Editor's note: Green Options' newest blogger, Patrick Donnelly, will be sharing his experiences as he and his partner attempt to "green" and simplify their lives. We're very happy that Patrick has joined us!

If one is to judge by the collective “buzz” of our society—newsmedia, blogs, at the coffee shop, over our wiretapped telephones—it’s a pretty bleak world out there. Iraq and Iran, big oil and climate change, E. coli and GMOs… it can really start to get you down, if you let it. Long, sprawling conversations over the state of our culture and our planet so often end with the throwing up of hands, “Bah! Forget it! We’re all screwed anyway.”

But it’s hard to live that way. How can I go through my day, feeling like the work I do is meaningful and the Earth I’m living on is being made better by my actions, if I’m utterly convinced that it’s all going to go down in flames within my lifetime? My mother once told me the Adlai Stevenson quote, “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness” at the end of one such conversation. And I guess that summed up something that I felt but couldn’t quite put into words for the past few years. That is, while I’m thoroughly despondent over the apparent fate of our civilization, I am by nature a hopeful person, and I need to be able to express that in my life.

Kicking the Habit

So late last year, my partner Sam and I made the conscientious decision to start living a simpler life. That’s it. No mottos, no credos, no pacts or rules. Just to live in an intentional way, being conscious of each and every lifestyle decision we make, and its potential ramifications to our earth, to other people, and to ourselves.

There are many stories out there about buying nothing for a day, zero consumption for a year, and so on. While I feel that these are all admirable efforts, they are not necessarily for me. I’m not looking to temporarily change my habits. I’m also not looking to so radically change my life that I can no longer get on as I normally would. I am a person of relatively limited income, who has to hold down a relatively normal job. I feel that many others out there may be able to benefit by hearing of my successes and failures, and the lessons that I learn along the way.

And so we set off! I foresee many challenges ahead (have you ever tried making your own nasal decongestant?), but I am also looking forward to decreasing my footprint, increasing my quality of life, and lighting a candle in the face of the chilling darkness that can come from living in our doomed world.