. If you screw up a year’s worth of crops (which he doesn’t), all you have to do is go out and buy some groceries and wait for the next season. People in lesser situations would be forced to work around that fact or go without, rather than simply picking up whatever was needed.

But at the end of the day, his ability to not worry about risk or cost or making a fool of himself is what makes Escape to River Cottage so endearing and inspiring. He walks into nearly every situation completely enthusiastically and possibly unprepared. I don’t have any illusions that when I finally secure my own piece of property, I’m going to walk onto it like some seasoned farmhand and set about cementing my new life with an Errol Flynn-like swagger. *cough* No. It’s gonna be a lot of trial and error and making a complete ass of myself, and that’s why I’ll keep looking to Fearnley-Whittingstall for guidance on immersing myself in a new (and yet utterly old) way of life.

(The video at the top is of episode one. If you want to buy the DVDs—bearing in mind they won’t work with most North American systems—you can do so here.)

January 6th, 2009 by Chris Eng

I am a procrastinator at heart. I dawdle, dilly-dally and drag my feet if it means that I can put off until tomorrow what I really should be getting done today—doing my writing/housework/errands. So, this past week, in the interests of protecting me (or, more importantly, my time) from myself, I’ve taken the step of blocking myself from a few of my favourite time-wasting websites (notably Facebook, Livejournal and few torrent sites) between 8:00am and 8:00pm daily.

I know fully half the day seems like a drastic measure, but there were a few solid reasons I chose those hours:

1) It’s the time Carla’s usually at work (on the days she’s working), so it’s the time best served by being productive.
2) If I want to see what happened during the night on any of my blocked sites, I have to get up before 8am (or wait until evening again). This is an incentive for me not to sleep in (or at least a trade-off if I want to).
3) There’s generally nothing on Facebook that can’t wait until after 8pm for me to see it.

Having chosen the time I wanted to set aside and I sites I wanted to block, I installed the Leechblock add-on for Firefox and was amazed by how simple its setup was. Under the preferences, you tell it which sites you want blocked and it will either block them between two set points on the days you specify (like I have—8:00 to 8:00, 7 days a week) or block them after a certain amount of surfing within a time frame (i.e. 10 minutes per hour, an hour per day, etc.). On top of that, if you don’t trust yourself not to go in and turn it off, you can lock yourself out of the preferences while it’s running. I don’t trust myself; I’m fond of this option.

I know the internet’s just one of dozens of distractions that conspire to keep me from knuckling down on a daily basis, but I figure if one free add-on can keep my daytime hours clear of the most omnipresent and invasive distraction in my life, that’s good enough for me. More time to deal with stuff that matters. And I promise I’ll read all your status updates later tonight.

January 4th, 2009 by Chris Eng

Being reflective and resolute at the end of December is something that many (perhaps even ‘most’) people do. Not me. I tend to ignore the end of the year in favour of being as reflective and resolute as possible during the other 51 weeks. I mean, if there’s something you want to do in regards to bettering yourself or your life, why not just do it? Why wait for an artificial opportunity like New Years Day? It’s just the same as any other day, except you need to put up a new calendar and are possibly nursing a hangover. Still, in the interests of hopefully gleaning some new perspective, I’m going to take a brief look back over 2008 and as much of a look to 2009 as my crystal ball can muster.

 
2008: The Year That Wasn’t… Then Was

To say there was an epiphany involved is overstating things, but the transition from my mindset at the beginning of the year to where I am now is certainly dramatic. I rang in 2008 at a job that paid well but was ultimately unfulfilling on any kind of creative or personal level: I answered phones at a plumbing supply company. I’m not going to shit on the job itself—I actually liked most of the people I worked with, and it certainly wasn’t hard—but during the year I worked there I barely wrote anything and any energy I might have had to devote to the other pressing matters in my life (home, wife, etc.) had completely disappeared. I was working 40 hours a week and spent the bulk of the extra money I was earning on books (that I may or may not have been really enthusiastic about), food (both at lunch and for dinner a couple of times a week) and booze (even though I’m not really a drinking man). I was spinning my wheels and was stressed out.

There were a few highlights, for sure—going to Bowen Island for the better part of a week with Carla was certainly one of them (even if it decided to rain for most of the time we were there)—but the internal pressure kept rising until I knew I had to quit and do something else. Now just for the record, I don’t love retail—not at all—but I know it and I’m certainly not bad at it, so despite the fact that retail is a step back from some of the grown-up jobs I’ve held (Editor-In-Chief, scriptwriter), when I was offered a job in a comic shop a few months back I was happy to take it. Yep, it was part-time and the pay was a substantial step down from what I’d been making, but I needed the space and the change.

See, while I was answering phones, the undone housework started to accumulate at an alarming rate and since Carla was the one with the career-oriented job (retail manager), I figured that if something was going to give, this was one that I was going to have to take for the team. Working part-time would allow me to take care of the dishes/laundry/whatever and allow me the time to do some writing and get back to working on stuff I love.

And that is more or less precisely what working at the comic shop has done for me over the past few months. While my writing projects haven’t all turned out the way I might have thought or hoped, that’s not the fault of my job, which has given me the time to work at them and explore them. And if you consider this blog to be a writing project, then one of them has turned out fairly well so far. The housework is mostly caught up, and I’ve managed to get some home improvement projects (The Purge I & II, most notably) underway.

