Title-less (or Untitled, if you prefer)

So with the coming of a new year of my life which began on Thursday, I decided to try a few new things. If you are reading this blog, then you are witnessing the one of those things firsthand. My goal for my 26th year is to create an insightful, creative, interesting, fulfulling, inspiring "blog" post on a weekly basis (or more if I am feeling ambitious) for the next 52 weeks. Surely, many of these will stem from my daily experiences, which, if my memory serves me correctly, are not always as inspiring experiences as I expect them to be. SO, I ask you to please bare with me, since this is something new.

I'm going to start off here with a few thoughts about something that I feel everyone can agree that they despise as much as I do: traffic.

Moving to Los Angeles in June has really opened my eyes to the serious problems of fossil fuel consumption and carbon emission.  EVERY day I see countless vehicles traveling in the congested streets as solo riders.  It surprises me when I speak with people at work (for those of you who don’t know, I am currently working at the Center for Health Sciences building at UCLA) about their travels around the city, and I find that I am one of only a tiny parcel of people who live within biking distance of the school.  This includes people who have been working at UCLA for up to a DECADE.  Now, if I were to work at a place for that long, I KNOW that in my head I would acknowledge the fact that I would be saving a substantial amount of money not having to pay for gas, car repairs, and something more important than that to me: TIME.  Why do others not seem to heed the facts as well?  If someone were to reply that they make more money working there than they would somewhere within biking or public transportation distance, I would argue that the difference that they would be saving from the commute would even out the difference more closely than they would be willing to admit.

I got my permit at age 19, license at age 20.  I didn’t have a car with me in college.  I graduated and moved to a small island is Alaska, where I was able to walk 5 minutes to and from work each day.  I now live in LA, and share one car with my girlfriend Kate.  I’ve made my decisions and conscious contributions to environmental awareness, and they are very much a part of my daily thought process.  The big problem that I have with my decisions is that very few people also care about long term environmental sustainability, and it pisses me off to no end to experience people being so careless about seeing past their direct tangible lives.

It also upsets me when I know people that do care, but think that there is nothing they can do to immediately change their impact.  Most of the time, this is a denial to being inconvenienced, which is often blown far out of proportion.  Yes, at times I do wish that I had a car so I could do certain things if Kate needs to get to work.  But you would be surprised to find that the times you are glad to have done something within walking or biking or spitting distance far exceed the times you wish you had the transportation, and to physically work to get to those places is far more gratifying than sitting in traffic wishing you had a helicopter.

I’m not saying that I think people who drive places everywhere are jerks. I am just saying that I think everyone should have a conscious realization that they CAN make a difference; it’s just a matter of putting forth the effort, and having the power to find personal satisfaction in making a difference, even if you don’t get a gold star for doing so.