Impact of a No Impact Life

Colin Beaven is No Impact Man...he's trying out a year of living in New York City without making any negative impact on the environment. That means, according to his site, "no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…" Yeah, I know. It's impressive. He's not going cold turkey on consumption, but he's been whittling away at things one at a time. His apartment no longer has electricity. He stomps his laundry in the bathtub. He has a box of worms that compost things. Colin's got a wife, a 2 year old daughter, and a dog. They're all no impacting, too. While I am definitely looking to simplify my life, get rid of possessions I don't need and not acquire new ones...and while I think being vegan is a really good way of being healthy, respecting the planet, and decreasing your footprint left on the planet (which I am still trying to be hardcore about but I'm not lately and I just need to DO IT already because I've already been basically a vegetarian since the 90 Day experiment except for when I'm weak but we're GETTING THERE OK?, haha)...I could not do what Colin is doing. Well, I guess I could, but I'm not going to. However, Colin posted something that rang true to J and I. We are trying to build a company that covers a multitude of goals: - work for ourselves - create art and put it out into the world - further the careers of other artists we believe in - travel and see the world -- and enjoy and appreciate everything in it - be happy to wake up every day Plus others, but I need to save some for other blogging material, haha. So anyway, sometimes I feel like we sound pretty pie-in-the-sky-optimistically-naive to people. Music and business and happiness and positive impact...well la de dah, right? Guess what, folks? Someone's gotta do it. J and I will. And we'll miss out on some things for it. Like someone paying our benefits for us, and sleep, and going home at 5 PM every night and not working weekends...but we're cool with that because we love this. And we're glad that by reading this blog post, you're along for the ride. Grab a bag of pretzels and settle in. What measures happiness? Colin posted this in his blog not long ago and it rang true to us...so don't worry about our pies and our skies, because I think we'll be just fine. :) "As for the personal or individual level, members of the new branch of the psychological profession who call themselves "positive psychologists" say that we are on a "hedonic treadmill." We earn more to spend more and then have to earn more to spend more and then…We get a quick burst of pleasure from our purchases but no long term increase in happiness. Meanwhile, many are stressed by working all the hours to do jobs they don't believe in with people they don't care for. Increases in the baselines of our happiness, it turns out, don't come from money once you've achieved an income equivalent of something like $40,000. What the positive psychologists say happiness does come from, on the other hand, is strong interpersonal relationships, doing what you are naturally good at, living a life that is in accord with your values, and achieving meaning by connecting to something larger than yourself." - No Impact Man