Small things

I was recently reading through my feeds and came across a short post from Scott Boms, with a quote from Haruki Murakami so good I’m going to put it here to make it easy to read.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot as things in the US get worse. It’s also made me think of Small is Beatiful which I read in 2016 and think I may pick up again. As I continue to read warnings about shelves going empty and things being difficult in the coming months I go back to thinking about how this global economy works. My CSA just announced they’re getting a lot more local produce in now, the spring and summer abundance is starting. I’m grateful for that.

Even though I can buy local produce on the regular for the next several months, there is so much that comes from across the ocean. Hardly any fabrics are made in the US anymore. There are mills for yarn in the US but there aren’t enough sheep to keep up with demand. I’m in no way minimizing the pain that many, many people will feel by talking about my hobbies, but this is what we do, isn’t it? We take from our own experiences and think about how it affects us, but the reality is that many people could feel very real economic consequences from this and that makes me sad.

I’m keep going back to the quote above, trying to do the small things, trying to focus on today, trying to stay offline, trying to find ways to improve things where I can.