Felicitations Newsletter #2
Imaginary Greta Thunberg is in my house judging me and that's a good thing.
Ever since Covid started I’ve developed a very upsetting relationship with trash.
I consider myself a pretty staunch environmentalist. When I was twelve, I won five hundred dollars in the lottery. (My dad gave me and my brother a dollar. I chose to buy a “pick three” lotto ticket with my money, and my brother chose to save his. He gloated. Until I won, BEETCH!) My family used the money to go on vacation to Key West, Florida, and I remember the only thing I wanted for myself was a Greenpeace tee-shirt with a whale on it. So clearly, my Earth-loving roots go deep.
As an adult I try my best to be green. I own a Prius. (A green one.) And I’ve always been self-righteous about the fact that I wash the little salad dressing containers out with soap before I recycle them. Of course, after I became a mom things became WAY harder. The Montessori philosophy of “wooden blocks only” went out the window the first time I visited the toy store with my kid. You can’t seem to dye natural-made items bright pink enough to satisfy my baby’s eyeballs. But still, I try! The kiddo and I have a compost heap in the backyard together, we pick up trash around the neighborhood, and I try everything I can to introduce her to Earth-positive mentors, like Captain Planet. (Only one episode. FYI that show does NOT hold up!)
But then Covid came. And stayed. Annnnnnd stayed. And around month six of quarantine something happened. I started seeing every tiny bit of cast-off material we produced as a symbol of the fruitlessness of our existence. (That’s all.) Every bit of plastic wrapping. Evey tossed out chunk of Styrofoam. It’s as if the repetitiveness of the daily routine, with no real breaks in it, made me hyper-focus on the things I repeated over and over. Namely: Sleeping. Eating. Pooping. And CONSTANTLY throwing away garbage that will never disintegrate.
I started to eco-give-up. In my mind, that used Chinese takeout container became the only immortality I could ever hope to achieve, so why not toss it?! After all, we’d become no more than animals, merely sustaining our material-gobbling existences. What was the point of trying to do good, we were just destined to become worm food? So go ahead and toss out that container, and that old broken chair, screw trying to fix it, WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANYTHING ANYMORE ANYWAY?!?!?! (There was clearly a touch of depression fueling this, but let’s not focus on that right now.)
It didn’t help my attitude that “sustainability” had become the catchphrase of a bunch of fancy influencer mommies in my mind. With their long, impossibly flowy hair and perfect pilates bodies, I couldn’t stand seeing them lecture people on Instagram about how to be “responsible” when I know they have a staff of people in their house photographing their every move. (I haven’t taken a picture of below my waist in ages. My arms can’t reach far enough out to get a full-body shot, I’m not Plastic Man, and my kid can only take pictures of her thumb.) I was FINE the way I was! I mean, didn’t they know I OWNED A GREEN PRIUS?! The best I could do was hate-watch one of them talking about sustainable gardening while I ate THREE FULL FAT CUPCAKES WITH NO SPINACH OR STEVIA IN THEM. TAKE THAT GRANOLA ACTIVIST BARBIE! Ahem.
But a few months back, I was able to turn my attitude around and get back to my environmentalist roots. How? With an imaginary guilt ghost, that’s how!
I don’t know how or why it happened, but all of a sudden one day, while I was tossing out a plastic mermaid of my daughter’s because she has seven of them already and I was just DONE with these mermaid things, I pictured global warming activist Greta Thunberg standing behind me with her arms crossed, GLARING at me. For real, I was startled! (As you know, her energy is FIERCE.) It made me pause, look down at that little mermaid…and then stick it in a box to regift someone one day. Maybe? Who knows. Bottom line I was NOT tossing out that mermaid.
Greta Thunberg wasn’t actually in my house of course, that would have made a much cooler essay, but the energy of her imaginary ghost was powerful. And wouldn’t leave. For some reason, she kept following me EVERYWHERE I WENT.
At the grocery store, her glare made me choose recycled paper towels instead of bleached white ones. It made me choose the “ship slower in fewer boxes” options online. It made me half the length of my sad-bath time, and purchase those fancy Stasher silicon pockets so I didn’t have to use plastic baggies as much. (These things are $$ but MAN are they awesome, I promise it’s worth it. They last forever you can MICROWAVE OR BAKE THEM! #notsponsoredby)
Bit by bit I started to be a more responsible human. Even though I was still cooped up and still semi-depressed, I wanted to be BETTER. Imaginary Greta Thunberg made me want to start demonstrating to my kid again (and Greta’s ghost) that I still cared. And even though I was trapped in my house, I could at least do my part in not being an absolute a-hole to the Earth. That’s all we can do individually about anything really, right? Just our part. And hope that all of our individual actions, added up together, make an impact. (To be honest, I was just glad to feel self-righteous about something again. It was invigorating!)
So basically, Greta Thurberg haunts me. She makes me a better person. That’s a good thing, even though it’s creepy!
If you have an area where you need to improve, my advice is to conjure an imaginary guilt-ghost. Like, yes paper straws suck. But picture a ghost sea turtle named Reginald with a plastic straw sticking out of their eyeball watching you everywhere you go, and yes, you’ll make better straw choices, I promise!
But don’t tell anyone about him. It will definitely creep people out. Just like I’m doing now.
Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
INTERESTING LINKS I FOUND THIS WEEK:
FELICIA LINKS (ALSO INTERESTING):
I am narrating a LitRPG book called “Rule of Cool” that is on pre-order at Audible RIGHT NOW. Click to pre-order. It’s very funny and VERY geeky!
As always, my Twitch streaming schedule is HERE.
Podcasts: New Felicitations and Undressing Bridgerton are up!
Lastly please spread word about subscribing to this newsletter. I’m having fun with it and hope you are too!
See you in two weeks, and on my Discord channel in between for chatting and friendship! <3
oxox
Felicia
It is SO easy to feel the eco-'trying to be earth-friendly is pointless!!' feel. I feel it all the time. The best consolation/advice I give myself is that old starfish story - you know, that old, corny one about the person on the beach after a storm, where there were hundreds of starfish washed up, stranded. Another person comes along and says 'what are you doing, you can't save them all, why bother? It doesn't make a difference!' and the first person picks up a starfish and throws it in the water and says, 'It made a difference for that one.' (then the other person, inspired, joins and helps, and others join, etc, and all the starfishies are saved and they all lived happily ever after.)
Look for your local Buy Nothing group where you can give away things like the mermaid! :)