Day 98…Two more days! TWO MORE DAYS! I can definitely feel myself moving into winding-down mode with this project, wanting to look back over the entire 100 days and reflect on lessons learned.
In some ways I would have loved to have an Announcer Guy style Hollywood linear arc to this 100 Day Sustainability Challenge. Cue voice: “He used to be afraid to go outside (image of Eddie Vedder*, playing me, peeking through the blinds looking scared of the outside world). Then through the magical powers of activism he became…Super Tran!”
[* That casting’s for you, sweet spousey. Wait till you hit the love scene.]
The actual story of the 100 Day Sustainability Challenge:
There was a start, and there will be an end. And a whole lot of squiggle in between.
Recap of the past week
In my recap of Week #11 I mentioned having had a relapse of agoraphobia and outlining 5 things I needed to do to get back on track: go outside every day, reflect on stressors within my control, take responsibility for bailing on commitments, get back into an appropriate self-care routine (including saying no to new commitments so I have time to do self-care stuff), and set up regular appointments again with the fear specialist dude who I saw previously.
Now 3 weeks later, I can look back and be reminded that hey, if I don’t actually do what I know I need to do, there’s a good chance things will get worse. Not my first time around with that lesson, but a good reminder nonetheless. I am back to really small goals for outside time, like taking a 5 minute bus ride.
The question of how much effort to put into my own individual healing vs. stuff out in the world comes up again and again in my life. On the one hand it seems super self-indulgent (and frankly pretty boring) to put in the massive amount of self-care that seems to be needed if I want to be mentally well enough to be able to function out in the world. Part of me says fuck it, just figure out how to leave the house for the bare minimum – get groceries, walk the dog, go to the doctor/dentist, and go to my Zen sangha sits – and use the rest of my energy to work on stuff from home instead of expending it practicing things like taking the bus that, if I neglect them, I lose ground on the ability to do. But having those limitations means I can’t do certain kinds of things that I think are really needed in this world, like be in community and build relationships and do blockade actions. And of course there is financial survival. And whether it’s fair to sweet spousey and my family and friends to not make more of an effort to be well, as being somewhat crazy means I need a lot of help with things. And whether it is lazy and irresponsible to not make more of an effort.
So, mental health-wise more questions than answers this week.
Ironically, my Sustainability Challenge actions this week all relate to events that I would actually need to leave the house to do.
- Most of my Sustainability Challenge work this week related to planning an action to support the Regional Housing First initiative. Way back in Week #11 I mentioned signing a petition and writing letters to regional and municipal governments supporting a proposal for regional government to build 367 units of supported housing by 2018. Since that time 1 of the 13 municipalities that make up the regional government voted to support the proposal, and it’s going before the rest at a regional meeting on October 14.
As context, over the past 25 years Canada’s population increased by 30% while annual national investment in housing decreased by over 46%. This shortage of affordable housing plus other factors that have increased poverty mean that homelessness is on the rise. Rather than continue to sit around waiting for the federal government to live up to its responsibility to ensure housing for all, the proposal — co-drafted by the Capital Regional Hospital District (CRHD) Chair and Victoria mayor and councillors — suggests taking action now through borrowing funds to be serviced by a regional levy of ~$11 added to property taxes for house owners across the region.
Although this is a very mainstream proposal and one that should be easy to get behind, mayors and councillors for some of the municipalities have been saying they don’t have any homeless people in their municipality and this is just an urban core problem. So an ad hoc group of folks will be gathering outside the building just prior to the meeting, then go into the meeting to show CHRD reps that homelessness is an important issue to people across the region, and that the community supports this proposal as a step in the right direction.