But it was the transition I had around October that was the turning point for the year. In comparison, everything else is window-dressing. Reading The Long Emergency gave me a new perspective on my life and the world, and the chink it put into my mental makeup allowed other ideas to take hold—ideas that challenged my my views on Convenience vs. Self-reliance and put a severe crimp in my lifelong collection of ’stuff.’ And the more I talked things through with Carla, the more it turned out that we were both on the same page. The things it turned out I had come to value are things that she valued as well. Our lives had changed direction, but we were doing it together. Moreover, for all the work that our new lifestyle would entail, it seemed like an adventure and fun to boot, and if you can manage to inject that into a scenario where you’re stepping up your responsibility to yourself and the world at large, I’d say that’s a winning combination.

 
2009: The Road Ahead

As stated previously, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, because I don’t believe that a lifestyle change based on swapping calendars is as binding as one you make to yourself in the interests of bettering yourself. If you don’t have the resolve to change your life at the point when you notice something is wrong, then you have to ask yourself how badly you want that change.

But I do have a couple of resolutions for 2009, and with luck and a bit of determination I’ll keep them going through the years to come as well:

I resolve to take this new-found drive and run with it as hard as I can for the duration of the year. I don’t want to stop or slow down; I don’t want to get back into the slow lane. I want to learn a million things about living that I didn’t know before. I want to learn to be a better cook; I want to learn to be better organized; I want to keep making my already fantastic marriage even better, and I want to be one step (or 20%, considering the five year goal) closer to owning that dream property.

 
Coda

Years like 2008, with all its attendant highs and lows and revelations, don’t come along that often. I’m pretty sure that 2009 won’t be as dramatic a year for me, but that’s fine—I’m on the right track now, so as long as I can happily (and non-dramatically) keep plugging forward, that’s fine. I know 2008 was pretty shite for a lot of people, and 2009 may or may not be worse (economically, climactically), but if you were one of them for whom it was, I hope this year holds a little of what 2008 did for me. Take care, everyone.

January 2nd, 2009 by Chris Eng

I try and keep a log (admittedly more mental than physical) of the songs and writings I find inspirational in working toward my greenpunk goals. ‘Shangri-La’ by the Kinks sums up my feelings on suburbia and its accompanying lifestyle better than most other works I can think of.

Now that you’ve found your paradise
This is your kingdom to command
You can go outside and polish your car
Or sit by the fire in your Shangri-La
Here is your reward for working so hard
Gone are the lavatories in the back yard
Gone are the days when you dreamed of that car
You just want to sit in your Shangri-La
 
Put on your slippers and sit by the fire
You’ve reached your top and you just cant get any higher
You’re in your place and you know where you are
In your Shangri-La
Sit back in your old rocking chair
You need not worry, you need not care
You cant go anywhere
Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La
 
The little man who gets the train
Got a mortgage hanging over his head
But he’s too scared to complain
‘Cause he’s conditioned that way
Time goes by and he pays off his debts
Got a TV set and a radio
For seven shillings a week
Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La
 
And all the houses in the street have got a name
‘Cause all the houses in the street they look the same
Same chimney pots, same little cars, same window panes
The neighbors call to tell you things that you should know
They say their lines, they drink their tea, and then they go
They tell your business in another Shangri-La
The gas bills and the water rates and payments on the car
Too scared to think about how insecure you are
Life ain’t so happy in your little Shangri-La
Shangri-La, Shangri-La la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
 
Put on your slippers and sit by the fire
You’ve reached your top and you just cant get any higher
You’re in your place and you know where you are
In your Shangri-La
Sit back in your old rocking chair
You need not worry, you need not care
You cant go anywhere
Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La

 
And just in case that needed any reinforcement, I’d like to cite Lili Taylor in Say Anything, who, in one of her Joe Songs, also summed up my feelings on the matter quite nicely.

That’ll never be me,
That’ll never be me,
That’ll never be, never be me, no.
 
That’ll never be me,
That’ll never be me,
That’ll never be, never be me, no
 
No. Never. No, never, ever, ever. Don’t you ever think it!

December 31st, 2008 by Chris Eng

So, I’m back. I know that I didn’t tell you I was leaving beforehand, but I was off jetsetting for the holidays… if hanging out and drinking with your in-laws in a suburb of Edmonton can be considered “jetsetting,” anyway. Let me check up on that and get back to you.

Still, despite the neverending parade of sugary baking and Sailor Jerry Rum dancing past my eyes (and into my stomach), there were a couple of things that added a touch of greenpunk to my Christmas-time. First, I got two different encyclopedias:

 
The one on the left—The Encyclopedia of Country Living—is pretty much indispensible reading for anyone considering going back to the land or just adopting a more greenpunk/D.I.Y. lifestyle. The one on the right—The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia—is indispensible reading for anyone who wants to know what Lando Calrissian and Admiral Daala have been doing lately. I’m sure there’s a greenpunk angle there if I look hard enough, but I’m too thrilled with it to bother.

I also, in a roundabout way (which involved a bookstore giftcard), received a copy of Nikki McClure’s Collect Raindrops, which is one of the most awesome and inspirational books I own. Every year she makes a calendar of paper cut art, with each month illustrating some aspect of simple living. Collect Raindrops assembles the best of her art from 1998 to 2007.

 
The other thing we got to do, which I haven’t done in years, is visit a farm. Carla’s grandfather owns a small farm in Whitecourt, so we drove out and spent an afternoon socializing and wandering around the property. It was nice and I was happy to have been able to spend some time there, as well as finally meet her grandpa.

As a final note, in case anyone had read my previous posts and was wondering—yes, the Star Wars Encyclopedia is both excellent and beautiful. Just thought I’d clear that up.