For Your Journal: Writing Prompt

Do you keep a journal – or wish you could get one started? Literary Mama wants to help.

Three times a month, I’ll post a writing prompt. Open a notebook and write for 10 minutes. Don’t worry about grammar or punctuation – just write. Then let the writing simmer and your mind wander for awhile.

And who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a character for your next short story or a theme for a narrative essay. Or maybe you’ll use the idea to create a special holiday card or photo album for someone in your family. However you decide to use your journal entry, I know you’ll enjoy re-reading it months–and years–down the road.
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Former LM Profiles Editor Jenny Hobson and her husband, Chris Green, chose car-lite living in 2006 when it became clear that their mid-80s Toyota wouldn’t pass inspection without costly repairs. Chris bicycles to work and Jenny, a part-time preschool teacher, takes the family’s car.

Jenny has this to say about her family’s choice:

Although making the decision to go car-lite takes some set-up, it doesn’t take much time once you’ve got your infrastructure in place. When we moved to Huntington (West Virginia), we came from an old suburb where we could walk almost everywhere we needed to go, and we lived in a “front porch” neighborhood. We wanted to do that again when we came to Huntington, so that’s how we found our house. Coincidentally, it turned out that what we were looking for in a neighborhood worked very well for car-lite living even though we were not thinking about that when we moved.

Once you set up your infrastructure, minimizing your car use can take as little or as much time as you want. For us, having one car frees us to focus on our passions for our families and for our work. Chris is passionate about his job working with college students in Appalachia; I’m passionate about my job in Early Childhood Education; we adore our family. For us, living with one car is a sideline. If you want it to be a sideline, it absolutely can be. But if reducing your auto use and your carbon footprint is your passion, it absolutely can be, too.

Read the entire interview here.

Journal Entry: How are you teaching your children to take care of the earth? What are they teaching you?