It's been only a month, but Ethan's already waxing nostalgic for his days of environmental innocence. Why continue Project Good with Maryhope in their new home when it seems so hard?

All right, confession time. I have to get this out of my system and into the open before sucking it up, becoming an adult, and moving forward: I think I might have liked my life better before I started paying attention to the planet.

Call it a case of ignorance being bliss, perhaps. And some of it was definitely ignorance-thinking, for example, that a single shirt thrown into the dryer for a full cycle with a sheet of Bounce Spring Awakening would make me irresistible to women. But some of it, too, was bliss. Listening to a new CD on the car stereo, say, with the windows down and the volume cranked, because doesn't all music sound better in a car, at night, at 30 miles an hour on a back road? As far as I'm concerned, that's how music should be heard.

But since I've been reading ad nauseam about how to curb our thoughtless waste and so on, how could I, in good conscience, do this? I tried it the other day. Disaster. I get in the car, and I'm thinking, I should've bought this album online; this jewel case and packaging is so wasteful. I turn on the engine, pull out onto the road, and crank the volume-and instead of losing myself in the music, I think, I'm driving nowhere for no reason, putting CO2 into the atmosphere, supporting the oil industry, and single-handedly melting the ice caps. True? Not true? Doesn't matter. I drove around the block and parked. When I got inside, I re-sorted the recycling to make myself feel better. I still haven't listened to the CD all the way through.

I loved taking long, hot showers. I liked brushing my teeth, shaving, and just taking my sweet time in there. Twenty minutes? Sure, if I was rushing. I liked sitting in the bathtub when I was hangover, closing my eyes, and pretending I was in some mystical headache-curing tropical rain forest. Now, I take lukewarm flash showers and am out before I even rinse the suds off. Why? Because I'm thinking about Al Gore. I can't get that guy out of my head. Which, in addition to being slightly alarming, is not doing great things for my relationship with Maryhope. Hard to think about sexy time when Al Gore's anywhere in the picture.

I liked getting all my food shopping done in one place instead of traipsing around to farmers markets and eating only what's in season, which is always pea sprouts or something equally unappealing. Not the kind of stuff you'd eat if there were any guilt-free options. Additionally, the people who run the farm stands-they're nice folks, but you know what? Sometimes I don't want to talk for half an hour about wheat germ, OK? Sometimes I don't want to be congratulated for doing the right thing by shopping locally; I just want to do it and go.

There's one farmers market around here-it shall remain nameless-that I don't go to anymore because the people who run it drive me insane with their over-friendliness, self-congratulatory smirks, and finger-wagging diatribes about "the man" (whoever that is). It's the vague self-righteousness I can't stand. Anyway, Maryhope now goes to this market alone, because she's better than I am at getting out of conversations she doesn't want to be in. She's also, most likely, a better person.

I could go on, but it's probably about time to wrap this up.

Here's the difficult thing for me about designing and sustaining a low-impact lifestyle: There is no immediate, tangible reward for doing so. It's a leap of faith. You have to believe that what you are doing (or, perhaps more accurately, not doing) is having a positive effect on the environment. It's hard. But you start looking at websites; you watch Who Killed the Electric Car? and An Inconvenient Truth; you start simply thinking about how thoughtless your consumption habits are, and your life will never be the same. You can't go back to your old habits. You shouldn't go back.

I'm glad to be consuming less. I do feel better about my lessened impact, but it boils down to believing in an abstract principle. I do miss my old (and preferred) way of listening to music. I do miss smelling like a field of fresh linen. But what I'm getting in return for giving up these things is a sense of purpose, of responsibility, and it makes that sacrifice somehow feel good. And then you realize that this sort of self-congratulation-which is a mode I normally find absolutely repellent-is needed, because it's what will sustain this green movement in its early phases.

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