Reflection

Well today’s the day I look back on this adventure to tell you if it was worth it. Short answer yes. Long answer nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope, actually also yes. You see at the end of the day this whole experiment is exactly that; and experiment. In the long run what would the point be if I just want back to my old ways. What I will do is keep similar rules of this experiment with me for the rest of my life. The thing is that to properly manage your impact you have to commit your lifestyle to it or else it won’t count for jack. Here’s the benefits I got when I was doing this the proper way. With my better diet I genuinely felt happier. I was more proactive and energetic. When I was not doing swell on my dietary part (hey I am graduating, sometimes the boost helps with work, well not really, but it felt like it.) I felt even worse when I strayed to crackers or filler snacks. It wasn’t as unhealthy as popcorn or chips, but I barely eat those anyways. I felt worse because I full heartily knew that the apple, or grapes, etc, would have been a far better choice for combating chronic laziness. For most of my lunches I had fruit and only fruit (maybe vegetables thrown in as well), and I have to say I know prefer to have that now instead of that processed crap. It just feels far better, and the flavour is in fact worth the little bit of extra effort.

  

The funny thing is that I tested myself today since this journey ended early afternoon. I had some popcorn and played some games, but it just didn’t feel right. After the popcorn (light butter, I hate butter in general) I didn’t feel like touching any sort of dessert, or having a snack later at night. And I only played about twenty minutes of games then got disinterested. I also had Gatorade in a plastic bottle, and didn’t even taste great. Interestingly enough I would have wasted approximately 25 bottles throughout the time of the experiment. That’s 300 hundred bottles a year. By the time I turn fifty I would have consumed 9600 bottles. That is what I call a quantifiable impact.

Although this experiment helped me to re-find my self-control and resolve, I still need to work on it. During the experiment I hiccuped while being sick and watched some videos, and that urge to sit around and watch videos all days is still here. However I will be fixing that by refusing to watch any more gameplay videos. If you watch just four channels that do gameplay you can add at least one hour of internet time a day. That’s just by watching four channels. To match that with non-gaming channels, you would have to follow fifteen to thirty channels depending on their content to get an hour of usage per day. Also despite the fact that I am sleeping less, I feel more energetic and responsible then I have been in the past.

Could I have committed a bigger positive impact? Of course I could have, and still can. The idea of this experiment was to change how I view my lifestyle and for that it was a success. My plan was to change the little things, I didn’t go for any shockers, I also didn’t sit on my ass twiddling my thumbs around. Changing the little things instead of making a statement makes it far easier for you if you mess. As long as you stay on track. I may have not been perfect with my food, or internet, but damnit I made a noticeable impact. And the best I could hope for is that other lazy people like me could one day think that if a lazy tired teenager can live healthier, then so can I. I believe that a story similar to mine (let’s face it I think if you are in fact reading this, you’re the only one who will) could inspire people to change their lifestyle. This method shows how easy it is to make a better impact if you commit your routine to it, and make it reasonable to your position.

Now I know that it seems like a making a mockery of other people who actually try to have a no impact experiment, I mean look at the url; greenbutnotthatgreen. However I feel quite the opposite. What they are doing is very challenging, and sometimes breathing the air of impossibility. And yeah what they do is extreme, but sometimes its the extremeness that causes response. I would leave you with some links of what I think the future of green technology has in store for us, but I no longer have my old computer which had them. Go Google search the future and stop reading this novella of a post. Or go outside.

Day 20

I got sick over the past weekend. How perfect. So since I barely could do anything much besides moping I watched some videos and what not. Would've been nice to get all my work done then, but that was not going to happen. At least I got some work and some reading in. Now I'm going to end this thing on Friday. Then I'll be free to play video games...in July. Still haven't used plastic bottles, still don't have any pictures,, still don't know how to change my post time to Eastern Standard Time (it's past eleven), and still not enough time for anything. (inset witty sarcastic here, while I pass out into deep sleep)

