Every Day for a Month
Dec. 4th, 2006 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebToday I found the blog of someone who decided to see if he could go a whole month spending just $1 per day on food: Hungry for a Month.
It's not the greatest place to get advice on eating cheaply, as he's not the greatest cook or nutritionist. However, you do get to learn what can happen to your thoughts, your appetite, your feelings, your time in the kitchen. It's a quick and amusing read, and I recommend it. For example, from the first entry: "Food is just one of those things that makes people feel comfortable and good; it's like Hugh Grant movies or silk boxers. And since it's a little assuming to hand out silk boxers at most potentially awkward business receptions, they tend to hand out food."
I especially liked how he told a bunch of people what he was doing and got all kinds of interesting reactions.
This is only the first blog he is doing (of two, so far). "My name is Evan and I like to do different things each month and then write about them on the Internet." Interesting idea, eh?
I can think of three times I've done something like this. First I spent a whole weekend living on nothing but what I had with me and what I could find. Of course I had a whole backpack of stuff, and I knew where a natural spring of good water was, but for a suburbian girl, it felt like a cool challenge.
The other two y'all have read about in excruciating detail. First nanowrimo, where I wrote a, um, piece of writing in a month. And the other was when I went without processed sugar for a couple of weeks. Oh, right, and that day when I promised to write in here every day.
This second month, Evan has decided to draw a cartoon every day. Even though he can't draw. Just as he lived on $1 per day of food even though he didn't even know what kinds of food were cheap yet. He has some guts.
What are some other things one could try for a month?
Watch me brainstorm some ideas I could imagine myself thinking of doing (although I am unlikely to actually do them).
* make the bed every day (I liked doing that over Christmas break last year for some reason.)
* wear only black (Would anyone notice? Would I start acting differently?)
* write down three good things that happened to me each day (This is supposed to help you be happy.)
* spend at least 15 minutes a day working on the garden
* write nonfiction daily
* walk 10,000+ steps a day
* mend or repair something each day (I wonder how many things around the house could use little fixes.)
* do something I have been putting off (Some days getting out of bed might count.)
* buy nothing but food, mortgage payments, utility payments, and investments (and whatever obvious thing I'm forgetting).
* read or make up a bedtime story to someone every night
* introduce myself to one new person each day (ha!)
You could do something that seems kind of like a whim like Evan seems to be doing. Where you don't really know what you're doing, so there's a very high potential for learning. Or you could pick something that has to do with your life dream like the guy writing Questionable Content did. Or maybe some combination, like when you suspect you might love something, but you just want to collect a bit more data.
It's not the greatest place to get advice on eating cheaply, as he's not the greatest cook or nutritionist. However, you do get to learn what can happen to your thoughts, your appetite, your feelings, your time in the kitchen. It's a quick and amusing read, and I recommend it. For example, from the first entry: "Food is just one of those things that makes people feel comfortable and good; it's like Hugh Grant movies or silk boxers. And since it's a little assuming to hand out silk boxers at most potentially awkward business receptions, they tend to hand out food."
I especially liked how he told a bunch of people what he was doing and got all kinds of interesting reactions.
This is only the first blog he is doing (of two, so far). "My name is Evan and I like to do different things each month and then write about them on the Internet." Interesting idea, eh?
I can think of three times I've done something like this. First I spent a whole weekend living on nothing but what I had with me and what I could find. Of course I had a whole backpack of stuff, and I knew where a natural spring of good water was, but for a suburbian girl, it felt like a cool challenge.
The other two y'all have read about in excruciating detail. First nanowrimo, where I wrote a, um, piece of writing in a month. And the other was when I went without processed sugar for a couple of weeks. Oh, right, and that day when I promised to write in here every day.
This second month, Evan has decided to draw a cartoon every day. Even though he can't draw. Just as he lived on $1 per day of food even though he didn't even know what kinds of food were cheap yet. He has some guts.
What are some other things one could try for a month?
Watch me brainstorm some ideas I could imagine myself thinking of doing (although I am unlikely to actually do them).
* make the bed every day (I liked doing that over Christmas break last year for some reason.)
* wear only black (Would anyone notice? Would I start acting differently?)
* write down three good things that happened to me each day (This is supposed to help you be happy.)
* spend at least 15 minutes a day working on the garden
* write nonfiction daily
* walk 10,000+ steps a day
* mend or repair something each day (I wonder how many things around the house could use little fixes.)
* do something I have been putting off (Some days getting out of bed might count.)
* buy nothing but food, mortgage payments, utility payments, and investments (and whatever obvious thing I'm forgetting).
* read or make up a bedtime story to someone every night
* introduce myself to one new person each day (ha!)
You could do something that seems kind of like a whim like Evan seems to be doing. Where you don't really know what you're doing, so there's a very high potential for learning. Or you could pick something that has to do with your life dream like the guy writing Questionable Content did. Or maybe some combination, like when you suspect you might love something, but you just want to collect a bit more data.