Loss, life, consumption, etc
This blog post is a bit of a bummer in tone and theme so if you’re not up for that, you may want to read something else.
In early October, a friend of mine got very sick and passed away. This isn’t the first friend of mine to die, and assuming I live even close to a regular lifespan, there will certainly be more to come. I often feel too young to have had too much loss. A good childhood friend of mine passed away before I hit 18, my four grandparents all passed away by the time I was about 20, my dad died, a college friend I connected with over chronic illnesses died, a lover died, a guy I did delinquent shit with died, friends in the kink community have died, and now this friend too. How fortunate to have so much love, but how heavy death drags on me. Cancer, covid, suicide, all sorts of things have taken my friends from me, and boy do I want a break. It’s scary to feel how fleeting it all is, and what if I don’t make the most of every moment? What if I don’t love someone hard enough before they go? What if I don’t do enough to prevent an untimely death?
But amidst all the grief, there is always the rest of life carrying on. Some tumult in my personal life, but also a visit from my wonderful friend Ella Raine. (Yes, Ella, Alex Knight, and I made some extremely hot porn. Yes, it’ll probably take ages for me to release it as I’m catching up on a cascading waterfall of admin, for life, appointments, and content). I turned 30, which is inspiring because I feel like I’ve seen some real curveballs in 30 years and adjusted to all of those, so I suppose I’ll adjust to whatever else life throws at me. I had a really wonderful birthday party, and lots of people made a big effort to make me feel special. I even had people helping me run lab-quality covid tests on all of the party guests, so that I could be sure this wouldn’t be the third fucking birthday that I get covid (I’ve had covid 5 times, and twice it’s been a surprise birthday “gift”). In the last few months, I’ve been considering taking up a pescatarian diet, and now that I’ve had my birthday party and the smoked pork my spouse made for it, I’m considering it more seriously.
Which brings me to something I’ve been thinking on in a variety of ways for a long time now: consumption. What do I consume, when, and why? What does my consumption affect? In the case of diet, eating lots of animal products is a drain on resources and huge contributor to carbon emissions. While I don’t think it would be practical, possible, or even net-positive for humanity to eat fully vegan, I think it’s worth it to examine why Americans, for example, eat so much beef. And how much grain is grown and transported to feed those cattle. And how many people are going hungry that could be eating that grain. And how much other produce or even smaller animals like chickens could be grown on the same amount of land that it takes to raise cattle.
Of course, a lot of hunger isn’t necessarily due to a lack of food resources - after all, the United States has about 635 million kilograms (1.4 billion pounds) of cheese stashed away in caves. That means that right now, there’s about 4 pounds of cheese per person in the United States. This is partly due to governmental subsidies of the dairy industry artificially inflating demand and increasing dairy production at different times in our history, most recently in 2016. But dairy isn’t the only industry being subsidized and/or creating vast surpluses. Keep in mind, I think a government, in general, SHOULD subsidize agriculture, because literally everyone needs food to survive. But it’s also important to get the food to the people. Where do the resources go, and who gets to consume?
So creation and consumption go hand in hand, and diet is just one aspect. What do we have demand for? Why? Could we potentially demand less and share more? Share more with others, with animals, with the planet. Demand less energy use. I think of how I run my air filters and I do that with electricity, but part of the reason I run air filters is to clean the air of pollution, which is often driven by the fossil fuel industry. It’s like a sick ouroboros and I’m stuck gagging on my tail. But then again, I’m not in charge, and I’m so very tired.
If you read all of this, good job and thank you for entertaining my ramblings. I’ll write more about porn, kink, bdsm, being a dominatrix, and appointments soon, and probably share my reading and watching list again. For now, know that my November schedule is super packed, and December is already filling up, so if you’re thinking about scheduling with me I suggest doing so soon!