Day 18

Three more days. But that's just a number. A LYING number. You see I could go back to my usual ways once Tuesday hits, however it doesn't work like that. I still have summatives to reluctantly hand in, and exams to study for. So if on Tuesday I catch up on the stuff I missed during the experiment I'll just be digging myself a bigger hole. I won't have any other time to do anything I'd love to do besides school work, because who doesn't love their soul being crushed. However I'll probably do a reflection on what I learn, and on what the world of green technologies has to offer, and how living a greener lifestyles has different benefits. But I can reflect on one thing: spell check sucks compared to using Google. Seriously if you type horridly (like asf;h) it can still tell what you're looking for. Which is great if you can't figure a way to spell the word close enough (that you don't know)  for spell-check to find the word you want. Well at least there is the summer to be  catch up my entertainment, oh no wait. That time is reserved for a job, getting in shape, and hanging out with friends. Maybe I should just remove some YouTube subscriptions.Yeah when the equator freezes over.

Day 17

Yet another post date entry. This time do to frivolously working to try to see if I can do the green Saturday (Spoiler alert: it ain't happening) and as a result it was already to late to post. Now that I found the SD card for my phone, I'll be able to post pictures, when I'm not drowning in work, and if I create the right conditions where the camera doesn't mistake objects as fuzzballs. I've been using my laptop more in classes, that's green right? I mean as long as it's not drawing power from an outlet. And I'm walking to school, just like always since I started high school. And I walked to middle school as well. That's green. I eat more fruits, and yes I throw out the remainder, but that will eventually rot in a landfill somewhere. (At this point I think my parents are doing better then me. They took the broken TV to a recycle plant. Normally my guess is that they would opt for the curb seeing as it's marginally closer. But that probably wouldn't have happened if it weren't for my initiative, so point for me?)

Day 15

I'm planning on ending this experiment on Monday, however before I do end this I will try to go one day, one measly day without electronics. I hope to do that this Saturday, so instead of getting 3 hours of leniency, I will use 2. However knowing my luck so far, that may happen, in fact I might even manage to make this somehow backfire worse then an explosive boomerang. Well as long as most of my work gets finished before then this plan should work just fine. Also I realize I mentioned that the plan was to do this for three and half weeks, however I still kind of doing that. I started this days before making it official, however those don't officially count seeing I messed those up by not having a structured set of rules.

Day 14

Well this it. I just can not possibly do this. I leterally cannot go 2 weeks without music parodies. What? you thought I couldn't go three mere weeks without video-games or YouTube videos. That's hilarious, and I know I'm close to the edge of failure seeing as I am using YouTube to play the music. But guess what; I am not watching the video that goes with the movie, meaning I'm not breaking any of my rules. But seeing as that is kinda of a (as the kids call it) dick move, this means I'm adding a rule: No going over to a friends place, unless it involves no electronic entertainment. The thing is I did not put in this in my initial rules, seeing as two or more people sharing the same electronic activities, in the same room, is only slightly more harmful then a single person compared to multiple people. But then I would also be causing some emissions, which I want to reduce immensely.

Also this will add a few notches of difficulty seeing as I can't physically watch any new music on YouTube, and I get to see how many videos I did not watch. As for the photos, well there turns out if there is camera in my house it is well hidden, and for my cell phone, well the SD card is nowhere to be found. And with my room getting cleaner and cleaner, I am running out of places where it can possibly be.
Before I go here is a real rule I'm adding for the last 10 days: no web articles that are not needed for school . The reason for me having to listen to music: I'm far behind schedule and this is the only for me to catch up.

Day 13

It's the end of day 13 and after not missing video games and videos for nearly two weeks, I'm now missing them. And caring for the environment is going smoothly seeing as I'm only going to be doing three loads of laundry this week (clothes, summer clothes, sheets) compared to one. But its on cold water (like it always is.) Uhm okay this is actually looking pretty bad. However I can fix this seeing as the main environment aspect is really from stopping my use of plastic bottles. Tomorrow I'll take some pictures to represent that amount of plastic I saved from trashing the planet by taking pictures of the ones that I never got rid of............. and therefore will after the experiment. Dammit. Well I'm eating fruit, mainly oranges...from Florida. Well I guess that can count seeing as doing the 100 mile diet in Canada can be a minor inconvenience, with the fact that its nearly impossible. Also still no video-games.