The beginning of my environmental journey

Jennifer Bleby - 21 Aug 18

A little bit about me and why I’m doing this…

I’m not an environmental expert (barely a novice!).

I’m not a particularly good writer but I do find it therapeutic to get my thoughts written down (whether or interest to anyone else or not) – it stops me ruminating – and i think it’s good to have something positive to focus on when scrolling the internet.

I’m a first time Mum to my beautiful (biased but true) baby boy who is now 7 months old and everything about my being has completely shifted to make his welfare and happiness my number one priority (same for every parent I know!)

As a result of the above,  I’m ever more ashamed of the carbon footprints that stand behind me and concerned to my core about the world I’ve brought him to live in.

I love a documentary and I’ve watched a hell of a lot of Netflix since going out out has not been an option.   In the past I’ve gone for murder/crime documentaries (i’m an ex-criminal lawyer and have a morbid fascination) but we ran out of those, which is probably a good thing!  I love nature and started watching more environmental documentaries.   Watching documentaries like Chasing Coral have really opened my eyes, dominated my thoughts and inspired me to make changes.

I will have to go back to work to earn some pennies to pay the bills and afford a few nice things, but it’s not a fulfilling or particularly interesting career! While it’s difficult for me to change that at this point in my life, this costs nothing and will bring me a lot more fulfillment, so why not!

While I’d like to say that I’ve always been fairly concerned about the environment and the damage our generation specifically has done to the earth, the truth is I’ve been more of a bystander thinking that it’s enough to just switch to reusable shopping bags and sort your household recycling (still good things) and hoping that someone somewhere will come up with all the other solutions.   Naive optimism as well as life distractions and misplaced priorities have stopped me from educating myself further or making solid lifestyle changes.

I thought the best way for me to remain committed to the cause is to document it so I can see my own progress, and to make it public.  Hopefully a long the way I can inspire some other naively optimistic people such a myself to do the same.    I’m not setting out to be perfect.  It will be a long road.  I don’t own an electric car or have solar panels on my roof and I can’t as yet afford to go and buy them.   Cost and convenience is one of the main reasons I believe I and the majority of other people don’t do more but i’ll look at ways to combat that and make even a small difference.

Jennifer Bleby

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