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“More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems.

My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress.

But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.”

(Quote from Henri Nouwen, an internationally renowned priest and author who wrote 39 books on the spiritual life.)

I had not heard of Nouwen until just now, when someone in the Socially Conscious FIRE group posted this quote as his reason for pursuing FIRE. It so aptly sums up how I have come to feel recently, particularly in the past year or so. And, like Nouwen, I’m finding it is “not as simple as it seems.” It’s well worth practicing though.

The “simple ministry of presence” that he mentions is actually a cornerstone of societal transformation.

“There’s no retirement on a dead planet. Invest accordingly.”

This was the text of a recent post in the Socially Conscious FIRE group on Facebook. (A group I have permalinked in the sidebar of this blog, and refer to fairly often in my posts.)

It was very timely to me, because I had been thinking for awhile about posting a question to the SC-FIRE on this topic but wasn’t sure how to word it. “So, those of you who are planning for retirement in 20 or 30 years, and are plugging away at your paycheck jobs in the meantime … Are you so sure we have 20 or 30 years?”

Or, “Those of you who are investing with an aim of attaining financial independence: Does climate change factor into your investment plans and calculations at all? If so, how?”

So I’m glad a more “insider” person brought up the climate thing. (I feel like a bit of an edge-dweller in the SC-FIRE group, as someone whose main focus is footprint-minimization, occupational freedom, climate adaptation-in-place, and economic resilience, as opposed to financial independence and early retirement.)

I don’t really ever plan on retiring; I feel like as long as I’m alive there’s going to be work I need and want to do. BTW if I were to try to be an active member of a regular hardcore FIRE group (as opposed to the Socially Conscious one I participate in), I wouldn’t just feel like an edge-dweller; I’d feel like a total freak from an alien planet. If you want to know what it’s like in some straight-up FIRE conversations I’ve seen, think: unexamined geo-arbitrage; Wall Street worship; no-work house-flipping; Bitcoin fever; extreme land-hoarding; and other forms of personal neo-colonialism. It can feel very soulless. So I’m very relieved to find the SC-flavored version of a FIRE group.

In the “Further Exploration” section of this post, I’ve shared some links representing what I felt to be the most useful comments made by other people on the the SC-FIRE “dead planet” thread. The experts referenced in these comments are three of the top experts I know of in the arena that’s often referred to as “regenerative investment” or “financial permaculture.” Those experts are Vicki Robin, Laura Oldanie, and Marco Vangelisti. I know you’ll enjoy reading their insights.

Also, here, I’m sharing some of my own thoughts on “There’s no retirement on a dead planet. Invest accordingly.” My thoughts also address the question of the ethics of FIRE in general, since it involves stockpiling a surplus that could be much more beneficial to others. (Someone on SC-FIRE just now brought up that ethical question.)

It feels to me like time is running very short. I’m often startled to hear people casually talking about even 10- or 15-year horizons, let alone 20 or 30 years. That could be just the Doomer in me, but the fast-and-thick parade of weather- and climate-related disasters in recent times just seems to be getting faster and thicker. And I will say I’ve never been harmed by hypervigilant planning, even when I’ve erred on the doomy side (such as around 2007 when I started feeling in my bones that the entire world economy was about to collapse, and it turned out to be just the U.S. housing market).

Anyway! I am no financial whiz, for sure. I’m pretty much driven by a combination of gut feelings and my own moral compass.

Here is what “invest accordingly” looks like for me:

I plan to work til I die, because I love my work (freelance artist, writer, eco activist) and even tho I’m just one person, I never want to stop contributing to humanity in this way. I aspire someday to be that 110-year-old woman, standing on a ladder with a paintbrush or reading poetry at an open mic. Or wielding a shovel (and a community library of eco books) to help a community stave off desertification and extreme heat.

I’m more into FREE (Financial Resilience, Economic Empowerment), and I use my low-footprint thrifty lifestyle to maintain creative and occupational freedom while helping the planet.

