Push Back

Well, so...
I have been experiencing push back. Hard core. I have found myself rebelling against my homesteaderish life in every way. First I abandoned buying things in bulk. It was too hard to change my patterns and go to the bulk stores and it was so easy to head to my local Ralphs. Next I abandoned my glass containers. I had been saving all of our glass jars and some friends saved and gave me their glass jars (thank you Viki and Brook) but I never remembered to take them with me so the things I would buy in bulk would come home in plastic bags then get transferred to the glass jars. Now that I was not buying bulk the glass jars sat there empty, filling up shelf space to capacity and reproducing while I wasn't looking. So I threw them all in the recycling. Then I rejected cooking. "I don't want to cook anymore. I'm done". Realistically, I have been preparing breakfast lunch and dinner for my family for over 20 years and it makes some sense that I might be tired of all of the meal planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning that goes into that. But I still have about 8 years to go before my youngest is an "adult" so I can't be done yet. And I like cooking. After pondering things like, meal delivery service and a personal chef, I found myself in Trader Joe's purchasing over $200.00 worth of prepackaged meals and filling the freezer. Every day, I look in the freezer grab something and heat and serve. My daughter is a little stunned by this change and looks at me with questions like, 'is this processed food?' and I look back at her and say 'well it's trader Joe's, so it's okay".

What am I doing?

I also found myself thinking "I don't even like to take care of my dogs, what the hell would I do with goats and chickens?"

or "maybe all I want is a small studio apartment for just myself on the beach with a fridge full of single serving sized beautiful looking food and drinks".

 Basically feeling like - I don't want it to be so hard. So there we have it. The essentially lazy person is creeping out. The person who is used to all of the conveniences that we enjoy in this country. Who doesn't want to give up all of the things that I can have with almost no effort. I don't want to work that hard for something that feels so intangible.
But I am finally waking back up. I am finally realizing what this is. This is my push back. It's no different from when I try to diet and decide that I can not have any cookies and then within two hours of the decision eat an entire box of cookies; something I would never do before I had made the no cookie decision.

Changing your life and lifestyle is very hard. It is hard work. It takes a lot of determination. and I still want to do it.
Somethings have remained. I still make cleaners and detergents - because once you have the borax and washing powder and salt and citric acid and vinegar it is considerably easier than going to the store to buy it. I still....hmmm..maybe the cleaners and detergents are all that have truly remained. sigh.

But I am recommitting myself. I will keep going. I'm not even going to call it starting over because maybe push back, fall back, fall off the cart entirely is a natural part of this process. Maybe what feels like being back to square one is actually achieving square ten because you had to miss a beat in order to move down this path.

We are almost finished with my Trader Joe hoard. I will not go back and replenish. I will pull together the remaining glass containers in the house and march to a store and come home with something that is not wrapped in plastic.
And so we continue...