Green Minded Wallet

I, like most people I know, take medication on a regular basis (and I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing). But given all of the news about the high level of pharmaceuticals in our water, I have been thinking about just how much medication we take nowadays. Not only that, I have also been thinking about how quickly I take my doctor’s advice on which medication to take (or even to take a medication at all). It’s not that I think that doctors are giving out bad advice, but it just seems strange to me that as someone that deliberates on the environmental and financial impacts of just about every decision, I would so blithely make a decision that could impact my body, finances, and perhaps even drinking water for decades to come so readily. Part of the challenge is determining the best way to get information so that I am making an informed decision, especially since individual physiology can play as much of a role as the pharmaceutical in question. While internet message boards can be informative, you often only get the extremes. Friends and family can often be a useful source of information, but are sometimes biased and may not be able to offer assistance in all areas. I do feel however, that given the potential side effects of many drugs and their ability to vastly outweigh benefits it is definitely something that I am going to consider more carefully.

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I would be flat broke. Seriously. I feel like I start off the week with a manageable number of tasks and plenty of time to get them done, and yet somehow some things always get squeezed out. To make matters worse, it’s always the same things that get squeezed out, like blogging and cleaning and organizing. And I like blogging, I really do. Truth be told I don’t even mind cleaning and organizing within reason, but somehow they get pushed down the priority list. I think a lot of it has to do with guilt and the feeling that I’m not going to live up to some expectation. If I don’t clean my room, no one has to deal with it but me and the dog (and I’m really not that concern with her feelings on the matter). But if I don’t put full effort into an assignment what will my professors think of me? I realize that it’s silly and that prioritizing your time (just like any other resource) requires that you make some sacrifices. I also think that no matter what you choose, someone is going to be disappointed: I’m not talking about them being let down because you didn’t do something that you were supposed to do, more that you didn’t do all that they thought you could (and therefore should do). If this is truly the case, then I guess I need to learn to deal with the guilty feelings (i.e. get over it).

Fortunately I think my problem is not that I have too many activities, but that some areas of my life (classwork, triathlon training) seem to squeeze everything else out. The nice part about this is, that I don’t have to quit anything, I just have to scale back. And I’m trying, it’s just going to take some time. Perhaps I could set a maximum amount of time per week for everything related to that particular activity including travel and additional research to make sure that all of the little unexpected tasks don’t continue to encroach on other areas. We’ll see.

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