200 Things: Miscellaneous

By Sharon Astyk. Reprinted with permission.

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Honeybees have been in a dangerous decline - attract pollinators like mason bees and other wild bees to your home and garden to ensure reliable crops.

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If you are adding a backup heating system (or even if you aren’t - your neighbor might be), don’t neglect fire prevention including good extinguishers, escape ladders and 10 year smoke detector batteries.

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You will keep heat in your house better if you bank it with snow or bales of hay.

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Sing as often as possible - it will make you happy, provide you with music, and the songs you know by heart will always be with you and your family.

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Learn to sleep anywhere, in any situation. Self-hypnosis and meditation can help with this. Being able to fall asleep when you cannot change your situation means that you will be rested when the time comes that you can.

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Pay attention. Look carefully at your surroundings. Notice your weeds, your seasons, the birds at your feeders, the flowers that bloom on the roadsides. Notice your family - look for what they are doing more of, better, and reasons to be happy. Notice your spouse or partner. Show them that you notice. Notice what you are doing - do it carefully and joyfully.

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Think in terms of turning off, doing without, reusing, making less, rather than keeping your life essentially the way it was with only minor refinements of consumption. It is often better to get rid of the appliance entirely than spend a lot of money finding the most energy efficient option.

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If others don’t seem to be responding to your message or sharing your concerns, remember that the evidence was there before you saw things too, and that everyone is ready to hear things at a different time. Don’t stop trying, but be gentle and respect the time people need to adapt.

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Distinguish between present scarcity and future scarcity - try and be more generous, more appreciative of abundance now when we have it. It is easy to look at the future and feel we are already enduring deprivation, to horde and panic. Remember, we are here now, and there is much to enjoy.

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For every new project you take on, consider letting something else go - if you are going to begin canning your vegetables, consider giving up vacuuming every day, and put it off. If you are getting involved in community affairs, cut down on the number of long phone calls with people you don’t like. Try and cut out something you hate but do because you feel you have to, and replace it with something you enjoy, that also helps you prepare.

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Try and look cool. Of course it feels weird to say, “nope, I’m going to walk 3 miles to work” or “nope, sorry, we’re not buying anything new this year.” Do it with class and elan - pretend you are having fun, and leading the pack, even if you feel weird. The weirdness will go away on its own.

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Learn to like your work. If you hate your job, either find a different one that serves your goals, or if you can’t, minimize your needs so that you can spend as little time working as possible and devote yourself to the other things you do. Try and do work that helps others, improves the world, improves your life. At a minimum, try to do no harm. And try and take pleasure in the work you will be doing in the future. We can choose what we enjoy in many cases.

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Think of peak oil and the other challenges that face us as an optimization exercise - how do I get the most fun, the best life, the most happiness, the most love, with the fewest inputs - the least money, the least energy, the least waste. Get excited about making it work.

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Find your special “thing” - your passion, your interest, your delight that will make the post peak world better. Peak oil will affect our whole lives - so find the one thing that needs doing most urgently that you care most about, and fix it. Find an underserved population and serve them. Find an unfilled niche and fill it. Find a loss or a need and help mend it. While the future will demand a diverse set of skills, it will also demand passion and energy. No one can fix everything at once - focus on your passion.

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