Two Things for Two Months

January and February are not good months for me.  It's cold, and bleak, and it rains a lot.  The gray in the sky matches the smudged shadows in my head.

I want to focus on two things for the next two months:

1.  Going vegan (again) -- I've been vegetarian forever, and it's very easy for me, but for some reason it's very, very difficult to go vegan. When I try to go vegan, I never last for more than a few weeks.  I think it's the cheese.  Yes, there is vegan cheese, but I'd rather eat greasy cardboard.  In fact, I think that some of the vegan cheese I've eaten actually was greasy cardboard. I miss cheese, and bread, and cheese, and milk chocolate, and cheese.  Did I mention I miss cheese?  And eating in restaurants is a freaking logistical nightmare -- trying to communicate with the kitchen through the waitstaff proves exhausting, embarrassing, anxiety-provoking, and irritating all at the same time.  This segues nicely into goal number two, which is:

2.  Spend no money for two months on anything except groceries, gas, and household necessities.  That's it.  No new clothes, no thrifted clothes, no new books, no used books, no eating in restaurants, no movies, no cute vintage aprons, no candles, nothing.  I am far from wealthy but I have an abundance of stuff and I really don't need anything more.  I may want more, but there is literally nothing at all that I need.  My little house contains everything I need, and then some.  So I want to note where I would have spent money and didn't, I want to start a list and every time I don't buy something I would have ordinarily bought, I am going to write it down.   At the end of two months, I will donate the savings to a worthy cause.  I already have the perfect idea for where this money can go.

So combining the two quite nicely, my little plan means I won't be tempted by restaurant food, as it's strictly verboten until March 1.  And I can stop (at least temporarily) accumulating stuff. And simplify.  Simplify my diet, simplify my home, simplify my life. I want to put less in my stomach, less in my car, less in my house. And at the end of two months, I will (hopefully) have something to show for it in more ways than one.

"It is the great curse of Gluttony that it ends by destroying all sense of the precious, the unique, the irreplaceable."  


-- Dorothy Sayers