How do you know where you belong?

SO and I doing a polar bear swim in Resurrection Bay this past February

We left our hearts in Seward, AK
A bay in a mountainous valley, it calls to us
To be where mountains climb halfway to the stars
The morning fog and rain may chill the air, we don't care

Our love waits there in Seward
Above the blue and windy Resurrection Bay
When we come home to you, Seward
Your quiet wonder will shine for us

~Modern Akhmatova

Note: This poem was inspired by the "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" song.

1 year anniversary BY THE NUMBERS

After writing the previous post about our 1 year "down to 1 car" anniversary, I started thinking about the evidence to support the claims I was making, namely that we were now healthier, wealthier, and happier as a result of getting down to one car and having to rely on public transportation, our bikes, bodies, and coordination talents to get around. Since my SO tracks everything related to our financial well being, I realized that I should take advantage of his love of numbers and graphs to try and provide some proof behind my earlier claims. So here is the evidence I could find:

Claim #1: We are HEALTHIER as a result of selling one of our cars and and having to rely on public transportation, our bikes, bodies, and coordination talents to get around.

Supporting evidence:

• We don't have conclusive evidence for this one, because we don't have hard data to support it - i.e. number of doctor's visits or doctor's conclusions about our health before vs after we sold our car. However, we don't really get sick or go to the doctor all that much, and so it isn't hard to keep a general sense of how often this has happened over the last few years. If nothing else, we have continued to feel healthier. Lastly, I know for a fact that my weight has stabilized since we embarked on this low-emissions lifestyle. I eat better, sleep better, feel energized, focused, and a lot more relaxed. 

Claim #2: We are WEALTHIER as a result of selling one of our cars and and having to rely on public transportation, our bikes, bodies, and coordination talents to get around.

Supporting evidence: Here is where my SO's tracking comes into play. 

• The chart above shows our annual car miles and costs over time, basically since we started dating at the beginning of 2012 to today, July 2015. The blue line represents the miles and the red line represents the costs. 
• The steep decline in miles and a less impressive, but still a decline in costs between 2012 and middle of 2013 is due to our moving in together, SO working from home, and living within walking and biking distance of my work. 
• 2014 was less consistent for a number of reasons. First, we moved again, but this time to a much less connected area that was within "car-distance" from all of our family and friends. The increase in miles in the middle of 2014 was due to a long, long-distance trip to NC for a family wedding. Nevertheless, our costs did not increase by a lot and at certain times declined. 
• Lastly, 2015 has been a good year so far. Overall, our car miles and costs continue to decrease. We still live pretty far away from family and friends, so most weekends we're driving at least an hour to see them. That said, we're keeping a very low-emissions lifestyle during the work week!

Claim #3: We are HAPPIER as a result of selling one of our cars and and having to rely on public transportation, our bikes, bodies, and coordination talents to get around.

Supporting evidence:

SO and I biking in WDC.

• We also don't have conclusive evidence to support this claim, because after all who knows how to measure happiness? It's an elusive concept that people still don't know how to quantify, and one that cannot be generalized, since it depends so much on the individual preferences, self-knowledge, etc, etc.
• However, we've been biking A LOT! And everyone knows that we've been displacing the car with the bike, and given a choice, biking is much more fun than driving. The below chart shows the growth of our addiction to biking. :) It's a 12-month sliding window of our biking miles. 

Based on what we know about ourselves, our self-constructed versions of past and present realities, we feel that we are pretty darn happy these days. We are grateful that we have the time and resources to experiment as much as we can in search of a lifestyle that is aligned with our values. And the lifestyle changes, such as going down to 1 car, have brought us even more awareness about our values and inspired us to continue down the road of REDUCING our waste on this precious planet Earth. 

Happy evidence-based analysis!

Modern Akhmatova