My work has not at least thus far been considered to be of high monetary value, so I learned to live well on 13k (before taxes) per year or less. (One year or three it was 7k but that was pretty rough.)

Before I was able to buy a house free and clear in my LCOL area (with money inherited when my parents passed), I maintained creative & occupational freedom on a low income by finding super cheap shared apartments, or using bookcases to turn a 1br into a 2br so I could have apartment-mates, etc.

Now that I own a house mortgage-free, I’m able to have my same lifestyle without having to worry about my landlord dying or selling, jacking up the rent, building being condemned because it doesn’t meet code etc. — all things that were constant worries to me as a renter. I am also able to provide stable low-cost housing to housemates.

With the rest of my inheritance, I am keeping a modest reserve for emergency home repairs. Other than that, I have invested in

• plants (food and medicine and shade for human inhabitants; wildlife habitat; pollinator support) for my sustainable urban homestead
• rainbarrels, solar oven, solar charger, pergola, and other durable goods for running my sustainable homestead that also serves as a demo site for urban permaculture and low-footprint living
• becoming a fractional owner of a permaculture farm and education center in my home state
• donating to local nonprofits that are addressing food-insecurity
• donating to nonprofits that are preserving rainforests and other ecologically important lands while being careful not to displace the indigenous human inhabitants
• donating to local nonprofits that are helping to preserve trees, pollinator habitat, and biodiversity
• donating to anti-racist organizations
• donating to organizations that provide free or low-cost mental-health services
• investing in my continuing education via online classes related to ecosystem restoration and urban revitalization

No, there is no monetary return for the donations, but I believe in investing in community; and also, I feel that contributing to planetary health and doing all I can to ensure the planet’s livability for future generations is non-optional.

On the theme of investing for the planet, I have started to specify (to the organizations who publicly list the names of their donors) that mine should be listed under Daytona Beach Permaculture Guild, rather than under my personal name. This gets the word “permaculture” out into the community in association with a variety of relevant causes.

I have more peace of mind from knowing that I have set things up so I can work and make enough to live happily on til I die, than any amount of hoarded lump sum could bring me.

With the remaining money from my inheritance, I am considering passing some on right now to my young adult nieces (since I am single and have no kids, and I believe in giving the young generations a boost right now rather than making them wait for me to die — assuming the financial system as we know it even lasts that long).

And with the remainder, I’m seeking out small eco/social enterprises to invest in, in a couple of my favorite key fields. Right at this moment I’m considering various options such as compost toilets, regenerative landscaping, a hardcore eco-focused PR agency to popularize low-footprint living, and starting a mobile outdoor cinema troupe focused on eco/socially conscious films. And anything about waste reclamation: retrieving/refurbishing plastic waste and using it as material to make essential stuff etc.

For myself, at this particular point on my path I feel morally OK keeping maybe 20k around in cash reserves (for aforementioned emergency home repairs and other misc stuff). My intent is to decrease that amount, in light of 1) the growing planetary emergency, 2) income flows from investments I make in small eco/social enterprises, and also 3) as I’m building more and more social capital so I don’t feel so dependent on keeping a stash of money.

My ideal would be to keep $2,000 or less in stored money. One fellow permaculturist says he rarely has more than $100, as he keeps his money constantly in circulation in his community in various ways.

This is just one 58-year-old self-employed writer, landscaper, activist, permaculturist, eco foot-soldier’s take on things.

Regarding regenerative ethical investment, the best writer/thinkers I know on this topic are Laura Oldanie and Vicki Robin, both of whom are active members of the Socially Conscious FIRE group.

Further Exploration:

• Marco Vangelisti offers courses on investing in accordance with your values. Here is one upcoming course, “Towards Aware and No-Harm Investing,” with Marco Vangelisti.

