I’ve been avoiding things I devalue lately. After writing about the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Buy Nothing Day, I decided to strive to buy nothing but food that month and succeeded, if you don’t disallow that I bought two things that I later returned. I’ll write more about it when I eventually do buy something, as I’m still going.

Next, I decided to avoid social media and news sites for January. Strictly speaking, I’m avoiding pages that refresh daily or faster, though allowing short-term checks for deliberate intent sometimes. I’ll probably write more about it after the month ends.

But I’ve done things like those sidchas before. A new one emerged from training a new host for a new branch of This Sustainable Life. He’s still training, so he hasn’t recorded his first episodes yet, but stay tuned. As part of his training he did The Spodek Method on me, which led me to commit to act on my environmental values in a new way.

I’ve noticed I’m eating less mindfully when I eat in front of the computer. I committed for the rest of January not to eat in front of a screen for at least two meals a day. I’m a couple days into the commitment and went for all three meals both days.

I’m already learning. The problem with boredom isn’t too little to do. It’s not being able to handle your mind’s incessant thoughts. We read news and such to placate our minds. I knew that distractions while eating lead to missing the flavor. I’ll see how balancing flavor with monkey mind goes. I expect the experience will teach me how to enjoy not distracting myself with a screen, but I’m open to discovering preferring reading while eating. That’s what experiments are for.

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