Shame on me....

My first blog entry, shame on me....

I must confess that blogging and all this New Age information sharing is not really my thing.. I know that is not an excuse... I kept on writing my blog contributions in word all the time and but somehow never posted them. stupid I know and also somehow running counter to the whole idea of having a blog, being super up to date and all that stuff.... but better late than never... So here it comes....

I have to apologize with all my heart to have not left any sign of me on this blog so far.
Different reasons, though still I will try cover up for it now. As we have alomst reached the last week of our experiment I will try to give a little retrospective and a bit of an overall assessment of this little crazy thing we did. In what way did it influence our daily routines and did it actually really change our mind-set about certain things and the way we deal with things? And most important: will this change be long-lasting and sustainable??? Well let me start…
This experiment is and was a very challenging and interesting time for me.
The idea of doing something like this had been crossing my mind from time to time before as I already spent some time on thinking about consumption issues. So until this summer I didn't really have the courage to go for it.
Last summer I read a remarkable and very recommendable book called Haben oder Sein by Erich Fromm, a German social philosopher. Though his findings and opinion are of a somewhat radical sort I found his thoughts very inspiring. In a nutshell, he is opting for total change of our way of dealing with the material world. Consuming things, in the end, makes us loose ourselves. If we cannot identify anything of ourselves that is not related to things anymore, there is nothing left of this 'self' anymore. Every item we buy holds a promise: I will affect your live positively in this or another way, you become a happier person, more admired, more loved by other people. Still most of the things we buy suffer a soon decay of appreciation. There lifetime is rather short.. Going on, he links consumption directly to the destruction on nature thus drawing a direct line to the issues that should trouble us most while designing our 2012 Student Organized Event: Sustainable Consumption.
The thought of really changing something about the way I surround myself with things, came to me when I moved to Freiburg last year. God, I had too many things!!! It took so long to get them all in the van and then back in my new room, I felt totally overwhelmed by this massive material presence. I felt somehow smothered by it and as though carrying a huge milestone around my neck.. Well, in anyway I felt less free. So I started to throw things away, but I kept on replacing them by other things.. a vicious circle! So, finally I came to the conclusion that something more essential had to be done or at least tried. The idea of doing such an experiment together thus was very appealing to me. It's always easier to do things like this in a group, keeps the spirit up.

So, the experiment then.

As the others had already outlined what kind of rules were set up, I directly start with my experiences.
Cold Shower and self-made soap: Grrrrr. But surely not the hardest point. I sometimes do it anyway to get awake though maybe not the for the whole shower. During the first week I was still very strict. I turned the knob to coldest possible, then in a hurry washed my hair, always turning the water of while shampooing. Same with the rest. This resulted in the fact, that I did not only use cold water but also quite little water since one is not so tempted to let the water run all the time.
After some days my reluctance to start the day in such an unpleasant way somehow grew. I started to do my hair with leak warm water. I had the impression that the shampoo would not really rinse off while using only cold water. And talking about shampoo.... That was surely one of my biggest weaknesses. I used our self-made soap for my body, but normal though organic shampoo for my hair.. I just couldn't talk myself into doing it...
Also, after the first enthusiasm had worn off, I was longing a bit for normal soap again. Our own product always carried this faint smell of old peanuts with tuna.. At least that was my impression. But I was rather strict on this, so nothing to confess here.
Electricity: Hmmmmmm. Well I turned my mobile phone of during nights and class more often, but I still used it. But I really became touchy on light. If my flat-mates would leave a lamp on while leaving the room I would hurtle after them and switch it off immediately. This darkened a bit the normally very sunny climate in our flat, but luckily did not cause any major conflicts...

So, enough for today.. My experiences with meat abstinence and no washing machine washing follow in the next days… So far I wish us all good nerves for the last days and KEEP THE SPIRIT