Looking Back and Forward after a Long Break

I am returning to my blog after another unplanned absence, and so I have been looking back over my posts to date.  I have been doing a lot of Dreaming of Less, and thinking about how to buy Nothing New.  But sometimes more is more, and something new is necessary.  A few green products have been brought to my attention in the past few months that I feel are really worth highlighting, and I intend to write them up in the coming month.

As important as it is to reduce the amount of new stuff that you buy, you can never eliminate the need for new stuff entirely.  So endorsing good, green products is an important part of promoting a green life style.  With that in mind, this February I will seek out as many great green products as I can, and promote them shamelessly.  Several have already fallen in my lap, one or two companies even approached me to write about them, but it was during my month of Nothing New, and so I decided to shelve it.  Since the holidays led right into starting a new job as a part time teacher for the Northwest Energy Education Institute (I am teaching a class on LEED), those products stayed on the shelf much longer than I had originally anticipated.

Being a teacher, by the way, is much harder in some ways and much easier in others than I had expected.  This is my first time teaching a class at an accredited college (NEEI is part of Lane Community College's Science Department), and I find the work to be incredibly engaging and fulfilling.  I also haven't dug this deeply into the text of the LEED rating system since I was first studying for the exam, so it has been a great way for me to further master this complex system.  I also really relish the notion that I am helping to shape an emerging group of green professionals.

Just wanted to let all my readers know that, although I am sorry I have been neglecting this blog for a while, it was for a good cause.