Hi there.  My name is Jess Lundie.  If you’re reading this, you’ve stumbled onto Openly Balanced. Openly Balanced is a blog dedicated to finding equilibrium; in our lives, our communities, and on our planet.  Because they’re all connected and you can’t have one without the others.  It is about sustainable living, and what that means to each of us.

Openly Balanced is my study on living.  And who am I?  I’m just a regular person seeking balance – I’m a little obsessed with that word – in my life.  Only I think that life balance is all about community, and all about saving the planet.   And that through building resilient communities and a healthy planet, we become more resilient and healthy as people.  Because they’re all connected, remember?

I recently moved from Washington, DC to Washington state, where I live with my two dogs and my cat, and wait patiently (not patiently) for my husband to come home from his deployment in Iraq.   My life in DC was unsustainable.  What is unsustainable?  (I’m all obsessed with “sustainable” too.)  In this case, it meant that my life – the 50 hour a week job, too much takeout, lack of fresh air and sunlight, and general urban isolation – was slowly driving me crazy.  So when we moved, I decided to change the way I live, because sometimes it seems easier to change a bunch of things all at once.

Me and my buddy, Superman

But what I am finding is that being balanced, living sustainably, is not about big changes.   It is about all the tiny choices we make, a thousand times a day.  And because we are all connected, a balanced life is also about the tiny choices everyone else makes which, in aggregate, become all those big things that shape our lives: the economy, politics, the environment, etc.  And even smaller “big” things, like getting through a traffic jam without excessive road rage or peacefully navigating a grocery store during the evening rush.

So this blog is about balanced choices, and what it means to live consciously, and what balanced and sustainable living even means, and what it takes to get there – as people, as communities, and as a planet.