Tag: recycling

Day 21

'A Poetic Potter & A Potting Poet'Leave a comment

Writing into Life, more

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Lydia and I had one of our weekend walks this morning, on a quiet track.  It was cold, so I wore a hat. I’d inadvertently shrunk my knitted winter hat in a too-hot wash a couple of weeks back, but I found another in the cupboard to keep my head warm.  My cold is on its way out but I still need to keep myself ‘well wrapped up’, as our Mum used to say.

Lydia kept stopping and looking out over the fields at something I couldn’t see, or maybe it wasn’t something she saw either but sensed.  Anyway, we had an easy walk which I needed, then back to a warm house – breakfast for both of us and another cup of tea for me.

Strong tea and freshly brewed coffee are daily pleasures for me, but I’m cutting out coffee at the moment, and only drinking tea in the morning. This is to help me establish a better sleep pattern again.

I did a bit of kitchen tidying and cleaning, loading and unloading the dishwasher and mopping the floor, before going back to bed for more rest.  I have been very sensible in looking after myself while I’ve had this virus working its way through my body, and I do think that is a strategy that is paying off. It can be a bit frustrating, resting, but I know I need to do it at the moment.

Later it was Trev’s turn to take ‘stuff’ to the tip, which is actually a recycling centre, and very well organised for different types of waste, including a ‘waste to energy recovery’ skip for anything that doesn’t fit the recycling categories, such as wood, metal and so on.

I think we’re only a few tip trips short of a good clear-out now.  I have a charity shop run planned tomorrow, and then I’ll buy a pot of paint, to start doing some internal work that needs doing. 

Day 11 – welcome

'A Poetic Potter & A Potting Poet'Leave a comment

 Writing into Life

As I wake this morning I reflect on a reminder from the Buddhist teachings over the last few months:

Welcome Wholeheartedly Whatever

It isn’t always easy to welcome the difficult stuff especially when it feels like there’s no end of difficult stuff to deal with.

But I find that the more I apply this principle, the more I begin to understand what it means. I’ve still got a long way to go in deepening my understanding of what it means, but I’ll keep working on it.

Today, though tired after yesterday’s intensive session at the studio, including the 50-minute drives to get there and back, I feel a sense of something having shifted in my inner landscape; not a momentous shift – marginal, but a shift nonetheless.

Sticking with a steady routine of walking Lydia daily, going to regular yoga and Qigong classes, building a short meditation practice into my morning routine, benefiting from the expert guidance and teachings from the Buddhist Centre and the weekly classes, and returning to the pottery studio for an afternoon of contemplative creativity in conducive company, are all helping to restore something in me that has needed to be restored for a very long time.

As I write, Lydia is relaxing in a corner of the room on her favourite rug.  She’s had her walk and breakfast, spent a bit of time outside doing a bit of barking, and now – like me – she is ready to rest a bit.

I’ll go out later and do a bit of shopping, taking some soft plastic waste with me to go in the recycling bins that Aldi have in store.  Their distribution methods do create a lot of plastic waste but at least they provide recycling facilities. Less waste would be better but we all have to start somewhere.

It’s hard to say which self-management rule applies here, although it could be rule no. 13: something to do with responsibility.

 

Soap

'A Poetic Potter & A Potting Poet'Leave a comment

First published 4th January 2020

Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com

It may not be the most obvious thing to write about at this time of year, or even at any time of year.

However, it represents, for me, something of a New Year’s resolution, albeit one that I started with before this New Year; in fact before the last few New Years.

I started using soap instead of shower gel as a way of using less plastic. It’s a small contribution to a massive environmental problem, and I’m sure soap itself has negative impacts on the environment.

But I believe in small steps, building up to marathons and mountain climbs.

I make other buying decisions to reduce the impact of my waste on the world, such as buying unpackaged fruit and veg when I can, although I’m still horrified at the amount of ‘stuff’ that goes into our recycling bins.

This relates to an earlier post Poetry Rule No. 9b Keep recycling to a minimum until you’ve got your other priorities right. It may not seem obvious that it does – almost a contradiction in terms – but I will write further posts with further insights from this position. For now, though, I just want to keep this post simple, like the soap I use.