5 years, baby!
I’ve finally reached the 5 year mark, and I couldn’t be more excited!
Well, technically it won’t be a full 5 years until Saturday (Feb. 6th), but I’m still excited! Each year, I get more excited, because I’ve been vegan longer, and it’s always crazy for me to write down the actual number of years, because in my day-to-day, it’s just how I live now. It feels like it’s been a long time, and I suppose you could argue that 5 years is a long time, but relatively speaking, it’s actually not.
The majority of my life lived up until this point is still non-vegan, and I think that’s the weird part to me. 5 years vegan is amazing, but it’s not even close to half my lifetime. Since going vegan, and learning about all the bad things that happen to animals, I’ve just wanted to erase my non-vegan years, because I’m ashamed of them. I was so ignorant, and even used to make fun of my vegetarian aunt (along with my siblings), and I just look back and cringe so hard that I used to act like that.
And yes, I know that me looking back and cringing at how I used to be is actually a great sign of growth and learning, but it’s still embarrassing for me to think about. It does also help put into perspective how those close to me must see my veganism. A little while ago, one of my closest friends asked me if I was ‘ready to stop this vegan thing’ now that I had been doing it so long. They seemed to be kidding, but that really threw me through a loop. It’s been 5 years, and in the grand scheme of my over-all life, that’s still short enough to be considered a ‘phase’ by some.
It’s sad to me that something that changed my life so radically can be viewed so dismissively by those around me, but it helps me see things through their eyes. Not everyone views this 5 years as a good thing, or even as a big deal, and that’s pretty sad to think about. That someone close to me could be waiting for me to ‘snap out of it’ or something similar is just crazy. ‘Oh yeah, sorry I’ve stopped murdering for 5 years, guess I should get back to it, huh?’ Come on.
If (and this is a big ass if) I was ever going to stop being vegan, it definitely wouldn’t be so soon! I would wait at least until I saved as many animals as I’d previously eaten, so that my scale could be ‘balanced’.
And I know that it won’t ever truly be balanced – just because I saved the same amount of animals I had a hand in killing, doesn’t make it okay. Those animals still died for a stupid reason, and there is nothing I can do that will ever truly make up for that. I’m just letting you know that would be my rationale.
That said, that won’t happen until I’ve been vegan for 20 years, and by that point, my life would be so much more changed, it’d be even more crazy to ‘stop’.
Even now at 5 years, being vegan is just part of who I am. I can’t stop being vegan any easier than I could stop being left-handed, or stop being short – it’s just part of me. I can’t force myself to start eating dead bodies any more than I can force myself to grow another foot.
It’s just not gonna happen.
I find it especially funny for me to stop being vegan, because I’ve tried so many new foods I never would’ve been able to eat had I not gone vegan. With my food allergies, it was really hard to find non-vegan food I could eat. Like I explain in my Vegandale Festival articles, it still trips me out that I’m able to go to certain places and order whatever I want, and not order the only thing on the menu that wouldn’t make me sick.
I love all the new foods I’ve been exposed to, and being vegan has made me a better chef. I’ve had to learn how ingredients interact with each other, and learn how to build flavour profiles with spices and condiments. For example, when I’m making seitan, I have to mix 12 different ingredients together, just to get the ‘base’ taste of chicken. That takes a whole day to make, and then if I want to use it in something, I have to cook it ‘normally’ on top of that.
It takes longer sometimes to cook vegan, but it’s definitely worth it.
I love being vegan, and I’m hoping I’ve been able to share some of that love and have sparked curiosity for some of you, but I feel like I’ve just been repeating the same thing each year. And while it’s all true – I do think it’s crazy and amazing that I’ve been opened up to basically a whole new world – I don’t want to sound like a broken record, so I think I may just start doing these Veganversary posts every 5 years instead of every year.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna celebrate it myself every year, but I don’t think I need to make a dedicated post each year, either. I think waiting to make a new post will be better, because a lot can change in 5 years, and I’ll be able to share with you all that I’ve learned. (Unless you like hearing me be amazed each year, in which case leave a comment! Lol)
I’m also still going to be posting veganism articles, so don’t worry. I just realized these Veganversary posts are kind of… I don’t know, maybe dull to read every single year, so I’m gonna cool it. If you want to keep up with what I do on my Veganversary, you can check out my Instagram, as I’m sure I’ll continue to post a picture of my celebratory food.
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