The one about quitting

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplas

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Welcome to the end of March, 2023.

Lots going on out there. Lots to argue about, parse, and otherwise get bent out of shape over.

Instead of doing any of those things, I am going to declare myself Finished. Done. Finito. Finalized. No More.

No, I’m not going to quit writing. While I do consider it more a hobby. In the way of “hobbies” it is something I enjoy and will continue to do while spending money on it. Without much of an eye on anything like “profit” or “actual success” because to do that is to die a little inside every day. Especially now that I have had Chat gpt fully explained and demonstrated to me. Let’s just say, when I watched the screen fill with the words of a story I gave a simple prompt to create, I experienced a shiver of simultaneous elation and dread. But more on that later.

No, what I’m quitting is (drum roll) consuming things that are not made from, or do not come from, plants. That is to say, meat and eggs and (eventually) dairy products. I have done this for 3 weeks so far, and I’m a bit peeved to note that I feel a lot more energetic and I don’t really get hungry between meals. I did hit a point last week where I felt Extreme Sadness relative to thinking about my next meal because I didn’t want to consume it.

Plant based eating can be a tad boring, regardless of how creative you are with chickpeas, farrow, and sweet potatoes (my GOD I am going to turn INTO a sweet potato). But based on what my doctor said, relative to my cholesterol and glucose realities, I need to wrap my head around it fully. I’ve done the research: watched Forks Over Knives, subscribed to any number of plant-based eating email newsletters that are now crowding my inbox with their virtuous, righteous, somewhat gaseous, slide shows of recipes. Shopped at a place called Earth Fare that had the raw audacity to charge me way more than the regular grocery store does—although these days I walk out of most grocery stores feeling ripped off.

My pantry is chock-a-block with nut butters, egg substitutes, edible yeasts, beans, miso, grains, whole wheat pastas, while my fridge and countertops overfloweth with fruits and veg. I eat two meals a day with snacks in between. I am weaning myself off dairy but in week 3 I bit the bullet and paid for vegan cream cheese and butter so I should be clear of real dairy soon.

Like I said, I feel pretty good, even if a good portion of my time is spent, shall we say, detoxing myself while scrolling twitter or doing wordle on the toilet. All good, really. Although two nights ago I had a dream about eating bacon. I am not giving up alcohol, but have cut way back on it, limiting its consumption to 2 nights per week. I won’t be That Annoying Vegan at the dinner party. I can be flexible and I have left seafood in the diet because if I have to eat plants I shall also allow myself to enjoy sushi.

Wish a girl luck, won’t you? And send me recipes, preferably ones that do not include sweet potatoes because as much as I love sweet potatoes I do not love them in every meal I eat.

Media I have consumed and my opinions on it:

I listened to Demon Copperhead on Audible, by one of my all time favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, and read by Charlie Thurston. It’s a story of rural Virginia and how opioid pushers targeted communities like it for their early-adoption efforts around Oxycontin. Ms. Kingsolver is a Kentucky native and I truly love it when she digs into Appalachia in an honest way, showing us how lives are lived when rampant poverty is one of the biggest parts of a person’s background. Demon Copperhead is hard to listen to at times, it’s so brutally honest about addiction, abuse, and foster care. But like most of her books, the narrator is a pure soul whose life is one of perpetual hope beating its head against the reality of poverty. I highly recommend it in audio.

I also listened to The Golden Couple, by the writing duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. It was a well produced and narrated story and had their trade mark Big Twist at the end. However, this particular big twist was one I saw coming and so was not as entertained by it as I might be (and as I have been by their previous books). Easy to see how it will make a nice streaming mini series, though so more power to them.

Finally, I chose something about a world I know literally nothing about other than what I watched on HBO recently—gaming. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a long book but the prose is spare in a way that was refreshing. It’s a story about a young couple who meet when they’re pre-teens while the boy is in the hospital after a terrible car accident crushes his foot. The girl is there because her older sister has cancer. They go from playing games in the hospital’s kid zone play area to being some of the most successful and famous game developers in the late nineties/ early aughts. And it’s a beautiful story, full of realistic personalities, honest emotions including plenty of professional jealousy, and while it contains a core tragedy, is ultimately a lovely coming of age tale about friendship and love. And games—lots of game stuff is included but written in such a way that found myself wishing I played more games. Highly recommended (also in audio).

I’m reading 2 books now and will pass along my thoughts on them soon. And of course, I’m eyeballs deep in watching and rewatching each episode of Ted Lasso and am mourning the ending of Shrinking, also on Apple Tv also co-produced and co-written by Brett Goldstein. A story that is basically about a man and his daughter mourning the sudden death of their wife/mother in a car accident doesn’t sound like a terribly uplifting premise for comedy—by they do it and they do it well, thanks in part to Harrison Ford.

Carry on, lovelies and send me your no-meat, no cheese, no eggs, no sweet potatoes recipes, won’t you?