Its Good to be Back

Hello my green and filled with purpose buddies! Welcome to 2010 and I swear I'm back.

Sorry for the month Hiatus, but I just didn't have time last month to truly pen out my thoughts like would have liked to.
But I'm back and I don't quite know where to start....

Let's start with all I'm still doing that's good when it comes to Purposeful living.
I can't say I've been perfect -- in fact far from it. I will admit to slacking on some of my own rules about green living.
Oh sure I still use cold water washes for the laundry, eat my organic eggs, stay home and not drive that much, drink tap water, recycle every little piece of paper and/or piece of cardboard I come across and other misc things i can't think of right now, but I have been slacking.

I need to confess and then I think I'll feel better. Here's what I've done and I'm not proud of.

1. (and yes its #1) Shopping at Wal*Mart
2. I have been buying prepackaged and/or ready to cook foods
3. Taking long showers
4. Using the heat a lot
5. Using the dryer
6. Printing things A LOT when really I don't need to
7. Not supporting local businesses and getting commercially prepared stuff
8. Taking more baths then I even want to confess to
9. Shopping and buying clothes that were clearly made by some sweatshop child/person (Old Navy)

Now I honestly want to defend all those confessions (because its been REALLY cold, wet, out of work husband and I've worked A LOT of overtime and am just to tired to care sometimes) but I won't try to defend all my evil non-green ways! Ok they are not evil (minus the Wal*Mart one, that's pure evil and a complete frustration for me) but they do bother me.

Which is good!
If I wasn't bothered I would be worried that my own preaching hasn't even effected me!
But it has and its good.
My conscience has been whispering on occasion that many of my "choices" are probably not the best and I should reconsider them and just suck it up and pay more for stuff!!! UGH
And while I might not have a lot of readers, you still inspired me to be accountable and WAKE UP. So thank you! You didn't even know you did that! ?! Way to go!

I have no excuse about the Wal*Mart excuse except I have been worried about feeding my family with having only one income--that income being mine which falls pretty much around the poverty level -- but we do have unemployment so we are SO blessed with being able to receive that. God is good though and he's provided in so many ways that it blows my mind some days. See now if I had just trusted I wouldn't have felt guilty about going to Wal*Mart because I wouldn't have gone. UGH. Time to cut it off and move on and just stop. Time to make my changes and go back to my simple living anyway.

The past month has been hard though. I'm not going to lie. Its hard to live this "green" lifestyle sometimes when you don't have a lot of money coming in, but at the same time if I'm smart and look for coupons for example its not so hard. Just remembering to live simply like I constantly preach is really all I need to do. Plus if I just remember I probably don't NEED a lot of the things I obsess about anyway.

I did make good choices for Christmas though. We bought at least 4 gifts from the World Vision Gift Catalog and from Oxfam (which is like World vision where you buy things like animals or a mosquito net for example) for some family members and for others well I didn't get them anything. I got my mom some little bowls from an antique shop we were at and she bought me a little mini-vacation with her. So all in all it was a green Christmas and there was not a lot of spending of the green so it worked out good. Noah had to pick only 3 presents (because that is what Baby Jesus got and you can't argue with baby Jesus!!!) and he stuck to his 3 gifts and was happy in the end. He understood that we weren't going to be showering him with gifts anyway. We took him to Seaside, OR as part of his present and he was overjoyed with just going to the Arcade and swimming at the hotel pool. Having cable helped too!! ;)

So I wasn't a complete loss over the past month or so. All in all Its good to be back. I hope you are glad too and here's to 2010!