Pollan is my favourite food-issue author. His writing isn't overly aggressive and he covers a broad range of perspectives. It's also humorous, which is a huge bonus. Although I'm not done the book yet, here's one quotation that really resonates with me:
Or it could simply be that he subscribes to the general view in a modern specialized consumer culture that "leisure activities" should involve consumption, whereas any activity involving production is leisure's opposite: work. Put another way, a leisure activity is one you can't conceive of paying someone else to do for you. (Watching television, for example, or reading a book, or doing the crossword puzzle.) Everything else - everything that the market has figured out a way to do for us - becomes a species of work, something that any rational actor would presumably outsource just as soon as he or she could afford to.Sidenote: this fits right into Vanderburg (speaking of which I totally am going to work through APS302, I will make time!).
Before reading this quotation, I've been vaguely dissatisfied with how I spend my down time. Somewhere along the way of growing up, my hobbies changed from making things (eg. playing with lego, drawing, crafting) to consuming things (eg. reading blogs/forums, buying clothes/makeup/skincare). I really regret stopping art class (tbh it wasn't the most enjoyable thing, but in retrospect I was just being lazy) but still keeps most of my supplies in case "one day" I decide to pick it up again.
Last night while searching on Etsy for peony prints to use as wall decor, I toyed with the idea of painting my own (save money too!). And now that this is out on the interweb, I will very much do so (go public accountability). Will also try to focus effort (temporal and monetary) into cooking and hopefully gardening.
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