Aaron Dawson
POINTS TOTAL
- 0 TODAY
- 0 THIS WEEK
- 19 TOTAL
Aaron's actions
Health
Healthy Sleep
Effectively working for sustainability requires self care! I will commit to getting 60 more minute(s) of sleep each night to achieve at least 7 hours per night.
Health
Happiness
I will write down three things every day that I am grateful for, or send one email every day thanking or praising someone.
Nature
Enjoy the Sunrise/Sunset
I will enjoy the sunrise and/or sunset each day.
Nature
Practice Gratitude for Earth
I will spend 30 minute(s) per day outside, practicing gratitude (prayer, meditation, journaling, etc.) for Earth and my natural surroundings.
Transportation
Go by Bike
I will commute by bike 1 mile(s) each day and avoid sending up to (___) lbs of CO2 into Earth's atmosphere.
Community
Engage In Active Listening
I will practice actively listening to a friend, family member, co-worker, acquaintance, or someone who I may disagree with in at least 2 conversations.
Water
5-Minute Showers
I will save up to 20 gallons (75 L) of water each day by taking 5-minute showers.
Waste
Find Local Recycling Depots
I will find out where to recycle the recyclable items that I can't put in recycling dumpsters or my curbside bin.
Waste
Reduce Single-Use Disposables
Cheap, single-use items and disposable packaging end up blowing around as litter more often in poor and POC-majority neighborhoods. I will find out how I can limit single-use items and do my best to limit the waste I generate.
Waste
RESEARCH LOCAL WASTE SITES
I will spend 15 minutes finding out where landfills and/or toxic waste sites are situated in my region and which communities are most impacted by these sites.
Participant Feed
Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.
To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?
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Aaron Dawson 3/21/2024 3:28 AMI have just recently been reflecting on my sleep schedule. Tonight being a large exception to a rule of going to bed at 12-1, that both me and my partner are not getting enough sleep. Just by going to bed and being in bed at 10:30, I saw immediate effects on my performance at work and my mood throughout the day. I was doing so much better just by putting my body to rest earlier than I had been previously. -
Aaron Dawson 3/21/2024 3:23 AMThis week I got up a little bit earlier than I normally do and, for the first time since the beginning of the term, I went to Stott field and watched the sunrise. I was reminded of early mornings in high school and driving to school. I think that being downtown has made it so that I am really busy and I get swept up so much in the "people" of it all and I get really distracted. I found it really centering and I will be doing it again. -
Aaron Dawson 3/21/2024 3:08 AMI got out of the habit of riding my bike but have recently gotten back into it. I really like going down to the south waterfront and around the city by bike. I often find that by biking I can get to more places faster than by walking or by bus (with some hilly exceptions) and I am generally more relaxed. Even though you are fairly exposed on a bicycle, I really appreciate the privacy that I feel when I have my earbuds in and I'm on my bike. -
Aaron Dawson 3/21/2024 2:59 AMI practice active listening quite often and find it really important to me to do so. I work very hard to be able to say the things I mean and mean the things I say but I find that I fill in the blanks too often and I think that that can come and bite me back. It is more important to not be waiting for your turn to speak and I think that that is what I am finding out. You can't find what you want to say before you hear what the other person has to say - in full. I have found that this is making me more sensitive and empathetic and that it has become somewhat upsetting when people don't offer me that same courtesy. -
Aaron Dawson 3/21/2024 2:51 AMTo build off of my last entry, I actually started using less water prior to my shower and found that it doesn't take as long as I thought it did to heat up. I am not exactly sure how to estimate how much water I saved by doing this but I did it and have tried to reduce my every-day showers to be a little bit shorter. I made the change to my current hair-regiment and it has helped to make my showers even shorter but I have decided to dilly-dally less in the shower and I can now take really fast almost business-like shower. I find that I have more time to do other things and that I can fit a shower in during a really short time frame and I find that it really wakes me up. -
Aaron Dawson 3/21/2024 2:40 AMThis week I decided to start putting a lot more of my items in the recycling and more carefully examining the things that go into my garbage. I am disappointed at how much non-medication stuff in there is made of plastic. I also have been trying to evaluate how much water I use during my showers. I have seen that my practice of letting the water heat up has been actually very wasteful and I don't know how to remedy that. -
Aaron Dawson 2/18/2024 6:13 PMWaste:
For this week I have decided to reflect on my energy consumption. I am someone who, in my free time, is primarily tied to my computer. This is for a lot of reasons, mainly that I really like my computer and that it provides a lot of entertainment via videos and games that I like to play. I think that that is potentially something that I could cut back on by going outside more in my free time. I regularly go outside to play ultimate frisbee with people in the same club as me and that has been really important for my mental health and has been a great physical outlet for me. I also take care to reuse disposable things whenever I can. I have a gallon water jug that I carry and I really like it because of a. how big it is and b. how easy it is for me to replace if and when it gets lost or broken. I have these water bottles for as long as 6 months at a time and continually fill them up with water from my faucet at home. An area that I could be better at in this respect is by simply remembering to bring bags to the grocery store when I leave my cart at home and making more use of the reusable produce bags that I have. I am also working to turn down disposable plasticware like forks and knives when I go to eat out. -
Aaron Dawson 2/18/2024 6:01 PMThis week for my food focus I have decided to focus on fried rice. This is something that my partner and I eat a lot of and I think that it is a fairly sustainable thing for the two of us to eat, not only monetarily but in terms of ingredients. Neither myself nor my partner are big meat eaters so we only do eggs as the protein in our fried rice with a bunch of different vegetables like bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, garlic and whatever else we can find and rice of course. It works really well for us to be able to get through a lot of ingredients at once and we get to make it a lot because it is also very filling.