falling

Convention holds that love bears some kind of metaphorical resemblance to falling: out of control, maybe, or crushing, sinking, something like that.

I’ve gone a long time thinking I maybe had a part missing or broken, because I’ve never experienced anything like falling when it comes to another person. People close to me talk about being in love, too, as if it’s another form of insanity or possession. It makes you do things, right? As though your actions aren’t your own, but some parasite’s. Well, as far as I know – though I doubt whoever might be researching this would call me right away, there’s no love parasite. There could be one, and maybe I’ve never ingested it. Anyhow. Let’s assume this idea is not the result of parasite evolution, and is purely figurative.

I don’t think I have a problem after all. No, I haven’t seen any kind of light. I still have absolutely no falling feelings, and rarely feel anything but fairly in touch with all my faculties. I’m just not bothered by it. There’s nothing wrong with the conventional notions; I have different ideas, and that’s pretty neat.

people and their bags

I have been on a few planes over the past week, and I am struck over and over by people’s relationships to their bags.

The fees imposed in the US for checked bags have clearly shifted people towards carrying on more, so people no longer just carry a bag to entertain themselves or work on the plane. They carry everything they possibly can. Shopping for bags shows this off even more: the 22 inch wheeled upright is touted all over as maximum legal carryon like it’s some kind of performance-enhancing drug. People can buy bags to put in their bags to help them pack more (this seems odd – surely the bag in the bag means you fit less, as you’ve got all that extra bag now?). The goal, I believe, is to carry as much with you as possible, which feels like a burden and as though you’ve gotten some special bargain by saving the $15 an airline would charge you. Travel by taking as much of home with you as possible.

So we jostle around on planes and airports feeling shackled to these bags. Don’t leave the bag. Find space for the bag. Get the bag. Stow the bag. Get the bag. Stow the bag. Don’t lose the bag. Don’t take your eyes off the bag. It makes our stuff so overwhelming.

You know what? I think $15 is a reasonable charge to not have to carry another one of those wheeled bags all over airports. I’ll give them another $5 to get it straight to whereever I’m staying.

Better yet, I’ll just take less. That’s what I’m doing this week: headed to Chicago till Friday with a lightweight duffel and a laptop bag. It’s no doubt still more stuff than I need, but I decided to err, for this work trip, on the side of having some dress shoes.

It’s a nice feeling, having a bag that just carries stuff (and which I can easily maneuver on the subway) and makes few demands on me.

toothpaste

I have a possibly somewhat weird recommendation: dry toothpaste. Which I guess isn’t a paste at all. I’ve tried a couple of DIY toothpastes and hated them, but then settled on an even-more-simple version of my friend’s simple salty toothpaste recipe.

Basically, I left out all the liquids, mushed up some anise seed & used that instead of minty oil to flavor the stuff. It’s like brushing your teeth with Indian dessert mixed with ocean (I think that’s pretty awesome, but it may be an acquired taste), and it leaves them squeaky clean. For home, I may try tossing some peroxide into this recipe, thereby restoring the whole paste concept, but I like the solid for travel.

travel broadens the mind

I am awake at 3am local time, which is a little annoying. If I could, I might poke my internal clock in the eye.

This is the thought I woke up with: when did I stop using plastic baggies? My home airport keeps an enormous box of them just outside the security line, and I picked up the second plastic baggie I’ve acquired in a year as I left on this trip. I think at some point I decided that, whatever I was doing with regard to plastics, at least I wouldn’t willfully buy small plastic bags to transfer things out of larger plastic containers. As for the small plastic containers used to transport toiletries in carryon luggage… well, those are pretty easy to reuse, at least. Except for toothpaste. [Well, people have suggestions, but how many pairs of scissors does one household have?] Yet another argument for finding a toothpaste recipe that doesn’t taste awful, or like dessert.

There are other ways traveling shows – and perhaps creates; cause and effect are pretty subtle sometimes – the changes I’ve wanted for myself over the past mumble mumble years. I packed – as I’ve been telling everyone – one large carryon bag & a laptop (in a bag that will also be my purse and walking bag) for a week. This is going to be my new standard for work travel, so it may as well be my standard everywhere. One Bag is right, though: if you’re doing a single bag, wheels are a bit stupid – they’re heavier, and a bit unwieldy even in airports. Noted.

Bag logistics aside: I forget sometimes that I was once given to impressive meltdowns when forced to travel. The first time I went to Hawai’i, I cried at a Starbucks in LAX – before we even got there. And possibly again at a rental car counter in Honolulu? My poor travel companion! I finally left the US for a bit this year, in part because I gained a sense of humor and let go of that overwhelming need to have things happen according to plan. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. Which is great! That’s where the real fun starts.

Partly, also, I think I used to be afraid of… well, anything that wasn’t familiar or comfortable. Forcing myself to deal with new degrees of discomfort helped get me over that. In fact, as I try to list examples, none of the things that should sound uncomfortable actually are – I mean, sure I’ve camped in 100 degree heat, but there was a shower and a swimming hole; or there were those there-and-back-in-a-day job interview flights, but the tacos were fantastic; getting up to the tip of that mountain was hard, but it was amazing and only took like an hour and a half anyhow. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to do scarier stuff. My stuff just isn’t that scary. But. It sure would’ve seemed that way to the version of myself who melted down at LAX that one time.

