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A vegetarianism of convenience July 24, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Ramble , add a comment

Technically perhaps not really a vegetarianism, as I do eat fish, and as such would officially be a pescetarian but as that’s not a term I’ve ever really heard anyone use in conversation I refer to myself as a vegetarian simply so that people understand me and so when I refer to vegetarianism I’m talking about what I do, not official vegetarianism. Either way though the point remains the same. It’s likely to just end up as a ramble, I’m not making an argument here, I’m just trying to organize my thoughts a bit so I can’t really structure it well. It’s just all jumbled up in my head so that’s how it’s going to come out.

I’ve not been eating meat for quite a long time. I’m not exactly sure how long a time, I don’t think I was intelligent enough to date it. My best guesstimate puts it around 7-8 years, perhaps a bit more. Considering that I’m 17, that’s a substantial chunk of my life so far. It’s a big thing.

It all started out from a growing distaste for the consumption of animals, more specifically though farmyard animals such as cows, pigs and chickens. A major catalyst in the whole process was the Simpsons episode “Lisa the Vegetarian“. Yes, that’s right, vegetarianism based on a Simpsons episode. You can tell I really loved the Simpsons. It’s not to say that I simply took the episode at face value and just stopped eating meat, I wasn’t quite that easy to manipulate, the ideas had been brewing in my head for a while.

So that was it, I just stopped eating meat.

It wasn’t exactly easy at first, I kinda forgot some things were meat but eventually it was alright. I managed to keep it a secret from all my friends for quite a while, it was quite a shock when it was finally revealed. Since then I haven’t kept it hidden from my friends and some other people (eg people around me on school trips where the fact that I eat different food to others is obvious) but I don’t exactly shout it from the rooftops. It’s not something that I use to get attention and I only go into explaining my reasons if asked. I’ve never really objected to people eating meat around me, indeed my mother has always eaten meat and continues to do so, often creating meals I wouldn’t eat even if I did eat meat.

And that brings me nicely to my point.

The only real reason I am still a vegetarian is out of sheer convenience. The reasons I had for it when I started are all but gone now and instead its much more about what’s easiest. Whilst I began caring about the fact that farm animals are raised with no future than to be put to death when the right weight/age now I don’t care. I don’t have a particular justification for this change in view, no argument from a meat eater has swung me over, I simply don’t care that much anymore.

Quite possibly an important element to this is that at some point I decided something about what I should care about, my priorities if you will. I decided that at no point would I care more about animals than I do about humans. Perhaps at face value this may seem like egotistical humanity at its best but I don’t really think it is, all I really mean by this is that humans come first because they are my species and I should care about their suffering more than that of any other creature. This doesn’t stop me from caring about animal welfare, indeed I still do, I just care about humans more. I obviously think that things like poaching animals for ivory, or destroying habitat to the point of extinction etc is horrible and should be stopped but you have to recognize the human causes behind these actions and address them to really address the animal welfare issue.

I’m going off topic here, that’s really stuff for a different post.

Ultimately it comes down to this: I have no reason to continue being a vegetarian but I don’t really have an easy way to stop.

This is generally not something I can discuss with the majority of my friends, since they would either need some power empathy drives (which, no offense to most of em but its not the most common trait we have) or to be in the situation themselves to know what to do. Indeed, when I posed that above statement to one of my meat eating friends it meant nothing to him, he sees eating meat as the easiest thing in the world so to him there should be nothing more complex to starting to eat meat than simply to pick up a fork and tuck in.

But that’s just not the way these things work. At this point, after not eating meat for so long, there is such a heavy psychological barrier built up between me and the consumption of meat.

I’ve never really given a fuss about small amounts of meat product in things like cheese (althouugh tried to avoid them) so primarily we’re talking about starting to eat meat properly. I’m talking frying up some bacon and eating it. It’s not like I don’t know how nice these meat products are and how much I’m missing out by not eating them.

So what is it that’s stopping me at the moment?

1. Habit

This is obviously the big one, trying to get past the habit of not eating meat for this long isn’t an easy one but I have overcome habits in the past, things like biting my nails or cracking my neck are things that I’ve managed to stop doing. Nothing big really but then there hasn’t really been anything big in my life to go past habit with. The only exception might be Runescape, where it was borderline on addiction at points but now I can’t really imagine playing again.

2. Health Benefits

As it is, I’m already over my ideal weight (or really it’s body size, too much flab), I’m not hugely fat but still bigger in the wrong places in the wrong ways than I’d like. I already have a tendency to eat too much of stuff that is probably high in saturates and other fat so it’s likely that moving onto eating meat would just make this worse. One thing that heavily contradicts this is talking with a friend about it, he used to be a vegetarian (it was a family thing so he didn’t really have starting reasons to contend with) and since he stopped (only just earlier this year) he’s lost weight and gained muscle. Indeed, this sort of makes a certain amount of sense. Protein is one of the things you have to struggle a bit with to get when not eating meat and may be something holding me back in the building of my muscles.

