Sustainable Dreams

Six months or so after graduating from college, I found a real job as an assistant editor for a global news distributor. I had spent my last four months as a server at a Lebanese restaurant and with this new job came the fiscal freedom of making more than $150 a week. I made a laundry list of future purchases, the top of which, naturally, was laundry detergent. Second, a new wardrobe.

I bought my own clothes -- and not even from a thrift store or yard sale. I actually braved the pre-fab faux community of Crocker Park, hit up H&M and Urban and bought nice clothes for myself. Then I went to Target and bought new sheets for my bed. Eyed the drapes.

Adulthood.
Health insurance.
Dental plan.
Weekend hobbies.
Routine.
Martini bars.
Kobe burgers.
Planning retirement.

But despite the perpetual vortex of standardized living, there were some parts of young urban professionalism that I could not embrace. I did not rush out and buy a car -- though I did, for a minute, seriously consider myself in a VW Passat wagon -- nor will I any time soon. If anything, I became more focused on sustainability, and cast aside the standard notion of car ownership. For the first few weeks at my new job, I took the Cleveland RTA into town every day. Although I enjoyed the feeling of community from taking public transit, I knew I could be more proactive in my morning commute.

Another knee-jerk reaction to getting this job was to rush out and buy a shiny new bike. And I almost did, but my better judgment (read: thriftiness) wouldn’t allow it. Following the advice of one of my more bike-savvy friends, I claimed and restored an old road bike that had been accumulating dust in the basement of my apartment since I had moved in six months prior (and probably long before that). But I hesitated in riding it the five miles into town -- the RTA was treating me well and taking the train was a lot less impacting than riding amongst traffic. Instead I rode my bike to the Rapid station and chained it there until I came back in the evening.

Then one day, I missed the train by about a minute, and instead of waiting for the next one and being late for work, I hopped back on my bike and hit the road. I made it to work sooner than if I had taken the train. I never looked back. Despite arriving to work sweaty and rather exhausted, I felt real good. The cycling commute fueled my sustainability ideals.

About a month or so into my job, I received a packet from JP Morgan detailing my options for a 401(K) plan.

Want your retirement to match your dreams? it asked. Start early.

I sifted through the verbiage and percentages and match programs and fifty-cents-to-the-dollar ratios. I planned for my future. I didn’t leave any money on the table.

The retirement thing got me thinking. I pondered long and hard as to where I’d land in my twilight years. Could I maintain this sustainable lifestyle for all that time? If my dreams were to simply live sustainably, how would those dreams manifest themselves in reality 40+ years down the line?

I imagined myself a vigorous, virile, virtuous, sixty-something renaissance man living with my organic wife and our beagle somewhere in southern British Columbia, possibly on Victoria Island, near Vancouver. I’d have somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty acres upon which I have placed my modest ranch house with wind turbine, solar panels, and wood-burning stove/flatbread oven. I’d have my ‘victory garden’ of lettuce, garlic, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, etc. I’d have a few acres for my apple orchard. Maybe I’d raise one lamb a year to sacrifice for the annual gyro feast that I’d invite all my old college friends to. But it’s more about living on the periphery of the grid, being in a place where I could get some writing done and not feel like I’m consuming more than I’m producing.

I dove a little further into my dream, and imagined how much my grandchildren would hate coming to visit their weird Pap living in Western Canada.

‘He makes me ride a stationary bike for twenty minutes to heat the water for my showers. . .”

‘Whenever I go for a bike ride around his farm, he makes me wear a backpack with a battery in it, so I don’t waste any of my bioenergy, whatever the eff that means. . .’

‘He always makes me pick apples when I go outside. God!’

‘All he talks about is how he biked to work every day of his life to save for this ranch. What a freak. . .’

‘His electric station wagon is pretty cool though. . .’

But this malice is such a long way off. Throughout youth and young manhood, the future was always a rather hazy image -- distorted, shifty, rough around the edges. Now, I look toward a future that I can legitimately build for myself. 40 years is quite a long way. I’m sure that path to a completely sustainable lifestyle will intersect a few art deco jungles, and maybe an inner-ring suburb or two.

For the moment, I can appreciate the decision to join the legions pumping into the city each day, while at the same time leaning -- sometimes casually, sometimes drastically -- toward the periphery.