Tag Archives: Annapolis Maryland

this ship is shipping on…

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Looking back at the the prologue, the first entry I posted before starting to live out any chapters, I noticed that I wrote about the idea of “letting go”. I wanted to let go of control, and of planning my life in a detailed way. The goal was to learn to trust and to watch life roll out in an organic way. I was curious to find out if it was possible to be guided by instinct or inner direction, (or in my case my friends) while at the same time be able to continue to make distinct and direct decisions for myself.  Through trusting my friends and trusting the process and also by addressing my resistance and fears, I do feel that I am just starting (after six months) to understand the balance that is needed for this to happen. Maybe with another six months practice, I will be able to utilize these lessons to help me move forward.

During the past nine months, I have been living on a boat upon Spa Creek in Annapolis, MD living as fluidly as I could taking each month as it came written for me, one day and challenge at a time.  The Living Chapters guidelines that I set up for myself, pre-project, somehow made this floating lifestyle seem much more manageable.  The rules and outline of the project gave me a distinct structure that I have been following as closely as I could.  If I found myself doing something that seemed a little out of the ordinary or questionable (like jumping rope in the airport in Boston or hanging out in an isolation chamber) I could point directly at the project outline for an answer to why this was happening and it just didn’t seem that strange anymore.  I was accomplishing a task rather than making an “odd choice”. And even though I have been asked by external sources to do all these tasks, the self-created guidelines reminded me that it was my choice to follow through with them whether I liked it or not. I sometimes even chose to elaborate on them.

Deciding to live on the boat before Living Chapters began, was in a sense creating a space and such a guideline to start out this adventure: giving myself a physical structural reason to live without excess belongings, a place to create new habits, to adjust to a more simple life style, and allow myself financially to continue working part-time only. Somehow diminishing my living space and eliminating the excess stuff, opened up new opportunities and new ideas. This choice brought me personal freedom and time to explore different ways of living. I feel that the process of living out these chapters openly is doing this as well.

Living on water, has been the closest that I have been thus far to the physical realization and feeling of “letting go”. I have enjoyed floating and respected the dwelling for its practical, simple, and independent living.  The boat itself as a home base has kept me strangely grounded in these changing months.  Like the rules of the project, it has given me a structure for being here, and it has held a place for me in Annapolis.  But as the seasons shift and winter arrives, I have decided to depart, drift away from the dock for a bit and metaphorically sail south. It is time to practice letting go just a bit more and take on the spirit of “saying yes to what life throws at you”. I have been given the opportunity to try out a new living situation and have decided to take it.  As of the end of November, I have abandoned ship and will be floating between staying at homes of friends and loved ones for this reflection month of December.  And although sad to leave “Morning Star” and the marina in general, I am excited to see what the warm air of the new year will bring.  In January, I am taking a hiatus from my job and will be setting up camp on a tropical island for a while. So in the first few months of 2014, you will find me living out new chapters on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.  Exactly what will manifest there and how long I will stay is still unknown. Only time and possibly the next few chapters will tell.

me on morning star

12/4

Just finding this blog today? Read more about the Living Chapters project here.

checks and balances

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I have never been a numbers person. Honestly, keeping track of anything in a formulaic way has always been  counterintuitive for me.  I’ve just finished week one of this “Cap and Trade” system and am finding that balancing my actual environmental habits to be less difficult and than balancing the points on the scoring card. I am now wishing I had been asked to brush up on some mathematical equations in my last logic chapter; it may have helped me create a tool for tracking all the miles of driving, cubic feet of waste, gallons of water, and hours of electricity I am using this month.

I have never even balanced my checkbook technically, but I also have never overdrawn. It may not be logical but I usually sense when something is off balance and then adjust as needed.  I just make sure that I keep to my moderate spending habits and try to stay on the frugal side of things. I have tried to adopt this mode of operation to this game. So I’m not sure what my point results will reveal in the end, but one thing has become extremely clear. I am now more aware of everything I do on a daily basis more than I ever thought I could be (or wanted to be!). I mean who tracks how many times they flush a toilet in a database?

Within days, I  determined what my highest point scoring habits include: driving my car, charging my laptop/phone, eating food that has an unknown origin and showering daily. Some of these things were easy to scale back right away. (like cutting back on my amount of showers and length of them) But others can not be changed overnight – giving up my car would mean giving up my job and giving up my computer would also mean giving up my job. I decided to avoid unemployment and focus on the areas in which there was potential to shift. Food and Water. These two things I have direct control over changing in my daily life.