All this is a bit speculative because I’m sure there are people on both sides of the debate. Either way though, I could use to be a bit healthier, I’m just generally quite lazy and although I don’t dislike exercise I do find putting effort into food preparation a bit difficult.

Looking at wikipedia right now, there are definitely strong for and against arguments for everything. Indeed, it says that vegetarianism can even meet the protein requirements of body builders.

I am of course, perfectly aware that a sample of one person doesn’t really mean anything and that the changes my friend saw could be due to a number of things and may have nothing to do with eating meat. Indeed, he still doesn’t get to eat meat at home so his consumption hasn’t exactly been high.

3 - It makes me special

This one isn’t really very big but it certainly exists. Being a vegetarian makes me special and probably gives me instant brownie points with any hippies I meet along the road of life whereas being an ex-vegetarian probably just makes me look like I was sucked in by propaganda sent down from The Man. It’s one of those details that makes people curious, makes people want to talk to me and ask questions. As I said earlier, attention seeking really wasn’t the point behind it when I started and it isn’t now, indeed, trying to explain the reasons behind something that you no longer even believe to be right is pretty difficult and probably just makes me look like a weak willed fool.

4 - What would I eat if I stopped?

This is a big one, possibly the biggest, reason why I am in this state of non-decision. At the moment, my meals are pretty solid in my mind. Typically rotating between meat free Tortellini (a sort of stuffed pasta), pizza, curry using bought curry sauce and Quorn pieces, pasta or potatoes with other Quorn dishes, ready meals (often with fish) and occasionally vegetable and tofu stir fries. I’m pretty happy with what I eat, it could be better certainly but it tastes good and the stuff I do for myself (the majority of the time) is easy and nice. Starting to eat meat could potentially disrupt all of this. Particularly if I announce it to my mother, I have no idea what she’ll try and force me into.

This brings me nicely out of that section and into options.

Options

1 - Decide to simply become a meat eater again

This would basically just entail going back to where I was before I stopped eating. I throw away my happy non-meat meal structure in favour of the meaty alternatives, in some cases this would simply mean an increased selection - I could have a pepperoni pizza sometimes alongside the current plain and vegetable ones. It would also make me much more obliged to eat the same thing as my mum more often which I’m not really sure I want. I enjoy the freedom and independence that preparing my own meals brings and eating meat could take away from this. On top of that, as I said before, some of the things she makes I really wouldn’t want to eat regardless. Being vegetarian gives me an easy excuse to avoid it.

Due to these reasons this option seems unlikely, though it is an option none the less.

2 - Be an occasional meat eater

This would essentially mean becoming like my ex-vegetarian friend and whilst not eating meat at home I would occasionally eat it when out at friend’s houses or in restaurants. This option seems pretty strong because it enables me to keep the majority of the health benefits of not eating meat whilst supplementing them with occasional treats if you will and making me much less fussy when it comes to eating outside my home. This is one of the greatest things that irritates me about my vegetarianism, it makes me seem like a fussy eater when in fact I’ll eat almost anything, so long as it isn’t meat. Being an occasional meat eater would turn that into will eat almost anything full stop, which is much closer to me since I like almost everything.

If I did go with this option I still lack a date for it to start or any kind of determination as to how I will do it exactly, which is arguably my biggest problems at the moment. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to stop at some point due to the amount of doubt I have about it so it becomes more down to a question of “how?”. This could ultimately keep me not eating meat for the rest of my life so it’s pretty important. Taking that first step is always the way to do anything and I’m not sure how I would do that at the moment…

Conclusion

Last night (technically the night before that now) was my friend’s 18th and we hung out with a barbecue and some drinks. It was good fun.  The point of this is that I had ultimately decided quite a few hours before the actual occasion that I was going to have my first proper taste of meat since I stopped, however many years ago that was I’m not sure.  I went through with it, putting me into a place that is a bit difficult to describe.

Having done it I don’t really feel any different about the situation or that I’m very likely to continue eating meat on a regular basis.  Something that people may want to know stems from the taste, yes, it was good, better than the Quorn replacement (although, they were quite expensive sausages), it’s certainly something I’ve missed.  Ultimately when you are a carnivore at heart, which I am, those tendencies are never really going to go away.

It’s going to be a little odd, I’m probably going to become what I am now dubbing a “Social Meat Eater” which I described to a friend as “Like a social smoker but with more dead animals and less lung cancer”.  In that sense it means that my food options won’t really be limited (except for a few meats I don’t really want to eat on moral grounds due to shall we say “exceptional” cruelty) but that I will continue to not eat meat normally. Honestly I think that my original plan of starting to eat meat again once I am rich enough to afford quality still fits really, I doubt that cheap meat is any better than the alternatives (which is what I thought before, now I’m that bit closer to knowing).

