[polaroid sea]

self-sufficiency is a bit of a driving force for me. it propels a lot of my decision-making. it's important to me to be financially autonomous and to have my own place. when apartment hunting, i happily prefer living well below my means in some cracker jack box to having roommates. when household appliances break and others quickly give up and exasperatedly say "just buy a new one," i fix the shit out of said appliances. if i don't know how they operate, i disassemble them, figure out how they operate, and proceed in fixing the shit out of them. my mother finds it amusing that i'm "so mechanically inclined" simply by virtue of my being female. but i just need to be independent to be happy. i'm intrigued by green energy and going solar too.

one of my earliest literary loves was henry david thoreau. i have a quasi-libertarian fantasy of pulling a walden and living somewhere remote and outside human-imposed hierarchy/government/culture for a time. a more attainable goal of mine is cultivating my own organic vegetable garden and subsisting on it as exclusively as possible. i like the idea of simplifying to the least common denominator and determining on how little resources i can live. it's an ongoing self-experiment of mine. frugality is sexy. that's not to say i don't have my material kryptonites. i have more musical instruments than i can afford or house. and yet there's that theremin sitting in my amazon queue.. tauntingly!

i draw the line at cars. i haven't the vaguest interest in cars. can't be bothered. call triple A every time.