Or do I? Even these decisions, in which I thought I had ultimate control over, are a lot more complex than I originally thought. I didn’t make it past my first meal of the month before I became tangled up in the logistics of how to “score” my eating habits.

Dinner number one:  I had a salad with greens from my own garden, a tomato from a neighbors garden, some packaged baby carrots, a non organic cucumber and some salad dressing (with a ton of random ingredients) all from… the “local” grocery store, along with a turkey burger bearing a label saying it’s meat was “distributed” in near by Landover, MD Hmmm… something harvested by me, something locally harvested – other veggies from unknown territories and meat from where? If “distributed” means raised and processed, I think less than 100 miles away?  So how many points is that?

Things got pretty complicated even after examining one meal.  Knowing I got my food from the local food store was not knowing where my food is from.  Living in Annapolis, I am privileged to have access to many places that sell locally grown food, but I did find, after checking, that those stores and markets are actually scattered around the area and are a farther drive away than my local Grocery Store. I would also have to go to several different places to get all things locally.  Would the miles in my car out weigh the choice of the food? Hmmm… I had to check out the point system to find out. After checking I still was not sure.

While focusing on water consumption, this different dilemma surfaced:  I’m in a pubic bathroom in my favorite coffee shop remembering that every time I flush a toilet I am essentially wasting water (and gaining .5 points). I am wondering how the proprietor and other customers would feel about me implementing the, “if its yellow let it mellow” motto. I never opposed this idea but I had also never really fully adopted it. This was the first time I actually found myself pondering this predicament.  Do I do what’s considered “rude” and leave pee unflushed in a public toilet or do I waste the water and enable this water wasting habit we have all taken part in for years? I caved that time and succumbed to the “avoid doing what is rude rule” that my mother taught me long ago.

It’s ridiculous that I even have time or head space to think about such a “dilemma” as this let alone ponder it for the rest of the day. Later that evening I brought it up again in a phone conversation with “Logic and Order” chapter writer Gabe DellaVecchia. “Do you leave pee in public toilets?” I asked.  He lived in Portland Oregon where he said that the “if its yellow let it mellow motto” is the norm, not only in personal homes but in public places as well. He said you may get labeled a “hippie” for letting the yellow mellow but heck that seems  a lot better label than being called “rude”.

Is it rude to save water? Are we still being labeled negatively for trying to conserve? Well I guess we all have opinions on the right and wrong ways of doing things and we all feel differently about what’s important (in this case our etiquette  or our conservation habits). But we can only make decisions for ourselves in our personal lives… OR do we need to work harder as a culture together to make these changes acceptable?

This game has filled my head with an overwhelming amount to think about and its only week one! Not only am I now thinking about how my personal choices are impacting everything and everyone around me but I am also pondering how and why we have come to make the choices we do and what kind of support we may or may not have for trying to make those changes toward a better outcome?

It seems like we are up against a lot of different obstacles when trying to do something like lower our personal impact on the environment. Beyond just the system in which we track our habits, there is the structure of the city we live in, our culture, our economic status and our upbringing.  These are just a few of the factors that I haven’t even touched on yet.  What were you taught as a child about how to make your decisions.  Were you raised to conserve water or conserve money? Did you grow up on fast food or grow your own food?

I am curious about finding a system that could help us all shift our habits while taking into account our different starting points.  (does this exist?) And are we even in a position to be able to make the changes we want to or will we have the access to do so? These are some of the bigger questions I’ve been wrestling with this week along with the “pee in public toilet dilemma”.

What do you think? How can we assess and accept the path where we have come from to get to a new place of balance where we’d all like to be?

8/9/13

Please join Chapter 3 writer Andy and I in the Cap and Trade Game and track your own habits! You may learn something about yourself and the possibly the environment in which you live and where you came from. Just click here and add your name to play.

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about.

lifestyle: liveaboard

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In the past few days of tracking my habits and assigning them point values, I have realized that there is one major thing that has given me a slight advantage with this eco-challenge chapter.

I live on a sailboat.

I know I mentioned this in my last post but I feel that it’s relevant to return to and reflect upon this singular choice. The Cap and Trade game has asked me to look very closely at the multitude of choices that I make every day and how they all effect our environment greatly but I have realized that making this one larger lifestyle choice has really given me a head start on easing me into making more enviro-friendly choices.

