Vamos a la Adventura!

I'm ready for new. By this I mean I'm getting really stir crazy in my current excessive living condition. I've been making some interesting changes, especially in the areas of diet and product use. I currently do not eat meat or very many animal products and have given up most commercial cosmetic products, including shampoo. I also don't use body wash. That's right, I no longer lather up in the shower. I also have gone back to my shower schedule of twice a week or so. It's very interesting. We'll see how that hold up. I am feeling more and more fed up with my own consumption, so I've been cutting back though I have a long way to go.

I've been attempting to be a more well rounded (better rounded?) conservationist. This mostly springing from a deep desire to maintain God's creation and an increased weight of the burden of this responsibility due to my own growing awareness. I often joke about how I was a "hippie" in high school, but I was just beginning then in a journey of understanding the impact my lifestyle choices have on the world around us as well as ourselves. I have returned to my vegetarianism, which though difficult at time due to my love of food, feels more like me.

I have even been working on making my own clothing, like the dress I wore to my friend Lisa's wedding last weekend (see photograph). But in addition to wanting to be a more sustainable human being, I am also hit with how harmful many products we consume are to our own health. One fact that particularly hit me was that some ingredients in bath and cosmetic products can mimic our own hormones. This is frightening to me because when we mess with our hormones it affects so many parts of our lives, particularly our emotionality. As I keep learning more and more about this it triggers me to want to change, and I'm starting to get a lot of flack for it. I am trying to stay aware of if my hygiene changes affect the way the people around me feel (i.e. if i start to smell), but as someone who has never been a regular partaker in deodorant use that's not too different.

And despite the self education and personal revamping involved in this whole ordeal, I still crave adventure. I have been entertaining thoughts of different travel opportunities and am still waiting for the perfect one to present itself. It's just hard when I don't have a definite amount of time with which to go off exploring, and my parents are very concerned about going alone to most of the places I want to visit. At the same time, I don't have any time limits, because that's what I plan to do with my life- explore God's creation while remaining intentional about my impact a.k.a. further myself by furthering the Kingdom.

"Further up and further in"

-C.S. Lewis The Last Battle