Blog Reboot

     So I have been a little MIA for awhile now and that's not without good reason. This past year has made me question so many things in my life and myself for that matter. I questioned my relationships with everyone, my career, this blog, just everything. I've been in this crisis mode of like I'm getting older and I don't know what that looks like for my life. However, I feel like I'm in a good spot now, there's so many good aspects of my life at this moment and I feel like I can picture the future without worrying about the right now. 

    I recently moved back to Canada and I love it here. I don't know why but Canada has just always felt more like home than the US ever did, but I felt like I had to stay there. Like I was tied down to being there mostly because that's where my family is and that's the only place I've know as an adult. I'm from Canada, I was born here, so I have lived part of my life here but as a child not a grown up. So I guess that intimidated me to a certain extent. I know Washington, I've lived all over it so I know how things work there for me. This is new territory and there are so many things I feel like I have no idea about. So it's this weird composition of feeling at home while also feeling overwhelmed by a lack of knowledge over my surroundings.

    A lot of things have happened lately that have forced me to focus on other things opposed to zero waste and sustainability, and I'm going to call myself out right now. I have been buying on amazon, I have been buying cheap disposable plastic items for myself and my home. When I moved to Canada I only brought what could fit in my car so a lot of my stuff is still in the states. I will be going to get the rest of it this summer when I visit but until then I don't have that stuff. I first moved into a house that had at least two of everything you could ever need so I didn't feel the need to bring my stuff. However that living arrangement didn't last long and we moved out. So there we were with not much stuff which would be totally fine if it wasn't stuff we actually needed, like kitchen ware and furniture. We were gifted or we thrifted the majority of our stuff but were not rich so spending the money on the big stuff left not a lot of money for the smaller things. Like the more sustainable options for things like dish sponges and toothbrushes. 

    I took a long time to get back into blogging probably because I was embarrassed of using this single use stuff and I regressed quite a lot in my sustainability journey. I was at the point where my monthly garbage output was less then 2 pounds, yes I was weighing it because I am a data nerd and wanted to know. That's where I was and I'm so far away from that right now. But I think I need to give myself some empathy and compassion because I was doing the best with what I could without losing my mind. I feel like if I was worried about throwing something away on top of everything else I probably would have had a mental breakdown. I thought that I had to get back to where I was in order to continue making these blog posts about it but honestly that's silly. Everyone knows how life goes and how hard it can be without trying to hold yourself to higher standards than you are capable of at those moments. We are all human, we do human things and we fall, we break, we crash and that's life. I'm not going to feel bad for doing my best at those moments even if they didn't align with the values I chose in life. 

    I think it would be fun to take you guys along with me while I figure it all out again. Since I moved to a whole different county there's a lot for me to learn. I don't know the recycling system here, I don't know the politics, or the city I'm in, or the group I could join. I know nothing, I am very lost here but it's also so exciting to learn these things and then share it with you.

    Also I've been watching a lot of eco content on YouTube and most of the people I follow and have followed for years now are so advanced and while they do posts that they make targeted for the beginner zero waste population it's still a little overwhelming when I don't have a lot of my habits or items that helped me attain that life. 

    So we're starting over, from almost scratch. I do still have some of my swaps like my dryer balls, my veggie bags, coffee cups and reusable grocery bags. But I think something interesting I could do this time around is show my swaps but also show you what I do with the old version. I feel like a lot of content surrounding this topic just tells you what to swap it with but never really what to do with your old stuff so I think a lot of it probably goes in the garbage. I know that's what I did the first time around, because they are disposable items so you just dispose of them, but this time I want to see if we can find different or creative ways to use them, as opposed to just throwing them in the trash. I'm also working on creating a YouTube channel and Instagram for this blog to help give the visual aspect of everything instead of just putting pictures here, that doesn't do it for me. 

    I hope you guys join me in the reboot of this and I'm excited to keep it going!