Making my own magic

For many years, I said, if granted three magical wishes, and I wasn't allowed to wish for more wishes, one wish would be that every can or bottle I saw on the side of the road would be magically recycled and the return deposit amount would be placed in an account for me. Sure, I could've more easily wished for some large sum of money, but where's the thrill in that? Nope, I don't play the lottery, the tax on people who are bad at math (Credit that line to the bumper sticker over an old math teacher's desk. He was too nice to display that publicly on his car.), plus the idea of all that aluminum, glass, and especially plastic serving a purpose other than cluttering our world had plenty of appeal.

Even more years ago, when still living in Connecticut on a rural back road, my mother and step father started collecting discarded cans off the street with the intent of making the revenue their wine budget. We share this world with a lot of trashy people, and before long they had to put some of that income toward buying fancy crystal wine glasses to avoid becoming a pair of sots in the effort to keep up. A riding friend saw them one spring with a bag rummaging through the bushes on the side of the road and later told me he'd seen my mom collecting fern fiddleheads! Once I recounted this sighting to mom and step dad, "picking fiddleheads" became the standard euphemism for their evening walks and collecting cans.

Early in January of 2023, a few months after my neck was fused enough for clearance to again ride a bike, I was slowly regaining my physical form, and had tremendous appreciation of how quickly I was once again able to transport myself. After a month of weighing down a hospital bed and then walking with poles to prevent a disastrous fall after I was released, I was aware that even with frequent stops, riding was still damn fast compared to hoofing it, so I decided I'd give making my own magic a try, pausing to pick up some of the many, many deposit cans and bottles I saw on the side of the road.

That first most-of-a-year, I didn't keep an exact tally, but after a month I set the goal of 44 cans per day, which would return just over $800 dollars for a year. Soon enough, I figured out 308 cans per week was a better goal as it smoothed the flutter of good and bad days, and yes, it's a worthy debate which is a good day: one with lots of income, or one with zero trash seen on the road. I wasn't keeping track exactly, but I feel I can say with reasonable confidence that I was unreasonable enough to collect $800, or 16,000 cans and bottles that year. 

Not being one to let mere base unreasonableness suffice, the next year, 2024, I kept a running tally of the dollar total received when I redeemed recyclables, and I bumped my goal to averaging 55 cans per day, and even if it hadn't been leap-year, that would return a sum of $1000 worth of returns, not to mention marginally neater streets. 

Yes, I did it, but for this year, while I'd had fun with adding the collecting game to my rides, I wanted to ride less goal oriented again. Plus, my taste in bikes (the use I'd intended for the funds, akin to my mom's and stepfather's wine) is perfectly cheap, so I am running out of space for buying cool used wheels. For 2025 I set the goal of $600, a mere average 33 deposits per day, or just a little over one pannier full. A wee bit early, in mid September, I reached that goal today!

No, I'm not done. I do like my marginal contribution to a neater, more recycled world, and so do the the many walkers who've seen me stopped collecting and asked what I'm doing. They've all thanked me once I explained, which feels good. We live in a world that indoctrinates us to strive for financial success, or likely excess, and to appear to have failed at that is to be subject to a degree of scorn from some. I've learned to like that too! I have the financial success, and valuable peace of mind, of not needing more money than I have, and if someone thinks less of me for projecting otherwise, well, I feel confident that is a person whose opinion I don't value highly. Plus, if they get to feel a little superior at my expense while driving to the job they hate, it doesn't hurt me, nor cost me, one bit!

So what if the genie offered to grant me the typical three wishes? I'm pretty sure the next two would be simply happiness and luck. I do seem have a reasonably steady supply of those, but I struggle to imagine having too much. Although, hmm, I do now think of  Beth Orton's "I wish I never saw the sunshine". Sometimes a little hardship provides the perfect perspective for all the good times.