• Vicki Robin (author of the bestseller Your Money Or Your Life), commented on the thread mentioned above with this advice: “Consider investing locally in small businesses. As I said in Your Money Or Your Life, I’ve loved doing that, seeing my money build farms, solar projects, restaurants, a flower shop … seeing people in my community flourish. … Involvement in community building gives me reputational power which means people more willing to help me out if needed. … I’d love FI to develop a reputation for building main street rather than Wall Street.” You can check out Vicki Robin’s wonderful blog here.

• I recommend these two posts by Laura Oldanie: How To Invest Locally: Suggestions from Michael Shuman; and A Crowdsourced Guide to Social Justice Investing. And I recommend Laura’s blog Rich & Resilient Living in general (it’s permalinked in my sidebar), not only for ethical investment but also as an example of the exuberantly creative lives we can lead by reducing our dependence on strictly financial capital. Speaking of which, do also read Laura’s post on the many forms of capital besides financial. Her post includes a link to Ethan Roland and Gregory Landua’s article “8 Forms of Capital,” which is well-known in permaculture circles. Mainstream society tends to way overvalue financial capital in relation to, for example, social capital, but it’s a huge mistake, not only for the planet but also for our personal wellbeing.

• And, my series of posts “Becoming a Local Investor” offers some ideas on different places to channel your money besides Wall Street, that can help enrich your community and your own life. Hope you find them helpful!

“If I could not be peaceful in the midst of danger, then the kind of peace I might have in simpler times is meaningless. If I could not find peace in the midst of difficulty, I knew I would never know real peace.” — Thich Nhat Hanh (via Thich Nhat Hanh gems)

Such wise words. And I would say a similar thing about finding exuberance in the midst of danger. There’s no contradiction between recognizing the gravity of the situation and still taking joy in doing our work; in gardening; in becoming parents or grandparents. Life is fundamentally creative and exuberant even in the midst of a planetary eco crisis.

Baby cardinals screech from a nest high in a tree in the empty lot next door. A sleek black racer snake, chased by a neighborhood stray cat, hurtles into the bushes, practically launching itself airborne to safety. And yes, people keep making art and making babies, and it’s all magic.

“Adults keep saying, ‘We owe it to young people to give them hope.’ But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.” — Greta Thunberg in “I Don’t Want Your Hope,” article on real-leaders.com

Further Reading:

• Marine life is fleeing the equator to cooler waters. History tells us this could trigger a mass extinction event. (From The Conversation.)

“Finally, Green Infrastructure Spending in an Amount That Starts with a ‘T’

“The U.S. federal government is proposing to spend a sum of money that starts with a ‘T’ on an infrastructure bill, and much of that money (two trillion dollars) is aimed at fighting the climate crisis. That is remarkable, and not just when you consider that we’re only seventy-five days out from an Administration that didn’t believe climate change was real. In my lifetime, we’ve spent sums like that mainly on highly dangerous infrastructure—aircraft carriers, fighter jets, nuclear weapons—and the wars in which they were used. To see a proposal to spend it on solar panels and trains is moving, and also just the slightest bit annoying: Why weren’t we doing this all along? Why weren’t we doing it in the nineteen-eighties, when scientists first told us that we were in a crisis? So it seems a fitting moment to really try to tally up the score: What are we doing as a nation now, is it enough, and how would we know if it were?

“One of the best summaries of what’s in the Biden proposal comes from David Roberts in his Volts newsletter: he highlights the ‘coolest’ features, from electrifying the postal-service delivery fleet (and a fifth of the nation’s school buses) to a national climate lab situated at a historically Black college and a major transmission grid for renewables that may follow existing rail rights of way. The energy systems engineer Jesse Jenkins, on Twitter, points out that the bill should spur the electric-car industry—the subsidy for buyers would make the cost difference with gasoline cars ‘disappear.’ Julian Brave NoiseCat salutes provisions of the plan that would send forty per cent of the investments to disadvantaged communities, which is a sharp turn from the way big federal spending bills have worked for most of American history.

