About Me

The Back Story: About 5 years ago, I experienced a major career change (aka, lost my job), which then led to a major move and many life changes along the way. To document this, I created a blog called F that S, which started as an “alt-career” blog, but slowly evolved into a more sustainability-focused account of my life as I transitioned from graphic designer cubicle culture in NYC to rural living in upstate NY.  In March of 2012, I started working at the Thousand Islands Land Trust* as Coordinator of Education and Outreach. In short, I now have my dream job of organizing, funding, marketing and participating in “treks” that celebrate the natural beauty of the outdoors, while spreading the word about the importance of conserving it. And many of these “treks” are for children, which essentially means I get to spend my days running around in the woods acting like a big kid.**

The Here and Now: So now that I’ve figured out what I want to be when I grow up, I felt it made sense to transition to a blog solely dedicated to my life as it is now. I currently live in the 1000 Islands region with my husband, Butch, a woodworker (and future bestselling author), our 2 cats, Smash and Grim and our hound-mix, Fred. We have a thriving veggie garden, berry bushes and fruit trees, and recently added 9 chickens to the mix. We recently welcomed a baby boy (James Finnegan, born Oct 11, 2013), and I hope to instill my sense of wonder and earth stewardship to him, just as my own “back-to-the-land” parents did to me. And I plan on doing it all in as green(ish) a way as possible.

A “Green(ish)” Life: To me, being green(ish) means doing what you can, however large or small, to leave as little an impact on the planet as possible, while still maximizing your own quality of life. The way I was raised and the schooling** I’ve had since then may appear to give me a “leg up” over the suburbia-living, SUV-driving, fast-food-eating, name-brand-buying everyman (or woman) that greenies love to hate, but I disagree. Every person has the ability to lower their impact and improve the world around them – either in their own home, school, community, state, country or planet. You could start recycling more, organize a sustainability day at your child’s school, volunteer to clean-up a local beach, or connect with other like-minded people on the internet to support their causes (and maybe be inspired to start one of your own). No act is too small to be an important step in the right direction. After all, we’re all in this together!

Wanna chat? misscorinne (at) gmail (dot) com

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*The opinions expressed on this blog are my own and in no way represent the work and opinions of TILT

**I also still do graphic design on a freelance basis. If you need some graphic design work – DivineConceptionDesign (at) gmail (dot) com

***Besides a BFA in Graphic Design from Pratt Institute, I have a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) from the NY Open Center and a Sustainability 101 Certificate from the University of Illinois via Coursera (Among other things…I love to learn!)

“A Green(ish) Life” and all photos and subject matter contained within (unless otherwise noted) are © 2012-2013 A Green(ish) Life/Corinne Mockler