madelinekelly

Fifteen years ago I chose to be vegan. Friends and family reacted as if I had directly criticised the way they lived their lives. After several years of social pressure, I finally gave it up and switched back to being vegetarian. The social pressure lessened, but I wasn't happy at all with living a compromise: being vegan was an ethical stance based on concerns over animal welfare, but being vegetarian only spared pigs. So I went back to being omnivorous. Social pressure went away, but even now I get comments and smug smirks from people when they see me eating non-vegan-friendly food -- as if they'd beaten me in a competition I didn't know we were having.

Anyway, over the last ten years, Matt and I have effectively chosen to be poor. We could've got jobs in the financial or retail sector. We could've "played the game". We could've earnt a lot of money and idled Saturdays away in spending it all to cheer ourselves up after a long week of letting other people dictate our lives. We could've afforded a less ramshackle house. We could've started a family several years sooner.

But we chose not to. ( Long post is loooong. )