Here's a list of things I've done recently that makes me feel like a better person.
Building my own furniture. I now have a table and a desk, thanks to two trips to Home Depot, some hammering and screwing. The table is not very stable, which is something I need to fix. The desk is stable only because I shoved an extra piece of plywood under it and looks horrible from the back. However, since nobody can look through my walls (I hope) that shouldn't be a problem.
Driving under the speed limit. When I came back from a conference at Exeter, NH last week I almost always drove at or below the speed limit during the second half of the trip. Part of this is because I was rather tired and couldn't get much sleep the night before despite going to bed at eight. More importantly, I just don't think that driving over 50 miles per hour is a good idea on curvy, hilly country roads. This really angered the driver behind me. I would feel bad if he had actually tried to pass me during the times when there was a passing lane and I slowed down for him to pass instead of constantly tailgating me for over half an hour.
Not using the air conditioner in my car. Somehow, I survived a week of 99-degree heat without an air conditioner. In fact, I spent most of that time packing, cleaning, carrying books to and from buildings and otherwise doing low-intensity physical labor because it was just too damn hot to sit down at a Macbook and make a presentation. I am doing much better in dry heat than I have before; now that I am used to the cold winters I suppose my next project is to build up my heat tolerance.
Buying more of my food at the local co-op. Well, first of all, there's this brand of jalapeno-flavored cheese snacks that only the local co-ops sell for a reasonable price. Anyway, with the exception of meat, I've been buying over half of my produce from the local co-op. And now that I've found a co-op less than twenty miles away that has meat I've been buying most of my meat from there as well; while meat is much more expensive at the co-op the difference is acceptable when I buy in bulk. The meat, especially, does taste better coming from a local organic farm.
Paying for things I used to get for free. Today I, for the first time, paid full price for a piece of Microsoft software; the last and only time I paid for Microsoft software that did not come with hardware was when I bought a copy of Windows XP under a campus license agreement. This specifically has to do with the fact that OneNote is in fact an amazing piece of software that is worth its money; you wouldn't see me using Office, much less paying for it. Thanks to local, awesome record stores and rental services like Netflix I actually don't want to download music or movies anymore. Besides, the music I enjoy all come from small, independent labels which means that download services, legal or not, won't have anything from their artists. The whole having a job and a good amount of income that will depreciate faster than most things I buy thanks to our nation's failing economy also helps.
Eating ice cream. It's been a very long time since I had ice cream in the fridge and actually ate it. Well, now that I finally remember that small amounts of ice cream every now and then is awesome, I better get to eating some of it.
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