Recycling has become a license to waste, allowing us to avoid taking responsibility for our consumer choices. We soothe our consciences by dropping our excesses into a recycle bin and having them carted away. End of story; nothing more to think about. Continue reading
I recently met a young woman who is buying nothing for a year. Julie Phillips (photo) was giving a talk about how this came to be (serendipity, like many of life’s most remarkable moments) and about her experiences during the first six weeks of being propelled into a #DIYLife.
Julie Phillips is certainly not the first person to spend less money and do more for herself,
but I was struck by several defining aspects of her story: Continue reading
Conscious Spending, Conscious Life is travelling the London Underground. Really! As the above picture shows, it entered via West Kensington Station to participate in an imaginative program to turn the London subway system into a library for commuters. Continue reading
I recently arrived at the end of two relentlessly and unexpectedly chaotic years. It was all I could do to keep my head above water. I coped by hurriedly chucking things into cupboards any which way, abandoning cleaning routines for a lick and a promise, stacking files on surfaces (floor included) instead of putting them away—you get the picture.
Finally I gained some breathing space and have spent the past couple months bringing order out of the chaos. Continue reading
Last fall I discovered that people in the book industry speak about a book “going live.” I think it’s an appropriate term. Having just been through the book production process, I feel as if I’ve given birth – to an elephant!
It’s name is Conscious Spending. Conscious Life: An uncommon guide to navigating the consumer culture. Continue reading
Soon. And I have the evidence to prove it. This is a photo I took right after the print proof arrived. Very exciting, as you might guess!
Careful review revealed a few goofs that escaped our scrutiny of the final digital proof. Continue reading
We live in a culture of excess. Over the top. Hyperbole. It’s a challenge to maintain perspective, or what my grandmother referred to as a sense of proportion. Blowing things out of proportion was not a cool thing when I was growing up. Yet it so easily happens. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon… Continue reading
To make meaningful lives that work for us, we need mental space. How else can we be open to seeing and hearing the prompts and opportunities that occur around us? Serendipities will slide right by us if we don’t recognize them and respond. Recently, Frans Johansson wrote an interesting blog in the Harvard Business Review about the role of serendipity in business success—not only his own, but also unexpected moments that forever changed life for the owners of Microsoft and Google.
I’m a fan of serendipity myself. That’s how my book title appeared after more than six months of searching Continue reading
There’s a good possibility our children will be poorer than we are, according to Kevin Press in a recent “Today’s Economy” blog . If productivity of the Canadian economy doesn’t improve, he says, our children will not experience the standard of living we enjoy.
It strikes me that kids raised in a consumer culture have been put in a very difficult position. The conditions of their upbringing have set them up for a fall Continue reading