Volusia Business Women directory

Woohoo! I am thrilled to be a part of this wonderful Directory and organization. Thank you Angie Bee, Loretha Simon, Volusia Business Women!!!

“A Community of Entrepreneurs. From authors to life coaches to graphic designers and more, we are a community of entrepreneurs with a goal in mind: to grant business women in Volusia County an affordable website presence and be the Go-To site for event listings in our County.”

Yes it’s true as the slogan on my cool VBW ceramic pencil cup goes, “We Are Stronger Together!”

You can see my directory entry here. “It is easy being green — and I’m here to help you with all aspects of sustainability, both interior and exterior! Consultations, workshops, eco landscaping. Specializing in micro businesses; urban environments.”

#Entrepreneurship #Women #SupportLocal

How to minimize encounters with unkindness and meanness

I have noticed that for me, the best way to minimize encountering unkindness and meanness in the world is to work really hard to avoid being unkind and mean myself.

I’m not always successful but it’s a goal worth constantly striving for.

Yes, there’s a lot of unkindness and meanness out there, and maybe no way to avoid it 100%. I did notice that I was causing a really high percentage of the meanness I was seeing, though. Your mileage may vary! Not everyone is as cranky and mean as I am sometimes.

A lot of times if I’m willing to face it in myself before it “escapes” into the wild, I’m a lot less likely to see it out in the world. (This is an old principle of consciousness; nothing new.)

Also, some little imaginary devices I have found helpful:

• virtual roll of duct-tape (for my mouth; apply for example before meetings where there are issues I’m super fired up about but have said enough and really need to let other people talk)

• 7-second delay filter (breathe deep for 5-7 seconds before responding to something)

Act as if NOTHING gets recycled

Best and most reliable advice I can give about recycling. Unless you know differently for your specific town/city/area, at this point it’s best to assume that nothing gets recycled. And do our best to modify our grocery shopping and other purchases accordingly.

It sounds bleak but never fear, there is good news too. Stay tuned, I’ll be back later to add to this post; just need to do some composting tasks.

OK I’m back. The good news is that everything gets “recycled,” eventually. What I’m talking about is Mother Nature’s recycling bin. Compost.

In one of the first permaculture design courses I took, back around 2005, I heard a saying, “Everything composts.” The instructor was talking about a landfill in Vancouver where someone noticed that batteries were decomposing.

At the time, this came as a great revelation. But I have noticed many other examples over the years, of everything breaking down in nature. Tin cans rust and dissolve; even plastic disintegrates. Does this exempt us from being careful? No! For example, micro-plastic particles are proving deadly to waterways and marine life.

What it does suggest, though, is that compost bins and other compost facilities have a wider role to play than we may have thought, in breaking down “waste.”

Ultimately, we need to not make packaging that’s not either readily compostable or truly recyclable or both. In the meantime, I refuse whatever I can. Then reduce to a minimum, then reuse, then compost what I can. And then inevitably, some things end up in the trash or the recycling bin.

But I always think it’s best to assume nothing gets recycled unless I recycle it myself.

Cooking in the driveway

Multitasking!! Or, as we say in permaculture design, “stacking functions” or “multiple functions served by one element.”

Functions served:

  • Cooking food! (pot of soup made with local veggies, spices, + some nonvegetarian scrap ingredients that would otherwise have been thrown away)
  • Eco PR! Using my high-profile driveway on a heavily foot-trafficked street to publicize solar cooking, solar energy (yes! solar energy other than photovoltaic is a major thing, and is way underutilized!).
  • Evidence of homebased presence helps to create a safe, friendly atmosphere for the neighborhood.

Side note: The “STOP” sign might seem excessively stern, but over the years we have found it to be necessary, as too many people were mistaking the residents’ personal space for a public area. Over time I have found that setting clear boundaries is actually a kindness, and is part of creating healthy safe community.

See pix here, in my post in the Transformative Adventures group.

Wildness of the heart

WILDNESS OF THE HEART:

“We tend to think of wildness as being something beyond the frontier of a normal human life, out there ‘in nature’ — in the African bush, in the mountains of Alaska, or across the broad oceans, but all of us who have had times of great joy or untrammeled grief have felt a kind of wildness of the heart in those moments. A sense that the edges of our sense of self are fraying and falling away into something to begin with, unrecognizable, with its own rules and compelling nature far beyond our everyday comprehension. Absolute joy and absolute grief are states that almost always result from powerful states of compelling attention: a birth, a long-anticipated reunion, or the bereft, desolate state of losing a loved one. But a more sustained sense of the wilder edge of things in the everyday, outside of these subversive and compelling moments thrust upon us against our will, comes from the willingness and the practiced ability to give deep attention to people and things other than ourselves.”
— Eric Brown

(Note: The above is an excerpt that really spoke to me, from a longer post by my friend and fellow “FREE” Book author Eric; you can read the post in full here.)