This also preserves my meals at home and probably makes me a bit healthier by adding variety but not over doing it.  As it happens I get the feeling meat will be much like wearing my contact lenses, only done when necessary.

This conclusion was essentially inevitable, once I had lost the reasoning and passion behind my decision to stop eating meat it was only a matter of time before I started again, in some shape or form.  In the end there is no such thing as a perfect solution, I have come to one as close to perfect for me personally as there is but I realised from reading articles by people in similar situations to me that different lives are almost incomparable when it comes to this.  I hope if anyone does read this searching for help making the decision gets something from it, despite the rambly length of it.

As a note, Wordpress 2.6 is now happily reporting that this post is very close to 2500 words long. Youch. If only I put this much effort into my A levels. That’s a different story mind you…

Crazy days June 22, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life , add a comment

Friday was a pretty intense day. I’m not going to go into any sort of detail because that wouldn’t be fair for those involved.

This post could have been filled with talk of slip n slide water fight fun but as it happened the day turned a different way.

Things were left in state that threatened our friendship group, something that has brought me much happiness of the past few months. I’m hoping that given the circumstances of the day things will return to a close to normal situation shortly although things may never be quite the same.

The Penultimate Day June 18, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Misc , add a comment

This is the day before my last exam.  By tomorrow lunch time all the worrying, the procrastination and sporadic work will be over and I must simply wait.  Wait to find out my fate, to find out what I have the horrible feeling I already know the answer to.

I really don’t like this feeling…

That time June 16, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, School, Scraps , add a comment

Tomorrow begins my final week of exams.  My most important week of exams.  The exams that could well decided my future.  Unless the universities decide they suddenly don’t need grades they will decide my future.

Let’s just say I could definitely be more prepared.

Of course, times like this make me all looky at my life time.  And listen to music at a higher than normal volume, that too.

There is really no point worrying, I know this, it doesn’t really seem to stop me doing…whatever it is I’m doing.  At least once this is over I really have very little to worry about and I think it’s about time I got some worry free moments.  Well, I have to find myself a job but that’s another story.

One nice thing at the moment is that I have been given the job offer by my Ski resort so that is one more hurdle down, only one big one and one small one left.  The big one is the visa process.  Gee that’s gonna be fun…

Vampires: NHS Style June 13, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Druid, Gaming, Life, World of Warcraft , add a comment

So yes, if you have any understanding of my title you’ll know that what I’m talking about is blood donation.  I first registered as a blood donor last year when they visited my school and tried to donate but due to not being 100% I hadn’t receive blood in the past meant that I can’t donate.  I found out that evening that I hadn’t and managed to forget to go last time they came round.  So, anyway I headed along and got through it all.

I had an appointment but it still seemed to take a while.  It was quite busy.  Overall it was alright, not particularly painful or anything. It’s just one of those things that it’s important and it’s something I can do to help and there’s no reason for me not to do it.  Simple really.  A bit of time and discomfort once every 4 months is worth it for the lives it could save.

In other news, my druid hit 60 just now.  I sent over 515 gold (!) from my main to pay for epic mount training, the druid would have the money if it wasn’t for enchanting…

Still, it will pay for itself once I hit 70 and can farm a bit better.  I was looking at a gold making guide and paladins ranked last in farming ability. Last. And I’m the lowest damage spec. I have no idea how I’ll ever manage to get epic flyer, I’m down to belowe 1000g after maxing alchemy and this mount training. I think its gonna come down to some hardcore grind after my exams are finished.

Dream Onslaught May 28, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Misc , add a comment

I seem to be under assault from dreams at the moment.  Everything from random and wacky through epic adventures to life lessons.  It all seems to contribute to feeling really crap in the morning.  Particularly this morning, where my dream was filled with things that I would love to happen and that when I awoke it felt a bit like having it all ripped away.

Of course, these dreams are pretty typical in that they don’t shy away from blatant references to things that I have seen or felt, for example whilst I was with some wanted fugitives adventuring from a pub in the west country we had tracked down enemy and criminal (who incidentally, had no arms) to a field when a load of police cars pulled up and I feared my companions had been caught but instead they all just rushed into the field to capture the person we had found.  This is probably a reference to a video I saw the other day of some thieves running our of a shop they had just robbed and getting into a car when a load of cops appear and all rush into the building whilst the robbers calming drive away.

This post is pretty pointless, I have nothing to conclude from all these dreams happening, only perhaps that I am in a great state of emotional change as I shift between phases of my life.  Of course, depending on your psychological viewpoint you could say these dreams mean nothing or they mean everything however that is part of module 4 and as my exam in 2 weeks is on module 5 I don’t want to fill my mind with such distractions.