“The criticism, at least from environmentalists, was of the ‘Yes and’ variety. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she thought we should be spending not two trillion dollars but ten trillion. Varshini Prakash, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, which has done as much as any organization to get us to this moment, pointed out that the bill incorporates much of what the Green New Deal advocates, including ten billion for a Civilian Climate Corps to put people to work building out the new energy infrastructure. But ‘we’re just orders of magnitude lower than where we need to be,’ she said. ‘And I think that that fight over the scale and scope of what needs to happen in terms of employment and the creation of jobs, in terms of the scale of investment and the urgency, is going to be a terrain of struggle as this plan gets debated and discussed in Congress.’ She’s surely right about that, and I fear there’s likely to be as much pressure to reduce the spending as to increase it.

“The question of whether it’s ‘enough’ is, of course, the right one—and the answer is no. Summer sea-ice coverage in the Arctic has declined by fifty per cent since the nineteen-eighties, and there were a record thirty named tropical storms last year, with one of them, off the New England coast, nudging up against smoke coming from the wildfires on the other side of the country, in California. We should be investing every penny we can in green projects, and even then we would still face an ongoing rise in temperature. That’s why movements need to keep pushing hard to build support for climate action.

“But another test of whether this spending is sufficient will come in the next couple of months as we watch for decisions from Washington on big projects such as the Line 3 tar-sands pipeline, which stretches across Minnesota. One would hope that a two-trillion-dollar jobs program—with all kinds of promises about union contracts—would buy enough good will with organized labor for Biden to get away with killing these projects. Politicians like building things more than they like shutting things down, but dealing with the climate crisis requires doing both, and if this generous new proposal gives Biden the freedom to act aggressively, then we’d get a double return on the investment.

“The Administration faces similar tensions on other fronts. John Kerry, the global climate czar, has been working Wall Street in recent weeks, trying to get the financial giants on board before a global climate summit that the Administration has called for April 22nd. The banks are happy to make proclamations about their net-zero plans for 2050, and they’re happy to pledge lots of lending into the suddenly trending renewables sector, but they’re not happy about stopping their lending to the fossil-fuel industry. Like the building trades, they’d be most thrilled about making money off both the old and the new. And, of course, that would be fine, except for physics.”

(Bill McKibben; in April 7, 2021, edition of “The Climate Crisis,” an email newsletter of The New Yorker Magazine)

#TransformativeAdventures in art!!

For some years now, I have been using mainly art supplies that were going to be thrown away, that I found or were given to me, or was allowed to take as part of my pay for house clean-out gigs. It is surprising how many surplus art supplies there are. Pencils, pens, paint, paper, canvas. Please someone help

In the past 5 years I have made some new purchases: a bottle of ink for my Rapidograph pens; a bottle of fountain-pen ink; a couple of ultrafine paintbrushes; a little set of water-based acylic paints. I still have the same set of 12 bottles of colored india ink that I purchased back in 2012. I still have a stack of five or six mini canvases from a bunch I bought for my first solo show, and did not end up using all of.

In 2018 I purchased a large collection of beads from a woman who used to have a bead shop. They are arranged in little boxes on shelves in my garage, and will last me a lifetime. Ditto my sewing and needlework supplies — four generations of women’s worth!

Art and craft supplies go an amazingly long way. Maybe that’s why a lot of art and craft supplies end up at curbside or in thrift shops: The people who bought them quit doing art; or (saddest of all) never got around to doing art; or (happiest of all) died with a paintbrush or lump of clay in their hands.

This past week, it came to me: As part of my commitment to Mother Earth, I am officially pledging to only use the art supplies I’ve already got, or ones that come my way after being thrown away by other people. (Other than fountain-pen ink and Rapidograph ink, which I only use a tiny bottle of maybe every year or two.)

I’ve got a bunch of cans of water-based latex paint in my garage, left by the previous owner of the house. And for canvas, I’m realizing I prefer to paint my works on discarded junk surfaces like bottle-caps, old t-shirts, old campaign signs, worn-out pocketbooks, random scraps of plywood etc. The world of trash is my canvas!

I’ve heard from lots of fellow artists and artisans who use mostly or all used stuff to make their creations. Particularly a lot of textile artisans do this.

