current track: the libertines- music when the lights go out
current tea: twinings- darjeeling
i’m going to have a problem when i graduate and am forced to develop a real self-sustaining lifestyle. by self-sustaining i mean i’m going to have to pay 
for everything myself. i better go to the career center soon and be sure to tell them that among my other career demands, i require quite a bit of money because i need things. looking beyond the relatively straightforward matter of materialism, which i do embrace whole-heartedly, i’m not sure i know how to exist without q-tips and non-lipton tea and the occasional pack of blue pilot g2 05 pens. a can of raid. instant oatmeal. vitamin b-12. these are things economically-challenged [read: poor] people do without when rent and college loans only leave perhaps $80 per week for food, booze, and subway fare. let’s face it. i’m high maintenance. i like those soft pads that stick in the back of my spicy black stiletto heels and protect me from blisters. hell, i like things like spicy black stiletto heels. not that i wear them frequently, but i find fulfillment in owning them. i also love my red alligator-print italian leather handbag, that glittery black clutch i got free when i bought a grey sweater at express last friday, my green leather tote bag, and various other lavish pretty things (not always handbags) that i find deep satisfaction in possessing. mostly, i live in jeans and cons, but oh well. i’m in college and i like knowing i could at least look sexy and accomplished if i wanted to bother.
but let’s take a look at the whole picture. i attend a small liberal arts college. students here tend to bond a little too tightly to the people they meet at orientation. for me, somehow, those people were the ones who would become the token group of campus activists. vegan, pothead, feminist, environmentalist, anti-establishment, pro-choice 
hippies who shower without soap, refuse to use deodorant, organize teach-ins like other people organize their closets, protest as frequently as other people change their underwear, and who make a coveted fashion statement by ignoring fashion completely.
don’t get me wrong. i do love them or i wouldn’t still bother knowing them. and for the most part, i agree with their intentions. but really, i’m just not that person. i did spend the first two years of college trying half-heartedly to be that person, however. i say half-heartedly because i never gave up eating dead animals. or wearing them. i retained a deeply-rooted appreciation for material comforts and television. but i smoked a lot of pot, marched in the streets a few times, and attended countless lectures on the oppression and/or liberation of countless marginalized interest groups. by now, my hippies have realized i’m not that person and we’ve established a sort of unspoken détente because we’d never have remained friends if i constantly told them that they smell funny and they harped on me about my bottled water habit. these are some of the supposedly problematic things i do (and will continue to do):
i buy underwear from victoria’s secret even though their millions of catalogues are made out of pure rainforest.
i drink bottled water even though it’s apparently ‘slave water.’
i still use tampons even though the chemically bleached cotton is terrible for my body and actually draws away good natural moisture. and they also wreak havoc on the environment.
i shower almost every day, with soap. and i use deodorant (but not antiperspirant- that’s unhealthy).
i own a $200 hair straightener and boots with three-inch stiletto heels, even though both reflect the unnatural and unhealthy standards imposed on women by the fashion industry and modern culture.
i sometimes buy vitamins or batteries at wal*mart even though their human rights violations are numerous and extreme.
i wear a watch even though it keeps me chained to the arbitrary social construction of time.
i use lysol all over the place even through it’s bad for the environment and recklessly killing bacteria will eventually make our bodies unable to cope with even common harmless bacteria.
i eat dead animals even though they have feelings too, are forced into putrid living conditions, and are herded to their deaths in slaughter houses like animals…
okay, now i’m just laughing, which is why i am not meant to be that person. and i do all these -terrible- things despite having full and organic knowledge of suitable alternatives… [diva cups; nalgene bottles; frizzy, wavy hair; vegan substitutes, et cetera].
in the past year i’ve made certain choices and accepted certain truths. i started going to the gym (and kept it up faithfully with the exception of october, when i had mono). i no longer feel compelled to answer my phone every time it rings- sometimes i don’t even carry it [gasp]. i stopped putting sugar and cream in my coffee, and then stopped drinking coffee altogether. i stopped watching broadcast news because i won’t allow mass media to have that kind of control over my consciousness- dead bodies, fear mongering, alarmist controversies… i just don’t need that shit. i sometimes go to the movies by myself. i’ve accepted the ridiculously high standards i hold for potential partners. i don’t know how to lessen the impact of my gut reactions and i shouldn’t have to; eventually there will be a person who either lives up to my standards or renders them null & void. i quit smoking pot. the amount of energy i put into avoiding emotional extremes sometimes makes me seem cold. my favourite person to talk to is my mom: she doesn’t buy into my bullshit and she laughs most freely at my cynical irony and sarcasm. most of the time i’m pretty sure i’ve only tricked everyone into believing that i know what i’m doing when really i make it up
as i go. with or without my permission, things will change and i will change and current issues will work themselves out while new issues present themselves. i have to be okay with this.
margaret thatcher used to get b-12 shots every day. how do i arrange that for myself without becoming prime minister?
p.s. i have seven different kinds of tea. apparently i send mixed signals.
where are you off to, lady? 
Oh, wow. I wish I had bonded with the liberal hippie activist crowd during my orientation. Things would have been so much easeir. Instead, I met lots of jocks, whom I never spoke to again, and wandered through my first 1 1/2 semesters of college trying to find the secret society of hyper-literate indie rockers.
“i wear a watch even though it keeps me chained to the arbitrary social construction of time.”
I got you beat here. I operate outside of time.
Your post made me aware of just how much many young people are getting the message, even if they don’t act that much on it.
Overpopulation, pollution, war and resource exhaustion are very real problems. Someday, mabey very soon, we will have to pay the piper. Sadly, it will be undeveloped countries and the poor who will feel the brunt first and foremost. In fact, it is already happening but it is little talked about in the light of truth. These ar things many of us don’t want to hear.
Living a responsible life is not something we can be perfect at “cold turkey”. It takes time, thought and gradual practice to become better. Some who seem like kooks for their eccentric habits should be tolerated and forgiven. They, at least, are trying to find answers.
I used to be a lot like you. I knew the problems, but became an engineer, designing yet another CB radio (as if any of us really needed another one of those) , but it was just to make a living. My heart was never in it.
Now, many years later, I am trying to use engineering for more appropriate ends. This insistance on doing what I believe is meaningful and valueable for people and planet in the long run has left me in poverty and close to living in the street. That is the way our culture is presently designed to operate: greed, speed and drive all competing cultures and species into extinction.
Surely it does not have to be that way.