Pretentiousness

I had a family member ask why I’ve been posting so much, so I thought I’d explain. It’s National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo, and I’m participating. You write a post a day for November.

BTW, I did this walking page on my site the other day since I’ve started walking to work and other places. I am upping my activity level in general with a goal of walking 20 miles a week. I was interested to see how far I would have gotten if I were walking in one direction rather than just around the neighborhood, so I started tracking it. I’ll update it every week or so.

So. Pretentiousness.

A few people told me recently they were impressed the way I’d really cut down on my “carbon footprint” by being vegetarian, living in a small house and not commuting by vehicle. I suppose. Look at me! I’m an environmental hero! Ha.

Although I’ve learned a lot from my brother (who has a degree in environmental management), my response to comments like that is to chuckle uncomfortably. I have no actual intentions toward my carbon footprint. I’m terrible about recycling, I don’t save scraps of unused fabric, I use acrylic yarn, I wear leather shoes, and don’t turn off the water when I’m brushing my teeth.

I don’t care whether anyone else makes the particular choices I’ve made. People ought to make their own choices. Many more people than I expected believe my choices indicate I’m rather militant about certain things or expect me to launch into a tirade or guilt trip about something.  It’s odd, but the first thing 90% of people say to me when they learn I’m vegetarian is, “Don’t expect me to be, I LOOOVE meat” or they deliver some other sort of justification for not being so themselves. I was unprepared for this apparent widespread guilt complex. All I can say is well, that’s nice, but I don’t care.

I don’t eat meat because I think it’s gross in the same way I scream and run out of the room when there’s a giant cockroach. It’s slimy and has tendons and veins. Entrails. Shrimp looks like bugs. Ewwww! Vegetables simply don’t gross me out.

I walk because I like to walk and hate driving. Driving makes me yell and swear. Plus, my job is sedentary so any exercise to counter my love of food is good. Besides, the thought of sacrificing an hour or more of my life every day to commuting makes me angry – I have too much to do!

I live in a small house for practical reasons and expect no one to justify their large homes to me. I am used to small because I’ve lived in lots of small places. In those situations, you either shut up and learn to like it or you end up miserable. Plus it’s nice not to have to clean a lot of stuff.

My point is that I don’t mind being friendly to the planet I live on, but I dislike being stereotyped. Even more than that, I dislike people being put off by me or feeling defensive because they assume I fall into a stereotype. There’s so much weird unnecessary guilt about it!! It’s been a weird position to be in. I like my choices, but I keep saying, “No, that’s not the reason” or facing defensiveness.

In the end I’ll just do whatever I do for my own reasons, like always, but it’s a good lesson to me to never assume I know why people live their lives the way they do.