As you can see, I have two weeks left in this apartment.  I’m packing boxes; next weekend, I’m driving all my stuff (except camping gear and the minimal amount of necessary clothing for work) 1000 miles to my fiance’s apartment, where I’m leaving it, and then flying back here.  What a pain!

Nonetheless, this is going to be my first week where I try to eat foods.  Michael Pollan defined “food” roughly as mostly plant matter, unadulterated by other impulses.

Well, I’m going to try and eat food.  I’ve been thinking, and it seems to me that there are three main obstacles to eating mostly plants.

1. Breakfast
2. Lunch
3. Dinner

Namely, I have very little time; I hate cooking for myself; and how do you eat mostly plants for breakfast, anyway?  There’s frittatas.  There’s fruit.  And then there is a big blank space in the middle of my mind, where I can’t really figure out what else to put in there.  No pancakes, I’m sure (and besides, those are too hard to make and I don’t like them.)  No whole-wheat Trader Joe’s waffles stuck in the toaster (I admit, those are what I usually do.)  No Go-gurt.  No sausage or bacon or scrapple (yuck), except as a condiment.  I guess you can make toast and load it up with lettuce and tomato.  Oh well.  No bright ideas there, but that’s enough variety to last me a week, and I suppose I’m going to have to hope for a brain wave sometime in the middle.  So I now have the makings for several different breakfasts.  Let’s hope this works.

Now, on to lunch.  There’s a meal in the middle of the day where I usually sneak down to the cafeteria at work and grab a cup of soup or a sandwich, and I’m sure that both the soups and the sandwiches heartily flunk the “mostly food” test.  I think this means I’m going to have to start packing salads.  (How this will work when I no longer have a refrigerator is going to be another problem–but one I’ll cope with at that time.)  So, I’ve now gotten spinach and butter lettuce and tomatoes and marinated artichoke hearts (less than five ingredients, all of which I recognized) and avocado and walnuts, all good things for salads.

Finally, dinner.  My biggest problem with dinner is that I’m just freaking lazy.  By the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is cut up a bunch of vegetables and wait for them to cook.  I eat so much absolute crap at dinner; honestly, if I could just make myself successfully eat good dinners, I would never have gained so much weight in the first place.  So this week, I bought a good selection of veggies that I know I like, and I cut them all up today.  Zucchini, leeks, corn off the cob, broccoli, a handful of shallots.  I have spinach to throw in to pastas (more vegetables than pasta, of course) and stir-fries by the handful.

Also, I bought some gorgeous artichokes, which are steaming on the stove as we speak, and can be easily reheated for a simple yet yummy dinner.  Mmmm.  Yummy.  Those will get a butter-olive oil-herbes de provence dipping sauce.

Truthfully, I am going to miss fast food in that I-can’t-believe-I’m-still-cracking-my-knuckles way.  I know it’s bad for me.  I don’t even like the taste all that much.  I don’t like the way it feels.  But, yeah, I’m kind of addicted in the worst possible way.  That’s gonna have to change.

I’m your every day average person, about to embark on a not-so-average plan.

I graduated from college. Have too much debt in student loans. I’ve taken a number of short-term temporary jobs–a year or so each–in numerous places across the nation since graduation, all with the goal of making me all that much more attractive as an employee in my chosen field. They’ve all been great opportunities, with attendant long hours. It’s been two years since graduation. In that time, in pursuit of the perfect resume, I’ve lived no fewer than 1000 miles from my fiance, who is stuck in another city, pursuing his own temporary job, in pursuit of his own resume.

I’ve finally landed a job in his city. I get to move in two months. Middle of July is the magic date.

Unluckily, I got notice from my apartment building a while ago that they were going to be renovating the whole building. I have to move out May 24th.

These last two years–living alone, with no time for myself–have been devastating to me health-wise. I put on about thirty pounds. I get little exercise. I get out in the sun maybe four or five times a month. I am in worse shape than I’ve ever been before. I’m disconnected from everyone, everything, and the thought of shoving myself into some sublet–disconnecting myself even more from my environment–for the last two months made me feel ill to my stomach.

Perhaps that’s why I never looked for a sublet.

Perhaps that’s why, when I discovered there were several campgrounds relatively close in to my major metropolitan area, my heart leaped for the first time.

And maybe that’s why, instead of tossing my money into a second deposit in a second urban neighborhood, I bought a tent and a camping stove.

For close to eight weeks, I’m going to live outdoors. I’m going to hide it from my coworkers and my boss–they would never understand. And if you knew where I worked, you’d understand the incredible disconnect between what I am doing and what they are expecting.