I’m really excited to make this official!

Happy Earth Day everyone! Happy e-ART-h Day too!

And you can check out my art by visiting my “Art & Design by Jenny Nazak” Facebook page @jennynazakart

Go here to see the Facebook version of this post, which includes a picture of one of my artworks; a Facebook memory from 6 years ago. “Flower Power,” part of a series of artworks I did based on kanji characters. Homage to my “adopted second home country,” Japan, where I lived for two years as a young child and five years as an adult.

Many people are understandably eager to get back to what they see as the pre-pandemic “normal.” However, I’m a big fan of picking and choosing what works for you in that regard. Many of us have no desire to start cramming ourselves onto airplanes at the drop of a hat, going to theme parks, hugging anyone and everyone, feeling obligated to visit people in their houses or invite people into our houses though we have vastly different lifestyles, etc.

This article borders on introvert-shaming. “As life creeps back, some feel dread of emerging from pandemic ‘cave’
Experts say taking small steps over time is one of most effective treatments. Dinner reservations are gleefully being made again. Long-canceled vacations are being booked. People are coming together again, in some of the ways they used to. But not everyone is racing back. Their stories are emerging as the world begins to reopen – people secretly dreading each milestone toward normalcy, envisioning instead anxiety-inducing crowds and awkward catch-up conversations. Even small tasks outside the home – a trip to the grocery store, or returning to the office – can feel overwhelming. Psychologists call it re-entry fear, and they’re finding it more common as headlines herald the forthcoming return to post-pandemic life.”

I say phooey to a lot of that! Lots of stuff about what we call “normal” life IS overwhelming. Leafblowers, jackhammers, and other loud machinery operating constantly; harsh lighting and extreme cold air in public buildings; TV screens and LED signs covering every possible surface indoors and out; endless-looping bad-news announcements and loud music everywhere; roads clogged with traffic and bad moods. Maybe not wanting to go back to what passes for “normal” in U.S. culture is actually a sign of health. Everyone, feel free to stay home, or just go for a quiet walk around your neighborhood, when you don’t feel like going out into the fray! Not only is it good for your sanity; it also helps reduce our collective eco-footprint.

Sure, some of the pandemic syndromes mentioned in this article (washing your hands a hundred times an hour, or constantly scrubbing the floor of a hallway when you are the only person using it) sound like indicators of mental-health issues. But for those of us who don’t always fit the norms of a society that values and rewards extrovert behavior, the shutdowns gave us a chance to find our own levels of comfort and satisfaction, even bliss. Don’t let anyone shame you about what your level is.

I particularly love the stories about people who are finding their creativity — a common result of spending quiet time alone.

Along those lines, this article “Pandemic a chance to reexamine physical greetings” makes a good point: “The lack of physical touch has been trying, but many have gotten used to newer, more creative ways of greeting one another, whether it’s a friendly wave from 6 feet away or an elbow bump. As more Americans get vaccinated and are able to abide by the new CDC guidelines, we may be able to go back to hugging, shaking hands and cheek kisses soon. But should we?The pandemic has taken the pressure off forced interactions and allowed us time to reevaluate boundaries around physical touch, experts say.”

I’m all for that!

I have written extensively on this blog about “silver linings” of the pandemic slowdown/shutdown/reboot of the default settings of our consumerist culture. Many people and businesses have taken the opportunity to adapt and reinvent, to their own benefit and to the benefit of our planet’s ecosystems.

If in the quiet of the shutdown you’ve found new habits and practices that work for you, keep them! Personally I am finding a lot of freedom, and perfect excuses to keep my footprint low.

And really, who likes sitting in traffic?

On a related note, I was listening to a music video on YouTube, and one of the commercials was for VRBO vacation rentals. It showed this idyllic scene of a family sitting around the table. The message was all about creating lasting family memories. Ironic because this “once-in-a-lifetime boutique vacation memory” used to be just normal everyday family life, before people started rushing around so much.