Creative gift ideas that cost little, waste nothing but mean everything Last month, I wrote to you of practicality. Of reclaiming the “need” of gift-giving because, in delivering essential items, we are automatically reducing hazardous waste and corporate-fuelled climate change. Yet, to paraphrase Love Actually, most of us don’t want something we need, we want… Continue reading A Drop in the Ocean: When Less is More
I know it’s only November, I know we don’t want to think about it, I know it feels surreal and almost sacrilegious to even mention it what with the lockdowns and low hums of recession, the rising loneliness and lowering of morale but I’m going to do it, mention the unmentionable and open the Pandora’s… Continue reading A Drop in the Ocean: ‘Tis the Season to be Practical – How the Humble Care Package can Save Christmas and the World
As many of us face once more into the remote working breach, continuing to bid a prolonged and indefinite ‘A bientôt!’ to watercooler chat and after-work drinks, I find myself mourning but also interrogating the hallowed structures that defined my pre-lockdown working life. One of these was my caffeine dependence: an intense and unwavering obsession… Continue reading A Drop in the Ocean: Boiling it Down – The Uncomfortable Truth of my Caffeine Addiction
I always believed the Internet was essentially “green”. Online resources like OneDrive save trees and the need to print, video conferencing – as we are all now acutely aware – prevents millions of miles of air travel, while the Internet’s connectivity has emboldened global climate activism. Our digital lexicon – words like “cloud”, “web”, “lightweight”… Continue reading A Drop in the Ocean: Lightening my Online Footprint, one Unsubscribe Button at a Time
I may be someone who religiously keeps a slab of chocolate on their bedside locker (and thus someone who regularly has trouble sleeping and/or terrible nightmares for no discernible reason). Easter is therefore a much-anticipated event for me – a welcome respite from closeted snacking and a foray into full-frontal, unapologetic feasting, unfettered by the… Continue reading A Drop in the Ocean: Carbon and the Chocolate Factory
I saw a zine on social media this week that depicted two people catching up. "What did you do today?" One asked the other. "Oh, nothing out of the ordinary," the other replied. "I just gave money to an anti-racist cause, continued my unlearning, and then didn't tell anybody about it."* *I'm paraphrasing. I can't… Continue reading Weekly Weigh In #5
5.23pm I am writing this from my perch on the unstable and dilapidated (chuffed to have found a reason to use that word) outdoor furniture outside my Dublin bedsit. I am in full view of the front room voyeurs of my terraced street and I am in my bra and shorts that have been rolled… Continue reading Weekly Weigh In #4
I've been doing a lot of sitting this week. Not literally. Literally, I couldn't stop moving. I pounded the roads running, cycling, walking, hurtling, trying to rid my body of the toxicity of the week. I thought, if I could just keep moving I might arrive at some harmonious destination, some grand moment of enlightenment… Continue reading Wednesday Weigh In #2
"Privilege is not about what you've gone through, but what you haven't had to go through" - Janaya Khan. So here it is, here I am, doing absolutely not enough but something. Holding myself accountable. Making sure I won't do what I always do - get all hyped up on the injustice of the moment,… Continue reading Wednesday Weigh In #1
I hate that I'm this person and yet, I can't help thinking it. I cannot help but be irked by the tsunami of influencers and everyday people essentially blackwashing their platforms in the aftermath of George Floyd's. Except, just as Greta Thunberg was not the inaugural climate activist, George Floyd was not the first person… Continue reading Day 34: Is George Floyd to 2020 what Greta Thunberg was to 2019 and, if so, is this a good thing?
Earnest & Ethereal 