Lessons learned from Possum Living

Though the production of the 'Teenage' film itself seems to continue to pootle along slowly (it was originally expected to be finished by this Summer) the accompanying blog provides endless gems where old documentaries and various nostalgia-laden 'teen memorabilia' is concerned. So in my book the website surpasses my own expectations of the yet-to-be completed film and continues to be one of my must-reads when it comes to finding 'totally awesome' stuff I might not otherwise know about. 

Possum Living falls under this category of cool stuff unbeknownst to me (although I'm sure that plenty of you are already in the loop) and since watching the three-part documentary on youtube which follows Dolly Freed, a teenager living off the fat of (suburban) Pennsylvania in the late 70s with her Dad, I've been thinking about what exactly Turtle Soup must taste like and I've added 'Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money', Dolly's guide to self-sufficiency to my reading list.

In my search for more things Dolly, I found this brilliant interview with her over at Vice Magazine. It turns out that in addition to dropping out of school at the age of 12 and writing Possum Living at 18, she went on to become a NASA aerospace engineer. Awesome! I recommend you watch Nancy Schreiber's documentary in full (the second and third parts can be found here and here) I'm always interested in hearing about how people live frugally, and though after two years of studying at University without a job I've rather reached my 'poor threshold' (of course my use of the word 'poor' is relative-I always have enough money to actually eat, just left to treat myself to nice things that might cost a little bit more money) and I'm now enjoying earning once more, it's still nice to think about the little ways that we can maintain some frugality even whilst earning. Buying second hand clothes is something that is pretty much second hand nature to a lot of us, but it would be nice to also apply this creativity to what we eat too. Yesterday I was in the park next to my house picking blackberries for the cafe I work at (to be used in our fruit compote) and realised how ridiculous it is that I rarely buy fresh summer fruits like strawberries or raspberries (or in Autumn, blackberries) from the supermarket because of how much they cost when all along there are hoards growing in abundance in the park right beside me. And instead of moaning when I can't find kale in the supermarket, why don't I just grow some in a window box instead? Despite the whole 'buy local, grow your own' ethos having been the food manta a la mode for a pretty long time now, it's still easy to miss the glaringly obvious solutions and still fall in the trap of buying overpriced vegetable boxes when you could grow some of your own greens and spend those saved pennies on..well, a delightfully overpriced jumper. Those are my priorities for now, at least. To continue to embrace frugality but to stop being such a martyr about it. Less 'all or nothing' and more 'I like Lidl and I also like pricey mojitos and the two needn't be mutually exclusive.'