A Possible World: Zero Waste Week 2017: Friday, Saturday, Sunday...and a chance to ponder.

Monday 11 September 2017

Zero Waste Week 2017: Friday, Saturday, Sunday...and a chance to ponder.

I'm not very good at doing things. By which I mean, setting goals, making plans, and sticking to them. I have intentions, but they are more like dreams. You realise you're dreaming, and you wake up. They immediately start to fade. After mere moments, you forget everything you dreamed about; only the knowledge that your were dreaming remains. You are awake, which is often disappointing, logical, and predictable in all the ways that dreams are not.

So, Zero Waste Week 2017 is over. I made an effort not to waste, not to throw away anything, to reuse anything that could not be recycled. I was reasonably successful (though try as I might, I still can't stop eating crisps). It's good that such things as Zero Waste Week exist, and it's good there are such people as its founder, and all the bloggers, activists, and even - dare I say - entrepreneurs making adjustments to the world for the better. These are the people who are good at doing things, at having goals, at achieving them. At living their dreams, without waking up. Knowing that they're dreaming, but continuing to do so. Lucid.

I am not like this. I would quite like to be, but my brain is scattered. I would like to write my book, but my brain is scattered. I would like to work towards a singular goal, but my brain is scattered. How, like Thoreau, can I "live deliberately"? I still do not know. So I meander through life like candy floss. I've been eating more oranges, after reading about how 1,000 truckloads of orange peels and pulp unexpectedly revived a Costa Rican forest, to scatter the peels into my lazy bed allotment space, which I intend to compost and cultivate for the spring. Applause is owing to Linda McCartney Foods, whose coincidentally vegan sausages are delicious, and come merely in a cardboard box. Zero waste, tasty, vegan food. I ate four boxes last week. Now the boxes take their place with the orange peel on the foundation of the lazy bed.

I like the idea of "less than zero waste", as I toyed with midweek. Not just zero waste, but finding waste already wasted and de-wasting it. Here's a man walking the coastline of Britain picking up all the litter he can find, with his dog, living off £50 a week and raising money for charity all at the same time. A person with a dream, a plan, and a smile. I would like to be more like that. I wonder why I am not. My brain is scattered. Am I, as they say, woke? Perhaps not. I'd rather be gardening.