I had driven home to Milwaukee for my niece's 2nd birthday, and on my drive back to Columbus, I stopped at a gas station to pick up some dinner on the road. I grabbed a pre-made ham sandwich & some Funyuns and took a bite of my sandwich as I pulled back onto the freeway. As I was chewing, I looked at the vehicle in front of me and realized it was a truck full of pigs (a pretty small truck, with a see through fence as the back railing). I started to gag on my sandwich and spit it out & wasn't able to finish it. I guiltily stashed it in the passenger seat until my next stop, where I threw it out at the next stop without looking at it again.
Within two days, I had declared myself vegan.
Of course, this sounds like it was purely an emotional response, and I just like cute little piggies and that's why I gave up meat. Not quite. I am a vegan for ethical reasons, but they aren't just related to animals.
I could go on and on about the reasons why people (atheists, especially) should be vegan, but if you really want to know, I think vegankit.com is a great place to get information. Articles like this are also great (the fact that "A global vegan diet (of conventional crops) would reduce dietary emissions by 87 percent, compared to a token 8 percent for 'sustainable' meat and dairy." really stuck with me).
But this post isn't to give you every reason to go vegan. It's to show you the awesome things I've done since go vegan so you can see that vegans lead really cool lives.
Since I went vegan, I've...
-Volunteered at Camp Quest (complete with vegan s'mores!)
-Went to Las Vegas for TAM (as a Surly Grant Winner), hung out with awesome people, acted like a shark (?), hung out with my Best Sarah Forever (BSF)™
-Bowled for Abortion Access (which I'm doing again, and you can support!) and got a mug that says "Ask Me About the Abortion I Paid For" (which is super rad, obviously)
-Went to DC to be in a documentary, hung out at a fountain with some ducks
-Attended Skepticamp Columbus, hung out with @Delyseious and Hemant Mehta, lead the Legion of Sarahs (it's possible that this legion was only made up of two Sarahs)
-Raised $2,000 for the Secular Student Alliance and had to shave my hair into a mohawk on a livestream
-Had an appropriate amount of American Pride
-Attended the largest conference the SSA has ever had!
-Dressed up as the one and only Freddie Mercury for Halloween
-Had surgery and proposed when I woke up, looking flyyyyyyyy (and was good at texting)
-Designed a badass wedding ring, made of recycled silver and synthetic emeralds and diamonds from Green Karat
-Joined the board of directors of Go Vegan! Go! and went to a fundraiser at Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace for Sunrise Sanctuary. Delicious vegan hot dogs. :)
-Ate burritos and tacos, always and forever
-Ate a lot of cereal & felt like that dog with the birthday cake
-Bought sweet swag from my friend Sarah's store
-Had my best friend from Wisconsin visit
There's been quite a bit more, but finding where pictures of stuff is has been difficult, so I'll leave you with that. :) In any case, I'm very happy with my decision to go vegan. I'd encourage everyone to check it out. Even if you can't go fully vegan right now (or ever), I think reducing your consumption of animal products is an admirable goal, especially since it may be the only way to save the planet ("Please eat less meat," asks the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
Interested? Check out:
Vegan Starter Kit: http://vegankit.com/
Thirty Day Vegan Challenge: http://www.the30dayveganchallenge.com/
You can watch Vegucated and Forks Over Knives on Netflix Instant or Earthlings online.
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