At the beginning of the week I drew a chart with things I wanted to do every day (exercise, pick up trash, play guitar, write, practice German). I'm looking now at seven check marks in the “pick up trash” column, and it makes me really happy. It's hard not to feel crappy about myself for the empty spaces, especially the unmarked guitar column. I don't know if that's normal- to regret the things you didn't do instead of focusing on what you accomplished. Logically I know that I can't plan every hour of my life, nor would I want to. I believe that the more I fill out one column, maybe it'll be easier for me to make time to start filling in the others.
One thing I didn't expect of my experience was to feel bad about myself. Surely accomplishing something will make me feel good, right? Yes and no. I was proud that I was able to help out, but I started to feel like a weirdo. I imagined what the neighbors in my apartment complex would think when they saw me. I don't remember if I mentioned that my husband and I are on-site managers where we live and it's part of our job to keep the complex clean of trash. I wondered if they would think I'm weird for continuing down the block with my bucket and picker-upper. Like I was crazy and didn't know it wasn't my job to keep the whole neighborhood clean. Yeah, that's likely.. I'll admit it is a weird thing to do. I also didn't like the idea of becoming the neighborhood crazy lady. It's for that reason that for most of the time I've lived here, when I picked up trash I avoided the more populated streets. So far I think my paranoia has been proven unfounded. People only occasionally look at me strangely. Once I think someone thought I was the groundskeeper at the park and asked me where the bathroom was. More often than not I'm ignored. A handful of people have thanked me, which I appreciate a lot. I don't need gratitude but I like to know that others care about the environment (or at least how the neighborhood looks). I hope that the people who thank me will think about ways they can help out themselves.
During my experiment I was curious if I would run out of trash to pick up. Unfortunately I didn't but I had to walk much farther from home. It became more of a chore to find stuff. I was sad that the trash kept coming back day after day, but glad that if I stuck to a relatively small area I could easily keep up with it. If I set my next goal at a month, I'm curious how far from home I would have to walk to fill the bucket. I'll save that for another time because this month is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and that's more than enough to focus on. For now I'm attempting to pick up trash every day for as long as I can, but sticking to around the apartment complex. It makes me sad not to do as much as humanly possible, but I'm trying to establish a habit that I can work up from.
Sorry that I haven't updated more. I'm a dreamer to a big extent, a doer to a lesser one, and a document-er to a very small degree. I'll try to keep you better informed. In the mean time, here's a picture of some trash. Enjoy or don't... please don't.
