I’d love to reduce the commute, but we’re not there yet… I’m trying to take Franz Rosenzweig’s approach to the process of adapting in place (“…don’t say ‘no’, say ‘not yet’.”)

I had similar observations about myself in high school and considered asking an Amish family if I could come live with them for a year. Later in life, I prepared to join a monastery and I think that these issues were part of the motivation–though not the majority of that motivation. I married instead. I lived without a TV a lot and would still be happy to be rid of it, but I am not the only vote in the house. Car-free would be dreamy, but not possible yet.

How do you get 6 people in a Taurus? I assume that is at least three of those are car/booster seats of some sort.

But: television? Gone! Not missed!! Gives ya enough time to shell peas & beans on the back porch. It’s called Getting A Life, I think.

The second shift is the need for self-discipline – sometimes it isn’t good to take the cookie.

Exercise from Greer:

Put something large, brightly coloured and/or otherwise eyecatching in a room in your house where it doesn’t normally sit.

Later, enter the room and stay in it for five minutes — and don’t look at the object that whole time.

Repeat every day until you can do it easily. A classic willpower-builder; it does change you. Also it’s good to do it in game form like that.

In the west, we take a dualistic approach. “I” am fighting against some other part of “myself”, and if I only fight hard enough, I can win. The classic angel and devil sitting on your shoulders.

But in eastern traditions, the goal is to be aware of your whole self, in its true and united form. The word “yoga” literally means “to yoke” or “to unite”. Through greater self-awareness, one realizes that there aren’t two opposing forces, rather there’s only one you. You’re in control of “both sides” of the argument, because there’s really only one side. Once you can perceive the whole picture, the right path becomes clear.

Most places we want to go in the city are accessible either on foot or by bus, but we have given up on some activities because the aggravation of getting there and back outweighs the attraction. For example, when 3 different buses are required while carrying a heavy load of equipment.

For the first time in a year we have the temporary loan of a vehicle while my folks are overseas, and we’re using it on weekends to catch up on a few things. It’s quickly become obvious that apart from commuting, previously 90% of our car trips involved going somewhere to spend money – either we were heading for a mall or shops on the weekend, to some event that was not free, or eating out. It has been particularly noticeable that now we have a car available for picking up the groceries rather than being limited to what we can fit in backpacks, our weekly spend has shot up. Having to cart everything home on your back really helps you focus on whether you really really need that giant size box of corn chips
I think that not having a car has helped save us money by reducing our opportunities to spend money, as well as saving us all the costs related to keeping it on the road.

The one area where being carless does cost us money is in delivery fees – these days it usually costs 50-60 dollars to get any item of furniture delivered. So for the next few weeks we will be picking up a few small items of furniture, stocking up on chicken feed and bulky garden supplies, and extra groceries. The cat is also going to get a trip to the vet for neutering – we do have a perfectly good home vet who would happily do the job on our kitchen table, but I was just a little too squeamish for that. It wasn’t the fact that it was my kitchen table, it was the possibility that I might be expected to assist that worried me

Too bad we can’t read Sasha’s blog anymore, it was amazingly inspiring.