Getting close to the end…9 more days to go on the Sustainability Challenge. I am looking forward to reviewing my blog posts from start to finish and seeing all the stuff I learned from this process.
Recap of the past week
Last week I talked about having two types of goals for this week:
- Mental health sustainability goals: stuff to help recover my mental health, even if it’s stuff I have talked about before so doesn’t meet the requirements of this 100 Day Challenge. I set out 7 goals as part of this: shower every day, clean the kitchen and living room every day, eat when hungry and stop when full, exercise every day, make a positive contribution to someone else’s mental health on an interpersonal level, do the exercises from Active hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone, and do some kind of activism around the mental health system and the need for respectful, accessible mental health services.
- Other sustainability actions: make sure I’m doing something every day to fulfill the rules I set out for myself in this Challenge (1 new thing every day towards sustainability, no repeats). My starting list was: Create a balanced structured weekday schedule, max one evening activity (aiming to go to Black Seas: How Migrant Justice has Failed African Refugees), work on my draft chapter for the Trans* Buddhist anthology, and read Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations (edited by Leanne Simpson).
So how did it go?
Mental health sustainability
- Daily showering: I didn’t shower every day, but did manage to do it 6 out of the 7 days, which is a vast improvement over the previous week. And I actually put on clean clothes some days, which hasn’t happened in a while. Progress!
- Daily cleaning of kitchen/living room: I managed this for the living room but not the kitchen. Cooking and cleaning is something I really enjoy doing but when I’m struggling with mental health find it difficult to handle all of the steps involved in cooking so tend to just eat stuff that I don’t have to cook (like massive amounts of bread and peanut butter). When I don’t cook I’m much less likely to clean the kitchen so there were a few days where my sweet spousey cooked, and I just let the dishes sit there. This week I really noticed that when I have a reasonable schedule it is so much easier for me to do stuff than when I have to be spontaneous.
- Eat when hungry and stop when full: Ok, I knew this wasn’t likely to be an easy one. But I did do it one day, which is better than zero days. And it’s something to continue to work on, for sure. I also noticed that I’ve become more secretive about eating which is part of a binge pattern for me. So, also back to the drawing board about eating with other people, or at least out in the open where other people can see me.
- Daily exercise: My goal was to do some kind of exercise in addition to daily dog & spouse walks. I biked 4 days and did yoga 5 days, and am really happy with that. And, it was a good reality check on how much strength, balance and overall fitness I’ve lost in the past couple months since I stopped running – couldn’t do some of the balance poses that require holding body weight for a short period of time, which was a surprise. Good to know.
- Contribute to someone else’s mental health: I had a few interactions with various people struggling with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and panic disorder. Am happy with how the conversations went and hope that I did make some kind of difference. And wow, did I ever benefit from talking about agoraphobia and panic disorder with an old acquaintance who I had tea with this week – they have a lot of the same stuff going on as I do, but they’ve been dealing with it for 20 years – so much that I can learn from them and it really helped me feel less isolated and…well, crazy — to find out that someone who I really respect as an activist and a human being has experienced the same things.
- Did not do the exercises from Active hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy, and I’ve run out of library renewals, so will put it on my “do at a later time” library list.
- Mental health activism: Oops, I totally forgot about this one. Nope!
Other sustainability actions this week (Challenge actions – something new)
First, the stuff I had planned:
- I did indeed create a structured weekday schedule, and followed it Mon & Tues and it worked really well. One of my main goals has been to get back to being able to volunteer with Mother Felker Farms and that work happens in the morning, so my schedule is structured around mornings outside and afternoons inside. Which was a good reality check on the days that I did it of how much time I’ve been spending inside online, because wow, when I don’t do that I quickly get really behind on all my computer work. Anyway…so stuck with the schedule for 2 days, then got wrapped up in doing some work on an Indigenous solidarity “No consent, no LNG” event (more on that below) and neglected all the other stuff on my to do list as well as spending way too much time on the computer. But even though that type of intensive computer time is not healthy or sustainable, it was OK in the short term and didn’t totally tank my mental health, so yay.
- Max one evening activity: The intention behind this was to try to improve my sleep schedule. I generally don’t sleep well and wake up really early, so when I am doing stuff in the evenings can quickly get sleep deprived. This week the way things unfolded with the Indigenous solidarity event there was some stuff that needed doing that conflicted with the evening event I had planned to go to, so decided to let go of the evening event. And it confirmed for me that my mental health is way better when I don’t do stuff in the evenings. So, that’s something I’ll need to continue to look at going forward – how much evening stuff I can actually sustain (a lot of the stuff I want to do happens in the evenings, e.g., activist events, Zen sits).
