Insight Into the Born Again Green Mind

Just a moment. I grabbed it, quick, before it slipped away. Halfway between the kitchen and my office. Empty space. Vertigo. I could go shopping, get some action in. Quick remedy for transient un-ease. No. It doesn’t work any more. A vision of sisters moving amidst racks of clothes. And my heart sinks. The absence of substance is not that bad. After all.

Do you have such moments?

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Birds Moment

Out to get the Sunday papers, I am welcomed by the sound of birds singing high up in the bare trees across the street. Soon I hear a symphony, of birds far and near, competing for my attention. And the thought, what would happen if, one day, all the birds vanished?

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Nice Mommy

‘Mom, can we heat the hot tub? My friends are coming over.‘ I said yes at once. And then, almost in the same breath, this whole monologue in my head. ‘Not exactly green. Big time indulgence. Didn’t I go through all those carbon calculators this morning? But then I want to please her, there is no way I am going to say no. I am tired of setting limits. Tonight, I want to be Nice Mommy. The hell with global warming. Plus a couple hours of hot tub are not going to make a difference.’ I can hear Green Guru’s admonitions, ‘You are being a hypocrite. You are all talk. You say you want to be green, but look at you, you can’t say no to her.’ I hear, I know, and there is no way I am not going to be sweet. I bask in the moment. The sound of four girls laughing, talking, in the hot tub.

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Categories and Tags

It is one thing to deliver content, and another to organize it in a way that is consumable by readers. I had been so busy writing, that I had lost track of the most important person, you, the reader of this blog. Something had to be done. I just went through my entire blog, reassigning tags and categories, to better help sort through all the information. The main challenge was deciding on which categories and how many? Looking at other green blogs, people are all over the place. Some are using tags as categories. Some have short lists, others super long ones. Some category names make sense, others don’t. I decided to do my own thing, and think first of the main topics I like to cover in this blog.

1. Blogging: I did not plan on writing on my experience as a blogger, but it is turning out to be an important part of my life as a Green Girl Wannabe
2. Ecopsychology: The main focus and raison d’ etre for the La Marguerite blog. A little talked about part of the solution to the climate crisis. Basically, the study of how personal psychology affects human behavior towards the environment. Including strategies to induce positive behavioral changes.
3. French life: Because I am French, and references to my French experiences permeate this blog. I find it interesting to compare the two cultures, French and American. And of course, I am a bit biased . . . the French always end up looking good!
4. Green domesticity: Mostly my interactions with Green Guru, my husband, and in residence green conscience. A narrative has been developing, at times funny, and always a source of insights into the dynamics of families, and how these impact environmental choices.
5. Green solutions: An emerging category, and one I want to spend more time on in the future. Separately from this blog, I am working on a locally based green initiative. I will keep you posted.
6. Internet: Living in Silicon Valley, I cannot ignore this most incredible tool, without which this blog would not exist in the first place. Things I love: social networks, wikis, blogs, green Internet solutions, anything new under the cybersun.
7. Thoughts on society: The place for deeper articles on the macro problems, global solutions, comparisons between cultures, modern thinkers. An opportunity to cross-pollinate and tap into my multidisciplinary background as an engineer, marketer, advertiser, shrink, and artist.
8. Zen moments: To capture all those times when I become zen, and go down, down, to that still place, where things just are.

That’s eight categories total. A good, manageable number. For other bloggers, interested in going through this same exercise, I would like to share a resource I just found through Daily Blog Tips, an article from Engtech, “Climbing out of Category Hell”. I wish I had read it earlier. There are a number of things I did not do, did not know to do, and should have done, to minimize fallouts from my ambitious reorganization. I will only mention one, ‘to turn trackbacks off before you start reorganizing your categories or you’re going to spam the crap out of yourself as you resave all of your posts’. Ouch . . . I ask all to forgive me. This may explain the mysterious fall in Technorati ranking from the last few days.

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Mess

Every time I look up, the pile of dirty dishes is daring me with all its mess. I worked late last night , and have not yet summoned the courage to clean up. One day’s worth. Where to start? The kitchen is starting to smell. The kitchen is also my favorite workspace. I get lost in the computer for a while. Next time I emerge, the dishes are still there, and the smell, too. I realize the problem is not going to go away, unless I do something about it. The sooner, the better. The hardest is leaving what I am doing, and making my way to the sink. Once I turn on the faucet, I am committed. Of course, if I had not let all the dishes pile up in the first place, I would not have had to deal with such a mess.

I am bringing up the dishes story, because it feels so much like the global warming problem. With one difference. The planet is a big living space, and there are many of us, who do not have to stare at the emerging mess.

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Lookout

‘In the Clouds, Sitting Watch Over Paradise‘, the front page article in yesterday’s New York Times, introduced me to the fascinating world of Mike Gates, one of the remaining 800 lookouts in the United States. Mr. Gates lives high up in a shack atop the mountain. His job is to spend most of his waking hours, scanning the Lake Tahoe landscape for possible fire smoke. Like him, I have been spending a lot of my time lately, scanning the landscape, and looking out for evidence. The only difference is, I am looking inside, trying to stay mindful of all the thoughts, feelings, that keep me in a state of Green Girl Wannabe.

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Inertia

Definition of ‘inertia’: a descriptive term for that property of a body which resists change in its motion. I feel trapped in my physical body, weighed down by the force of inertia. And you are asking me to change? The law of physics, states that there needs to be a greater external force, in order for me to oppose inertia.

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