I haven't posted for a while mainly because life became chaotic yet nothing was happening for a while. Now I see that the chaos was really more like a bunch of puzzle pieces coming together for the next part of this lovely adventure. The camper is safely parked on a farm in Upstate New York, the title arrived on October 2nd (yaaay!) and Farmer Ben helped me to find a mechanic and a carpenter to help me with the transmission overhaul and the interior renovation. Whew! Then things came to a screeching halt. No money.
Having no money is not really a tragedy for me. There was a time, a couple of years ago, when I would have been sweating through the nights, awakening with heart palpitations and angst. Now, I just see it as another problem that will take some time and imagination to solve. My basic needs are being met (rent, food, transportation). The renovation will have to wait as I save up the money to finish it. Meanwhile, I am turning my attention to other parts of my happiness lifestyle re-design.My lifestyle re-design has three parts: How I care for and nourish my embodied soul, how I give and receive value in the world, and how I shelter myself. My camper belongs in the third category and so I am parking that one for a while to focus on the other two.
Sometime around four months ago, I suddenly found myself becoming obsessed with the idea of raw veganism. I cannot remember when exactly I first saw a Youtube video about the 80/10/10 diet. I'm actually pretty sure that it was last year, actually. The channel is RawRadientHealth.
One channel lead to other channels. I watched a few videos and figured the whole think was some kind of scam. There was just too much similarity between channels, some people were eating nothing but bananas, and the production values were just too good (See FullyRawKristina and MeganElizabeth). It seemed like one big coordinated effort to sell Doug Graham's 80/10/10 book. Then I saw this video from RawRadientHealth explaining why Natasha St. Michael, the host, found it necessary to start eating animal products. With that, I let the raw thing go.
In June of this year I began looking more earnestly at how I care for and nourish my body. The videos I'd seen before began to pop up again as I searched for information on the internet. Soon I was watching every video I could - especially from the FullyRawKristina channel. Gradually my skepticism began to fade. While I had reservations about very long term raw diets I decided to do a hard reboot of my entire way of thinking about food. I decided to go on a raw juice feast. For forty days.
I am currently on day eight. I decided to wait for at least seven days before blogging about it (although I have been posting pictures on Facebook - but for friends only). I really didn't want to have another project of mine start up only to die an ignoble public death. I'm all for experimenting (obviously) and I embrace the wisdom in quickly letting things go when I find that they do not serve me. Still, I do feel a responsibility to follow through on what I start - especially when I publicly commit to it. I wanted some certainty that this would be a journey to celebrate.I started on Friday morning, October 18, 2013. I don't teach on Fridays and I knew it would be important for me to have as long as possible to adjust to raw juices before even trying to return to civil society. My next class was on Monday night. I figured that nearly four days would get me past the worst of it. We all have plans.
I'll write about what happened in my next blog. For now, I'm going to overcome the second reason I haven't posted anything in a while.
I've dodged posting for the last month because I want to transition to doing more videos but I keep coming up with reasons why things aren't just perfect for that! I've decided to finally stop it and just do it! So here is a little video about my trip to the farmer's market for local organic produce.
