AYEDH ALKHESAIWI

For my final eco-challenge I decided to focus on simplicity. Specifically, I went with eating more mindfully. I started by eliminating all other activities and distractions and focusing on eating (in silence, for now, at least). It made me enjoy and appreciate food a lot more because eating is an activity in and of itself rather than something with which to supplement another activity. This is something I have not noticed before because for the last few years, especially living alone in the United States, I became more accustomed to eating alone and to distracting myself with a video or movie or something. It reminded me of the times I used to gather around with my parents and siblings, sharing a meal together, and talking about our day. Ever since my father passed away, this habit had become scarcer and scarcer, so that we all ate separately most times. I reckoned that if I kept practicing eating mindfully, then one day it would be easier to go back to that old habit of eating with other people, and at the same time staying away from the distractions of screens. There is also the benefit of allowing your body to register fullness when eating and chewing more slowly and mindfully, which helps with those pesky instances in which you crave a snack.

For my seventh eco-challenge I decided to focus on health. Specifically, being more physically active. I adopted two strategies to achieve this. The first is that I took a step back and looked at how my day-to-day life had been going for the last month or so. I looked for time periods in which I was doing something unproductive (and which did not help me relax in any meaningful way) and eliminated them to make more time to exercise. For instance I had a bad habit of checking my phone first thing in the morning but now I prioritize short walks along my vicinity just to get myself physically & mentally ready for the day. I think this is a better habit to develop in the long run because it should lessen my screen-time (systemic thinking, if you recall). The second strategy is that I looked into switching activities around, according to a weekly/monthly schedule. For instance, rather than spending time reading every single day, I could switch the days around so that on the days I was not reading I would be exercising instead, and vice versa. I believe with these two strategies I should be able to build back the discipline to do powerlifting, which I used to enjoy doing a lot, but stopped being consistent at it when life got too hectic during my sophomore and junior years. Powerlifting does not take as much time as something like bodybuilding so I think this should work better in the long run. Another small change I made is that I stopped using the elevator and resolved to using the stairs. This one is funny because the elevators in my building seem to break every once in a while, so why not make it habit to always use the stairs instead?

For my sixth eco-challenge I decided to use more public transit. I’ve never really shied away from using busses or trains but that is maybe because I’ve never been exposed to bad quality transit. The transit in Portland seems fine to me and I cannot recall any bad incident in a bus or at a stop. The reason I went with this challenge is because for a while I’ve grown used to using “uber” than public transit. To be more frank, using a bus is infinitely cheaper than using car services that charge too much, and at this point the time difference is not that major if you keep up with routes and stops and their timings. I suppose technology makes it easier to use a bus because you can go on Google Maps, choose a destination you would like to go to, and look at all the available routes and options. They always show the exact routes and stops and their timings. From my estimation the timing can be off by a couple of minutes, and if there is a major issue, then the app will show you that (if the bus will be late by 30 minutes, for example, which happened to me when I lived in Spokane WA). I’m looking into using the Amtrak more because I spend some of my weekends in Corvallis or Eugene with friends & family.

For my fifth eco-challenge I decided to engage in a custom activity I called “Community Engagement.” The idea is to spend more time with neighbors and get to know them better. I live in a huge apartment building with hundreds and hundreds of other people. There is half a floor dedicated to holding events (sometimes weekly or based on holiday) where people can gather and do fun activities. The management in my building is usually responsible for this. Most times they host an event related to consuming wine and I can’t do that for religious purposes but sometimes they do host board games and provide snacks and other stuff. I have gone there a couple of times before and it was fun to play chess and to meet new people. So I decided to go there again last Wednesday and spend a few hours with my neighbors. I didn’t really find anyone living in my floor this time around but that didn’t matter too much. One thing I never noticed before is how vibrant the setting is. People of all walks of life and different backgrounds live in my building but it’s difficult to see that if nobody is willing to connect with others. This is something I’d like to make a habit because in order to know the environment you have to know the people living in it, and how else can we preserve the former when we don’t know the latter?

For my fourth eco-challenge I focused on being more mindful of how much water I use on a daily basis. The one I focused the most on this week was showering because it seems to be an easy thing to tackle. I spoke with Evan about these challenges and he suggested I use a timer when showering to better achieve the challenge. I did this to actually figure out how much time I was spending during my showers because I tend to lose track of time and it turned out that I spend a little over 8 minutes there which seems absurd to me now. So I decided to set up a 5-minute timer every morning and stopping whenever the timer goes off. I also tend to take a second shower if I had gone outside during the day and got sweaty so the plan now is to allow these showers perhaps a minute or so.

For my third eco-challenge I decided to focus on not wasting food. I think it is very difficult for me to change my diet in any meaningful way because I tend to eat the same type of food on a daily basis (some dairy products, a lot of rice, dates and coffee, and some others). For this reason I decided to start with something small and manageable as a starting point and from there I should be able to build up gradually. This last week I focused mostly on planning my meals and purchasing exactly what I needed and cooking/eating less meals in general so that no food goes wasted. Two smaller meals per day works well for me now. In the future I would like to eat less meats and add more greens to my diet and I think I would be able to achieve this by alternating meal plans so that on one day I would eat what I usually eat and on another day I would be focusing on the newer items.

Hello. For my second eco-challenge I decided to be more energy-conserving than before. For instance whenever I leave my apartment I tend to keep the lights and appliances on rather than to turn them off. This was an easy fix the last couple of times so now I’m trying to be more mindful of what unnecessary lights and appliances I got turned on even when I’m present at home. One thing I never considered about appliances is that they continue to draw power even when they are plugged in so I’m trying to make it a habit to unplug everything that I’m not actively using. I also tried to be more mindful about lighting. I suppose that with so many hours a day of sunlight then the wiser choice is to use this natural lighting resource than to waste energy just to keep artificial lighting on. The goal here is to break down bad habits and to build up good habits.

Hello. I hope this is being posted in the right place. For my first eco-challenge I chose double-sided printing over single-sided printing. I don’t have a printer at home and I tend to use the printers around campus to print stuff out for my independent studies and writings. I usually annotate a paper using the empty space on the unprinted side, so at first I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to annotate effectively using the margins or the spaces between each line (it always seems that it won’t be enough). My handwriting is large and I tend to write a lot of comments about a particular section in a particular text. So, even when I tried double-sided printing I wasn’t too happy about the fact I couldn’t write as many comments as I liked. I suppose at this point I should teach myself to use the space more effectively so I’m interested to see how I can improve this habit moving forward.