So, this week I worked with a small group of people to plan the action, learned how to set up a Facebook event and created the event listing, created a poster and handbills, put together a list of groups to send event info and promo materials to, and did a bunch of outreach. I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way and lots of things I’d do differently next time around but am glad to have at least tried, however imperfectly. - Although I know that I need to say no to new opportunities (doh!), this week I agreed to work with a couple friends to help yes2scs put together a visual map of their approach to harm reduction. I love harm reduction work, and frankly would never turn down any opportunity to work with one of the yes2scs folks no matter what the project/issue (we have worked together lots in the past and I really respect his work), so there ya have it. I did at least manage to postpone getting going on it till next week.
- Approached a friend who lives in a collective house to see if they would be willing to host an anarchist seder in spring 2016. I haven’t done one of these since 2004 but won’t take much to tweak the haggadah from back then, which is based on the secular progressive haggadah I grew up with as a kid. My parents have come to past anarchist seders I’ve put on and it’s been really fun to have this continuity with them so am hoping they’ll be well enough to come in the spring.
- Looked into renting American Revolutionary, a documentary about brilliant activist Grace Lee Boggs who died October 5, age 100, and approached the aforementioned collective house to see if they want to do a film night. Really looking forward to watching this and talking about it with folks afterwards!
- Did some sleuthing for potential funding to support a local organization’s Indigenous women’s action group. The funder recently suspended all grants so they are scrambling for interim funding.
- Started reading about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP) to try to understand what some of the local impacts might be.
- Talked with my local MP and current NDP candidate Randall Garrison about my concerns around the NDP’s shift to the right and especially its emphasis on increasing middle class comfort (hello, the middle class is doing just fine on that front) and plan to increase funding for policing. Everything I’ve seen of Randall while he’s been my MP is that he works really hard and takes feedback seriously, and I really respect that despite being busy as hell with the campaign he has tried calling our house three times to follow up with me after I wrote expressing concerns and declining to put up a sign for his campaign.
- Donated to support a running buddy who has committed to running up to 500 miles (!) in 2016, to raise funds for charity:water which puts 100% of donations into community-based projects to build simple clean water technology (for accessible drinking water, safe sewage disposal, etc.). Go April!
- Worked with my sangha’s teacher to revamp our financial accessibility guidelines to further reduce barriers to participation. I’m proud that my sangha prioritizes making Zen practice accessible to everyone regardless of income!
It’s funny, this past week has felt like a total failure and write-off because my mental health has been so crappy and I’ve not succeeded in doing some of the basic life stuff I had set out to do. But putting together this list I can see that actually I did manage to do quite a bit of positive stuff. That is one of the helpful things about this Sustainability Challenge, as I can’t always trust my brain to accurately assess what is going on it does help to have an accountability process where I review each week and can find good things that happened every day.
Looking ahead
With two days left in this current Sustainability Challenge, I have started wondering about what is next. Is it a good idea to put another kind of structured challenge in place to keep momentum, or wait and see how things go?
In the half marathon training program I recently participated in, one of the coaches gave interesting advice about the cycle of goal setting and completion. After all the build up of working hard to reach a goal, once you actually reach it after the initial elation fades there’s often a let down period. It is an uncomfortable experience and many people try to avoid it by rushing to set a new goal. She suggested doing the opposite – let yourself actually experience the full cycle, including what happens after you achieve a goal. This made a lot of sense to me as I’ve experienced it with big political projects and race running. Reaching the 100 Day conclusion to this Sustainability Challenge doesn’t have that same feeling of intense buildup, but it is something I worked at nonetheless and so I do want to just take a bit of time afterwards to let the completion sink in. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to do sustainability work, just not necessarily rush to create a new structure for that work.
Leaving this space open means I can finish the next 2 days the same way I’ve done the rest of the challenge, by finding something new to do on Sunday and Monday, instead of being in a blur those days as I try to anticipate and scheme about what will happen next. So…here’s to Sunday and Monday! 🙂 I already have some great sustainability stuff planned for Monday (if I am able to leave the house) so am hoping to end the Sustainability Challenge with some anti-colonial/Indigenous solidarity research and a climate justice film night with my sangha.
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? Do you have suggestions or ideas for what my next challenge could be?
stand up eko 