Months before starting Living Chapters, I decided to move aboard, free of any writer’s demands or suggestions, I wrote this particular chapter myself not knowing at the time that it would change the fate of my future chapters.

Unlike most liveaboards, I did not make this choice because I am a sailor, or have any attachment or history with boats or the sea. Although I have a strong love for being on and near the water, my reasons behind this decision were pretty practical. We all have our priorities and make mental lists of what we want when choosing a home. This is what my list looked like when making my last move.

What I would like in a home:

1. Affordable rent

2. Walking proximity to a downtown with local coffee shops and a farmers market

3. Shorter commute for work

4. Lack of drama (meaning: living without multiple roommates was preferable)

Trying to accomplish these simple requests in Annapolis is nearly impossible with a non-profit part-time salary. And after a month into my Craigslist housing search, I was almost ready to give up. I had seen way too many over-priced apartments and condos and met a large cast of potential future restraining orders – I mean potential roommates. The idea of living on a boat did not really enter my mind until I answered yet another random ad on Craigslist. This one was advertising a motor boat for rent, $450. Hmm..? Sounded like an interesting idea. Well it was an interesting idea but not a good idea. After arriving at the marina, I found that the guy who placed the ad and owned the boat, Jerry, wanted me to pay him $450 to live with him on his musty, rusty 35ft boat. Anyway, not to get off track here, telling my house hunting horror stories, but I had to give a shout out to Jerry because he may have changed my life forever. I did NOT end up moving in with Jerry and his collection of fishing gear and old boat parts, but meeting him did solidify two things. I definitely wanted to live alone and I was even more curious about living on a boat than ever.

I knew living on a boat would change my lifestyle but didn’t really consider how it could change my environmental habits.

I have to start off by saying I really know very little about the liveaboard lifestyle. I’ve only been aboard 5 months now, which is long enough to know that there is A LOT to learn and there are a million different ways to choose how to live on the water (as there are on land). What I do know is this – I had to change quite a few things to adapt to this new home and the predominant theme for me was reduction.

“Less is more” is the mantra, right? Well let’s count the ways living on the boat has helped me practice this.

Less space = less stuff = less waste. The first thing I adapted to, was living in a much smaller physical space. It really wasn’t that hard. With less space, I just prioritized and brought aboard the things that I really needed to live with along with a few things I really wanted. I quickly realized that there were a lot of belongings I thought I needed but really didn’t. Isn’t this alone the crux of so many of our consumption issues? We think we need more than we really do? Desire more – use more. Desire less – use less. It seems simple but sometimes hard to put into practice.

For example: at the grocery store – I now, choose things with less packaging. Why bring home the extra foam, plastic covering, or extra plastic bags when there is really little room to store or dispose of these things when returning to the boat. Do I need an extra plastic bag to put my ears of corn in or loose vegetables – no dont think so? My trash bin on land was twice the size of the one I have aboard so keeping extra trash was not a big deal in my personal life.  I also don’t have ample space for recycling now – so I just try not to bring back any excess packaging when I don’t have to.  I also have gotten into the habit of buying only what I need to eat for the day that I am going to eat it (with a tiny fridge there is no room to keep excess food) This has helped me eat fresher food and also reduces my food waste. I eat what I have on board before going and buying more.

Less space also = less energy usage. On the first boat I lived on, I used a refrigerator smaller than a dorm room fridge, a hot plate, a toaster oven and a small space heater when it was cold. I used no more than two 12 volt lights to light the space. I also learned that I could only use so much electric at any given time without blowing a fuse. I needed to make choices of using one appliance at a time and turn the others off when not using them.

OH and lets not forget water usage.  Living on land my 1 bedroom apartment provided me with free-flowing hot water at my fingertips whenever I wanted it. I never had to think about if I would run out of water, so I didn’t think about conserving it. After moving aboard, water was the first thing I had to think about.  On the first boat, I didn’t have running water – I used dock water from a hose and filtered it or brought on bottled water. Visually being able to see how much water I had aboard definitely helped me conserve my use of it.

So what do these reduction adaptations add up to? A  much lower electric bill and possibly a lower negative impact on the environment. I have, whether I’ve intended to or not, fallen into a these new patterns just because of my lifestyle choice. If I observe and examine these habits a bit more closely and intently, (like the Cap and Trade asks me to) I may be able to make even more of a difference.

