Hi there, welcome back into my weekly diary. In this diary I want to show you what an eco-positive lifestyle looks like on a daily basis. I want to make more positive impact and reduce my negative impact. The past week I did another interview for a fellow student, went to the Trouw Sustainable 100 and sent out the first national order from my package free webshop Loose. Want to read along? Here’s weekly diary #107.
Thursday
Another day off from school. I slept till 11 am, had a quick breakfast and then started with my homework. Tomorrow I have a deadline, but I finished the assignment today and uploaded it. I am always early with deadlines, it makes me feel good. We had to make a video about an environmental subject and mine was about pluvial flooding in The Netherlands. I ate some leftovers after noon and went off to Amsterdam. I was going to The Trouw Duurzame 100 in Pakhuis de Zwijger. Trouw is a newspaper in The Netherlands and the duurzame 100 means the sustainable 100. They have nominated 100 civilians projects and today they’ll announce the top 25. There were lectures before the announcement of the winner and it was just such a great night. I went with a friend, she asked me go a while ago. No regrets! The winner was Zwerfinator, I have been following him for a while and it was amazing to see him win. Zwerfinator picks up litter in the Netherlands and this way he also collects data about trash which is used in all of The Netherlands. This way the plastic pollution is tracked and attacked! You should follow him haha. I also ran into Jessie from TheZeroWasteProject, always nice to chat!
Friday
I always have a hard time sleeping after such nights with so many positive impressions! It makes me feel so excited! This and the podcast of The Minimalist made me think about priorities and time. It made me delete the HayDay app off my phone. It’s a farming game I play a lot. I looked into my screen time and I spend about two hours a day on the app, insane. It’s fun, but very addictive and not really contributing to my values. So I decided to delete it, which gives me two hours of time extra every day! Time to live to my values. School was about preparing the exam today and when I got off I went to Enschede. I don’t have school for a week to study for the exams.
Saturday
I woke up early to go to the gym. It’s been a while, since I can’t always workout in Haarlem. But now that I’m in Enschede I want to work out. I immediately noticed it when I went, everything hurt. When you work out regularly this doesn’t happen. Also, meditating is going quite well. I hope I can hold on this time, I want to meditate every day. Also, today I went to a secondhand store today because I thought I needed to pick up my earnings within 8 weeks. I had earned 8,50 euros! All for stuff I didn’t need any longer and sold in the store. I used to bring it for free to another store, but I won’t do that anymore. By bringing it to this new store I can earn money on my old stuff. I worked at my part-time job and at night spend the night watching tv with dad. Watching tv all night isn’t exactly what I figure as living up to my values, but spending time with my dad is.
Sunday
Another day to wake up early to go to the gym and meditate. Afterwards I worked at my part-time job again. Also, I had some chores to do. I went into the city center to send a package and go to the MediaMarkt. My camera broke, just now when I figured out I want to vlog on a weekly basis. That sucks! The camera has been sent to the repair center to see what’s wrong with it. I also did some grocery shopping for dad. Today I had to be somewhere far from home and I decided to drive to the supermarket. I want to drive a car once a week now to keep up and make sure I don’t lose my skills. It sucks to pollute, but for now I think it’s a necessary evil. I bought some vegan egg replacement for cooking and baking there and a vegan Ben and Jerry’s. Also, today I replaced my humble brush since it has had its best time. Off to compost! I worked on finishing my blogpost for Monday, since this one really took more work than usual. I am proud of the end result! Also, today was the first episode of ‘Zondag met Lubach’, a Dutch show which I really enjoy. I would recommend it if you’re Dutch. I have made a schedule on my phone with the shows I want to watch. This way I don’t watch tv mindlessly any longer. I watch what I want to see and nothing else. This way I don’t spend an entire night watching television and afterwards kind of regretting it.
Monday
I woke up quite early to the gym, but I cancelled it because I will work out later today. I slept a little more and went the University of Twente. A student there asked if she could interview me about Loose. And as I love helping people, I said yes. We had some lovely conversations and I went home again. I made some vegan pancakes but at noon I felt nauseous and tired. I slept for an hour and felt better afterwards. Around 4 pm I went off to Harderwijk to my boyfriend. After dinner, we went squashing together. I had never done it before but had wanted to try for a long time. I enjoyed it! We played for 45 minutes but it was too short for me haha, I couldn’t get enough. I plan on doing it more often and I am finding that the best way for me to work out is in the form of a game. Handball, basketball, squash, as long as it’s a game I mostly like it. I’m learning about myself when I try out new things.
Tuesday
I slept till about 11 am and studied for my exams the entire day. As a break I watched a documentary about The Princeton Institute. I really enjoy watching documentaries. At night, we went out to dinner with my parents in law. They had been married for 28 years and they wanted to celebrate. We went to an Italian restaurant and they cooked some vegan food for me. It’s basically never an issue when I tell restaurants I eat vegan. If you’re trying to go vegan this might be the easiest way to do it. Eat vegan when you eat outside of your house, because at restaurants you just need to tell the staff you’re vegan and they’ll make something tasty for you. At home you need to do the thinking yourself.
Wednesday
I woke up at 7 am because my boyfriend went off to work. This is the easiest way to get to the train for me, just driving along to the station with him. It’s fine since now I also have a long day to do stuff. Today was a great day! The first order outside of Enschede from my package free webshop Loose went out the door! It feels so great! Everybody in The Netherlands can order package free groceries now! Also, during lunch I went to the library of Saxion (where I used to study) to pick up some books. I had asked if I could donate them there and the lady would check it. Unfortunately, the books were too old already and now they’re going to the thrift shop. At night, I went to the cinema with a friend, to see Joker. What a movie! We had some drinks afterwards and it was a lovely night.
How has your week been?
Yours sincerely,
Romee
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