Over the past several years, there has been a trend in publishing where people live differently for a year and then write about it: they give up something or follow a certain set of rules. Finlo Rohrer details this in his piece for the BBC’s online magazine. He points to Kath Kelly's How I Lived A Year On Just A Pound A Day; Neil Boorman's Bonfire of the Brands, “in which the protagonist burned all his branded goods and then lived for a year without them”; and Hephzibah Anderson’s book entitled Chastened: No More Sex in the City, in which the writer gives up sexual activity for a full 12 months.
Other examples that come to mind: The Hundred Mile Diet by British Columbians Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon who, for a year, lived on food procured from within a hundred mile radius of where they lived (I’d have trouble with the no coffee rule and the lean months of winter). Or The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, who follows the Bible so literally that he can’t shave his beard and has to stone adulterers.
There are other projects that fall outside the annual period: Rohrer mentions to Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Supersize Me that has Spurlock subsisting on food from McDonald’s for a month. And there is also Chris Jeavans’s blog in which she details her 31 days without buying anything plastic.
Stunts? Yes. But they all make a point about their subject: plastic is pervasive, McDonald’s is not good for you, the Bible shouldn’t be used to incite hatred, our world is comestibly globalized and sometimes casual sex interferes with women’s quest for “the one”.
Lazy as I am, I wouldn’t give up much that I like doing and I feel no need to follow a novel set of rules. But, as I’m sure everyone can acknowledge, there are several things I do as a matter of course that might be interesting to the reading public. But again, the laziness – so I will write in the spirit of John Crace’s Digested Read in which he takes books and distills them down to a few pithy paragraphs. (He even digests Chastened: No More Sex in the City – check it out at the link above!)
7 Months Without a Car
Back in January, I discovered that my muffler was completely rusted through. That, accompanied with the fact that the highbeams came on whenever I signaled left or right, the gas tank could only be filled halfway due to a hole at its top, the radio and parking brake didn’t work and the hood was held down with a flimsy contraption my dad had fashioned with the warning not to go faster than 60 or he couldn’t guarantee another hood-fly-up (which had happened several months before). So I sent my car to Car Heaven. Even got $300 out of the deal.
Considering it takes me 37 seconds to commute to work by foot, that part of being carless was easy. So was the fact that I live in an area where you can very easily walk to several grocery stores and specialty food shops to pick up anything I could want. I cheated a few times and “babysat” my parents’ car while they were away so I could purchase difficult-to-carry items like the economy pack of toilet paper or the large box of laundry powder.
Social engagements were arrived at by bike or public transit – the time commitment was definitely more, but there was never any waffling over whether to drive and remain sober or have a few drinks and cab it home.
The one drawback was missing out on those quick trips across town to visit people for just a few hours. Taking public transit sometimes was just not worth it. I also found I just did not frequent those stores that were out in Scarborough and I have yet to go back to Ikea.
25 Years Without Meat
When I was nine, my dad told me how they killed animals for food. I swore I would never eat meat again, and being the stubborn firstborn that I am, for the most part I didn’t. When I say “for the most part” I mean that there were a couple McDonald’s burgers in the first few years of my vegetarianism and then a few times when I ate meat without knowing it.
It’s become more of a routine now – I only know how to make two meat dishes and when I have tried bits of meat recently, I’ve found it takes a long time to chew. Besides, restaurants are much better now than they were in the 80s about offering vegetarian options. I also can claim environmental superiority by only taking up one field for food production instead of that field, plus a few more for the animals, plus a few more to feed the animals.
12 Days Without Sugar
A few years ago, I went on the Wild Rose Herbal D-Tox Cleanse (highly recommended) on the advice of my naturopath. For 12 days I was allowed no alcohol, no dairy products, no wheat or yeast and no sugar. I found the sugar the hardest, partly because I have quite the sweet tooth, but also because there is sugar in almost all prepared foods. I began reading labels much more carefully and ended up making all my meals from scratch – just fresh fruit and vegetables, beans, eggs and rice. I lost 8 pounds and felt so much better when it was finished. I also found my blood sugar levels evened out and I didn’t have that drop at 4pm when you crave cookies and other starchy, sugary snacks.
It wasn’t easy, though – I was craving things like pizza and cake like crazy. And when the cleanse was over, I went out and had poutine and immediately felt wretched. It taught me how much extra crap goes into prepared foods and how much what I put in my body affects me.
A Week Without Cell Phones or Internet Access
This summer I spent a week at a cottage where my cell phone didn't work and there was no internet. How did I cope? I went swimming, I read books and I lay in the sun. Hmm - this one seems to be the easiest - but also the shortest.
2 Months of No Work
At the end of the past 7 Junes, I have become unemployed. Weeks stretch out before me to be filled with sleep-ins, daytime television and meeting up with other unemployed friends. Some people ask how someone could possibly fill all those empty days without some kind of project or focus. Well, as I’m currently approaching the end of my unemployment once again, I can safely say that the days were filled and they slipped by easily.
On that note, I still have part of a week to continue my lazy unemployment. Maybe I'll try for a year of living like a responsible citizen. A year of getting up when my alarm goes off. Or a year without heroin.
