I thought this concept was wild:
The notion of “ecoanxiety” has crept into the culture here. It was the subject of a recent cover story in San Francisco magazine that quotes a Berkeley mother so stressed out about the extravagance of her nightly baths that she started to reuse her daughter’s bath water.
My husband and I have ecoanxiety, but our eco- is for economics. I get so excited when I find balls of yarn on sale for a dollar, but I stress too because it's an extravagance I don't need. We could be saving that dollar. I wrestle with myself in stores all over town because even though we save plenty, there's no such thing as saving too much for the future. So I guess I understand the feeling, even if I don't understand tying oneself in knots over the environment.
Posted by Sarah at February 18, 2008 09:16 AM | TrackBackI'm a big saver too. In fact, I'm such a big saver that I've recently had to realize that I have to live in the moment a little more. I have a hard time finding the right balance between saving for the future and enjoying today--the today that I was saving for yesterday. I want to be old and financially secure but not old with gobs of money that I'm too old and/or tired to enjoy with family and friends. Does this make sense? That was a bunch of rambling...
Posted by: Nicole at February 18, 2008 03:00 PMI am a little crazy about our finances. My husband makes fun of the fact that I check our bank account literally 5 times a day. And before we leave the house to do anything, I have to check it to make sure nothing has changed, lol. My debit card number got stolen once, hence the paranoia I guess.
Posted by: Kasey at February 18, 2008 10:22 PMI appreciate your comment. Eco-anxiety is actually a misnomer for many reasons, but the economic anxiety that so many of us are now feeling is directly related to the ecological anxiety most people are actually not feeling because they don’t know that the two are connected. Match dwindling global natural resources with a burgeoning middle class in China, India, and elsewhere and you get skyrocketing prices for just about everything coupled with plummeting US wages and growing debt as people try to keep up and you get a lot of economic anxiety. Just how real and appropriate this growing anxiety is was dramatically reflected recently in the demeanor and words of the head of the Federal Reserve addressing the Congress.
Posted by: Sarah Edwards at February 20, 2008 04:43 PM