- I drafted and put out for feedback a draft piece for two local art projects — All Bodies Are Good Bodies , a fundraiser for the Vancouver Island PWA Society, and Free All Bodies. The feedback has been great and I’ll be working on revising the piece as a chapter for the Trans* Buddhist anthology (so finally did some work towards that!).
- Started reading Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations (edited by Leanne Simpson).
And the spontaneous stuff:
- No consent, no LNG! The “BC” (settler) government has been pushing hard for extraction and sale of liquefied natural gas for sale in Asia. Large companies and global investors are being vigorously courted to build pipelines, processing plants, and shipping terminals for export. As of September 2015, 20 LNG proposals had been announced – if approved this will mean massive fracking in Treaty 8 lands, pipeline construction through multiple Indigenous territories in the north, and construction of new plants and terminals on Indigenous territories on the coast. As the BC government has ignored its legal, political and ethical obligation to obtain consent to use of Indigenous territories, and industry contractors have attempted to start work without Indigenous consent, Indigenous people have set up camps at Lax U’u’la, Madii Lii, and Unist’ot’en to protect their territories from trespass and damage. These camps have continued despite harassment and threats by industry contractors. So, when it was announced that there would be a pro-LNG lunch for government and industry reps here in Victoria it was a great opportunity for a solidarity action. Very amazing speakers Mary Vickers (Heiltsuk) and Charles Elliott (W̱SÁNEĆ – Tsartlip) were present in person, and Chief Yahaan Donnie Wesley (Tsimshian) and Richard Wright (Gitxsan) were able to join by phone from, respectively, Lax U’u’la and Madii Lii. I was also very grateful to learn from working with the organizers who did an amazing job pulling things together and MC’ing. LNG is new to me so I spent some time learning about it before the event to produce a flyer for the event, and am happy to send the flyer by email if anyone is interested in reading more…
- Donated funds to support the Medicine Drive for the Unist’ot’en Camp.
- Put out an invitation to my sangha to go see a local screening of This Changes Everything, based on Naomi Klein’s book about climate change. The film re-imagines the challenge of climate change, presenting portraits of 7 communities around the globe and asking the question: What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world? Thus far it’s looking like 14 people are going to go together, yay! Hopefully this will help with my longer-term goal of creating some kind of structure within our sangha to explore both environmental and social responsibility within the community (e.g., ways to reduce our carbon footprint as a sangha) and also provide a way for people to learn from and support each other to engage in activism from a practice perspective.
- Connected with a local trans health researcher who is interviewing trans people and primary health care providers about best practices in the primary care setting. Looking forward to meeting in the upcoming week to learn more about her work, talk about my personal experiences as a trans person in the health care system, and share some of the lessons learned from past work I’ve done in this field.
- Watched a live stream of the last in Our Place’s 3-part series Transformation Through First Nations History. Gwawaenuk Hereditary Chief Dr. Robert Joseph spoke about reconciliation and the importance of engaging in sacred, respectful dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to transform the relationship. The event was at First Metropolitan United Church and apparently the church will be putting out a DVD of all three events in the series – this is the only one I was able to watch so am thinking about buying the DVD, and potentially doing a community screening and/or donating to the library.
Looking ahead to the next week
This is my last full week of the 100 Day Sustainability Challenge – wow!
Still a bit shaky, but I feel like I’m on the right track with mental health sustainability and am going to continue with many of the things I started last week – consistent yoga practice, structured weekday schedule, taking care of my body and our house, working on eating when hungry and stopping when full, keeping evening stuff to a minimum to try to get sufficient sleep, etc. Am also aiming to start running again this week. I have a terrific running group of online folks who all started half marathon training together in April, and even though our official training program has finished we have decided to continue to stay connected and support each other to keep setting well-being goals and do accountability check-ins with each other.
This will be a busy week catching up on Zenwest volunteer work that I neglected last week, and also busy work in the garden (autumn waits for no person), so it will be interesting to see what things I can come up with to continue to do new things each day. I am not going to set specific goals, but have a few things in the calendar to provide some structure. Mostly I just want to buckle down and get regular work done, so will likely try to find some small things to do this week.
I will do the usual weekly report next weekend, and then will take some time in the following week to review and reflect on the 100 days as a whole. It’s been an amazing process of going from having a very tiny, constricted life to having tons of new relationships and opportunities to do thing and so appreciate the many people that have been part of that process!
And what about you?
I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?
Have a great week!
stand up eko 