P.S.: To find out more about the “Growing FREE” Book (Financial Resilience, Economic Empowerment) and purchase your own copy, and to check out our upcoming workshop, please visit our website growingfree.money . This is a cooperative venture among five of us. We co-write, co-teach, and share revenue. So you’ll be supporting all of our work — and, we look forward to supporting you on your path to creative and occupational freedom!

Cellphone flashlight: useful & pleasant, candle-like interior light

With all the badmouthing our cellphones get, they sure can do a lot for us!

With this tiny device I travel to distant lands; access libraries; take courses and workshops; attend international conferences; have a coffee or cocktail with friend or family; have business meetings with geographically scattered colleagues; communicate with elected officials; do my part to publicize beneficial businesses and social movements.

Oh, and of course produce my own content too: articles, books, slide presentations, artworks, videos.

All without leaving the comfort of my home and neighborhood!

But there’s one built-in function of our phones that’s much more ordinary, yet a great boon to my life: the built-in flashlight! I use it to provide a level of illumination that’s enough to see by for basic early morning or late-evening tasks in my room (getting dressed, going to the kitchen to fill up my water-glass etc.), while being unobtrusive and not bright and glaring.

My housemates and I all have similar sleeping patterns: early to rise; mostly early to bed. So we don’t usually have to worry that we’ll bother each other with bright lights. But, I do find the candlelight-level light from my phone to be very pleasing to ME: convenient and ambient in the early mornings or late evenings.

For extra nice illumination I set the phone on top of an empty clear glass jar or empty drinking-glass (or just about any flat-topped transparent container or even translucent container), light-side down.

I do enjoy actual candlelight on a regular basis for illumination too of course! But there are times when the phone flashlight makes more sense, such as when I only need a few minutes of light, or when I know I will need to leave the room for periods longer than a second or two.

#hygge #personalstyle #ambiance #selfexpression

Upcoming talk on Degrowth and a steady-state economy

This will be a “Lifelong Learning” talk for Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ormond Beach (UUCOB). Both in-person and by Zoom. The general public is invited.

Date Wednesday April 26; time 4pm-5:30pm US EST.

Here are the Zoom coordinates: ZOOM LINK https://zoom.us/j/5203271236?pwd=YVdVWEFFajhodVpRelJWMIE1MjF0dz09 ZOOM LOGIN – Meeting ID: 520 327 1236 Passcode: iti376

We (at least we in the industrialized wealthy western world), are accustomed to taking “economic growth” not only as a given, but as outright necessity. Doesn’t an economy HAVE to grow? 

But wait — DOES it? And from an ecological and a social standpoint, SHOULD it? This LLL by Jenny Nazak introduces the concept of “degrowth,” and related concept of a “steady-state economy.” These concepts have been around for quite some time, as it turns out. Find out more about degrowth and how it can benefit your economic and emotional wellbeing, while also benefiting the planet.

From Wikipedia: 

“A steady-state economy is an economy made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size. In effect, such an economy does not grow in the course of time.”

This talk is given by a non-economist, for other non-economists. However, links to in-depth books, websites, and other resources will be provided to satisfy the intellectual thirst of even the wonky economist who might show up, or who lives within our own selves! 

Time permitting, we will cover related concepts such as the “8 forms of capital.” Of which money is but one, and possibly the least versatile. 

Ample time for Q&A will be included; come prepared for enjoyable exploration and creative exchange. 

ABOUT JENNY NAZAK 

Jenny Nazak is a sustainability educator and ecosocial activist. Author of DEEP GREEN book and blog; contributing author of FREE book (Financial Resilience and Economic Empowerment). Active participant in the Degrowth movement, as well as closely related movements including permaculture design, Deep Adaptation, and other worldwide movements for social/economic transformation. Her blog, a scrap-box of her written musings and takes on various stuff, is jennynazak.com . And she can also readily be found sharing ideas and resources on Facebook, Tiktok, and other social media.