What The Hell Have I Agreed To?

I’m Adam and I used to consider myself a moderately environmentally conscious person. My wife Erin kindly blew that out the window for me. She explained this whole compact thing to me a few nights ago and told me what she thought our family could do to be more environmentally and socially conscious; to make an actual, tangible difference, even if only a small one. I was actually kind of blown away by this whole concept. My idea of environmental awareness: not being a litter bug, recycling, and turning the lights off after I leave a room, seemed like they were just the no-brainers that everybody should be able to do unconsciously. This was the real deal. This was going to take a lot of sacrifice, effort, planning (my skill level < 1), and commitment.

I work a lot, so I am going to have to do a hell of a lot of planning to keep my part of the commitment. I have to say, one of my biggest worries going into this is the amount of time it’s going to take to do this stuff. Working 40 hours a week plus overtime, on top of having two kids and a 40 minute commute has thus far been enough as far as I was concerned. Now I have to spend a good bit of the valuable left over time making sure I live within this new “adventure” we are committing ourselves to. I think it will be fulfilling and will actually make a small difference in the big picture, but I know it will make our family stronger, smarter and better overall. I want to have my kids take a lot out of this and learn at a young age what they can do to be more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible. I want to go to bed at night knowing that I put in enough effort to pay back mother nature, if only a bit, for all she has given us.

I’ll do my best to explain what going on with our compact and how I’m doing, as well as how the family is doing.

So, back to the original question: What the hell have I agreed to? I don’t really know yet. I think there will be a big learning curve but I’m hoping it will become kind of second nature after a while. I hope to be able to answer this question by the end of the year. In the mean time…I’ll tighten my belt and see how things go.

Adam

Ps: I don’t think the cat seems to give a shit about any of this (he’s a bit of an asshole sometimes).