As a newbie novice living on the water, I just skimmed the surface of the many ways living on a boat can be a sound environmental choice. I encourage and ask the experienced liveaboards, sailors, and boaters to comment and share their conservation tips and experiences while on the water.  I really hope I can continue to live on the this lifestylefor a bit longer. I have become really fond of this choice and feel like there is so much more to learn.  I am renting this boat till the end of the month and am hoping to find a new one in September so that I can stay on the water. Wish me luck!

8/6/13

Thanks to Barbara and Jack Donachy for reading and commenting on my last post and sharing their fascinating life experience of living aboard. Very inspiring!

To get a taste of what it would be like to live on a boat yourself check out Sleeponaboat.com.  Greg, who runs this website, rents me the boat I am on now. He would like to connect both boat owners and individuals looking for a weekend stay or live aboard experience. I can only endorse this idea. I LOVE IT!

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about.

from where we are

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Before I begin to respond to the epic eco adventure planned for this chapter. I would like to take a small step back and reflect on the overall theme of the month that inspired Andy’s sustainability challenge. “The environment”

The term itself may mean different things to different people, but when I chose this theme as one of six for the Living Chapters year, I secretly hoped that I would be challenged in two areas: 1. How I engage with my physical environment (natural or man-made) and 2. How I consume the resources that our environment provides us.

We all experience our physical environments very differently therefore we also engage and consume in different ways. Coming from different backgrounds, and living in different places we all begin at varied starting points.

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So before diving head first into the compost bin, I’d like to take this first week to focus on becoming more aware of my immediate environment and my direct consumption patterns. Understanding where we are coming from and what we consume seems like it should be the first step in this “Eco-Awareness Game”.

So here is a quick snapshot of my own starting point:

My home/residence: I currently live in Annapolis, MD. For the past 5 months, I’ve lived aboard “Chasing Gwian” a 30-foot sailboat. On that boat my electric bill never went over $28 a month. I also did not have running water to use or waste. In some aspects, I was living relatively simply and efficiently. At the beginning of this month, I moved onto “Meridan Summer”, a 31-foot sailboat with running water, a somewhat working galley (kitchen) and much more space to heat or cool. Moving up in comfort definitely means moving up in energy usage.

Energy Consumption: My primary source of travel right now is by car. For my job, I luckily can do most of my work from a laptop computer from any place. However, I am asked to commute to a Baltimore City office once or twice a week (30 miles one way) and the majority of my work this month will be at on-site events and activities in Southern Maryland communities (50- 100 miles from Annapolis). I also commute to Mechanicsburg, PA (120 miles one way) to see and help with family at least once or twice a month.  Since I left my last long-term leased apartment in Baltimore (over 2 years ago now), let’s just say I have been on the road. Even though I have a very gas efficient Toyota compact car, my use of fuel is astronomical! I may have spent more money in gas than I have in rent in the past two years!

Water consumption: I use toilet and shower facilities in a shared marina. Before moving into the marina, I had given very little thought to my water consumption.  I love long showers and hot baths! Since making the choice to live aboard  I have become more aware of both my water and electricity usage.  The change of lifestyle directly changed my habits whether I wanted to or not.

Food consumption:  I have no set patterns of where I purchase my food and I often eat out as I have not lived with a proper kitchen for more than a year now. Currently I do have a small garden bearing only some herbs, bolting greens and one thriving pepper plant (not enough food to sustain myself on) I enjoy going to farmers markets but often feel like I can’t afford to shop at them but have occasionally treated myself to the better food and more eco-friendly choices.  The bottom line is this: choosing the right food has always been a mystery for me… organic, local, free range, sustainable… can someone help me out?

At first glance this game looks like its going to be ridiculously tedious and hard. But I KNOW this will be rewarding if I can come up with some fun and creative solutions.

So please, if you will – join Andy and I in this game – go here and sign up to play. Or illuminate me with some creative and fun solutions to all these enviro-friendly challenges. Post to the blog or on the Living Chapters Facebook page – Cause like Kermit and Andy have said “It’s not easy being green”. We need your help!

Last month I learned that simple logic tells us less is more…I am going to try to stick to that mantra as I move forward.

8/3/13

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about.

To get a taste of what it would be like to live on a boat yourself check out Sleeponaboat.com Greg, who runs this website, rents me the boat I am on and would like to connect both boat owners and individuals looking for a weekend stay or live aboard experience. I can only endorse this idea. I LOVE IT!