My weekend? I cleaned. I moved furniture and polished faucets and washed forty-seven-thousand loads of socks; I was a whirling frenzy of airborne dust-fluffs, wearing a crown of dead spiders and a shirt made of stray hair and dryer lint. I bleached and scrubbed and wiped and sanitized. The funny thing is I still don’t feel like I was finished; there are still cluttered closets, manky corners in the fridge, piles of shoes…

Why is there always such disparity between what was accomplished and the feeling of accomplishment? This 21st Century lifestyle seems well-suited to a Type-A Multi-Tasking Madwoman… which very few of us actually are. Thank goodness I don’t have children yet! And what does ‘living simply’ actually entail? I find that now that I’ve cut wheat and dairy (and a lot of meat) from my diet, eating has become a challenge. It’s good; I’m eating more fresh fruits and veggies, thereby creating less waste and less impact on the earth in general. I suppose that living simply doesn’t always equate to living easily. I also propose that the less “stuff” I have, the more easy my so-called simple life will be.

I’ve already changed the way I’m doing things due to the astronomical gas prices. I ride my bike more, walk, take the bus, and don’t go anywhere that I don’t NEED to go to. I am of the opinion that these steepening gas prices are a good thing. In fact, living easily is probably the last thing we need more of. My generation (X/Y) has been challenged very little and has known very little lack; there’s nothing like a recession to shock a society back into reality. Fact: North Americans are (by and large) GREEDY. Self-Obsessed. Shallow. These qualities don’t make us good world citizens. The high gas prices and high food prices might just be the smack across the nose we’ve been asking for.

Whew.