Mend
I finished the year with crackers. I made crackers from scratch with ingredients in our kitchen. I added the stuff we like and omitted the stuff we don’t. I knew everything that went into them. I knew that the cook washed his hands. I spent about $1 for the equivalent of the artisanal crackers that we would otherwise buy for $9: with some ingredients we don’t want; and with no guarantee the cook washed their hands.
I have asked “what happened to my hobbies?” In the start-up pressure cooker, so many things drop off the table in favour of the quest to get our start-up to take off. I think I have an interest that envelopes a number of hobbies and activities. I mend.
The pace of inflation is getting me more livid by the day. It’s not only that prices are going up: quality is going down. Packages are shrinking. To greenwash, businesses are dropping conveniences and keeping their mainstays (ie. go ahead and tell me that a Starbucks plastic cup has less plastic than their straws or their drink stoppers). The powers that be are actively degenerating the quality of life, increasing their profits and fending us off with half-assed excuses. The remedy is to take control of as much of your life as possible.
When restaurants went stratospheric with their prices. I turned to our kitchen. I have always felt comfortable in the kitchen. After 2022, I renew my commitment to start with raw ingredients and concoct as much as I can in our home: bone broth is coming from well enjoyed chicken dinners; pasta is coming from packages of semolina and flour; crackers are coming from a cup of flour mixed with a cup of oat milk and some other ingredients. All of these exercises take time and they still cost some money. By sliding these changes into the ‘hobbies’ column, I am finding the time. The Internet, especially Youtube, is a fountain of knowledge. Good advice coupled with trial and error is giving me a lot of joy.
Instagram and social media posts are scratching an itch, but that’s not the only place to seek a remedy. We have an innate need to create and make things. In some cases, it’s about making things right: mending them. Some people take photos for the sake of creation. Some people make things and then celebrate their accomplishment on social media. I’m going to slide into the latter camp. As I create more around the house from scratch, I will likely share those feats.
I think accomplishing something can feel really good. Likewise, creating something for others can be helpful. It can be an act of kindness. And in that is the distinction between creating comments on social media creating something real and why the latter can feel so much better even if it’s harder to accomplish.
This act of do-it-yourself is much more important in the world we live in. By making things, I avoid most of the necessity for packaging. I can re-purpose other items for other craft projects. As time progresses I could combine the need to make something new with the need to recycle and breathe new life into old junk. Long COVID has shot my health. In that regard, I need to literally mend up. It’s a long road to recovery and finances don’t allow for a fancy home gym. When I needed to mend myself through exercise I could do, I scrounged an exercise bike for free. I had a decent flat screen TV (also from the side of the road). I built a moveable TV stand out of old free pallets and $15 of lumber. By mending that junk, it can live on in a new incarnation. It gets a few more years of utility before maybe it really is trash, or I pass it down to the next user.
That’s going to be the sub-text to 2023: mending. I am going to make what I have work and work well. If the information is useful, I will share it around.