And the tacos really were fantastic.

appreciations

It snowed a lot – probably a foot  - in town last night. I remember some years ago being terrified of driving in any amount of snow, so much so that I’d basically stop where I was when the first flake fell.

Last night I stopped to buy a giftmas tree (a little one I could maneuver into my car and put up myself), knowing full well I also had a hospital visit (to a perfect baby and his wonderful, strong mothers) still to make. There were at least a few inches sticking to the ground by the time I made it home. It’s a route I drive all the time, even a couple of times in snow last year, though it would’ve been easier to walk if I were wearing the right shoes & not carrying a giftmas tree. I’m less afraid of a lot of things. I suppose none of that story is a surprise.

I was the first person in the neighborhood to shovel their walk this morning. Not that I did a great job – it’s hard work – but it was pretty enjoyable. I may go back out in a bit and get a start on the alley next to my house. Anyhow. Many things came together to make clearing snow a pleasurable experience, and I wanted to note my appreciation of those things.
- outdoor CST training, for which I bought a warm under layer of clothes a couple of years ago
- a prior version of me who did not think enough about the worth of all life & therefore got leather gloves that fit my tiny hands – and I’m certainly not so squeamish that I won’t wear them now
- Buddhists and hippies and meditation – in other words, joyfulness found in work and single-minded focus
- my former roommate’s broad, square shovel (I can’t justify buying a snow shovel for one use a year, but this thing is great for moving compost and snow)
- that plastic-bottle-fleece jacket; man, that thing is warm
- the neighbors who walked by and stopped to chat
- jazz versions of holiday tunes playing on NPR
- the snow itself, which is nicely and heavy, but still dry, so it shovels like rice but sweeps like flour
- still having power & therefore heat and hot water, making it cozy to come back inside
- and of course, the physical capacity to shovel and sweep in the first place – simple activity feels so good sometimes

resources from the job search article

This is a companion to my last post, with some sources for people who would like to take a similar path. I list these because I used them personally, and recommend them.

If you’re looking for a coach, I know several whom I haven’t worked with, but who are good people you might click with.

Read the rest of this entry »

looking for a job from the heart (looooong)

This is an article – or small book – that came out of a couple of blog posts I wrote over the past several months as I looked for my next job. It’s long for a blog post now, but since it started here, I share where it ended.

What do you think? What ought I do with it next?

Also, here’s a small annotated list of resources I used.

Read the rest of this entry »

no (or, well – less) impact

In another… hrm, six weeks… I’ll be starting a job that means I’ll travel constantly. That’s an impact on the environment I’m not used to having – though I do drive a 20 mile commute to and from work most days now, so it’s not like my business travel is zero impact to begin with. Anyhow. Air travel is generally considered supremely lousy for the environment, in case you haven’t heard.

I suppose I could buy carbon offsets, but do those actually work? I have no idea. Their main selling point seems to be education, and I already know that flying around isn’t great for the environment. And of course, I’ve ruled out the things that are unreasonable for me (that is, not taking the job or selling my house and moving to each place I work).

So. I’ve been reading about ways to reduce my footprint further (beyond the small things I’ve talked about here before). The No Impact Project has some interesting ideas. And some major liberal guilt. It’s pretty cool, though, to see people suggesting – and then going and enacting – changes that sound pretty extreme to me. I like shampoo, okay! Hair washing is awesome. Let’s do it all the time. [Sidenote: I continue to debate with myself whether it's better to have shampoo in bar form shipped to me or to buy it in plastic bottles closer to home. Currently the shipping solution is winning, because the volume of plastic in my life disturbs me.]

My thought here is that, in exchange for the travel, I need to step it up from what I do now (which, honestly, is what all caring people with money should be doing – none of my habits inconvenience me). Use my shampoo thing as an example: make bars of the stuff myself. I’ll try some of this stuff out and see what sticks. I figure the concern at least is a step in the right direction.

quiet

I brought Stellae (whose full name I admit is ridiculous – RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME), the youngest of the three cats who live with me, to visit with my parents for Thanksgiving. She’s a pretty daring, almost aggressive, cat – she’s here in part to give the others a break from being pounced.

Except. It is really loud here! At home, I listen to music on purpose, or watch television on purpose, and the only background noise is appliance-generated. Here in the country, there are two whole other people making people noises, currently four dogs doing dog stuff, and usually a teevee or a computer or a phone ringing or… lots of things. The area in general may be woodsy and quiet, but the house is a buffet of unfamiliar sounds. Each of which makes Stellae jump out of her skin.

Cats are a bit like canaries [Is there some sort of aphorism about cats and canaries? Those two words seem to fit near each other, and I feel like they're connected by more than mineshafts.]. They perceive things faster than humans, and their reactions are more extreme.

In the quiet at night, Stellae is relaxed and normal. She leapt a baby gate earlier and followed me around the dark house, and is now attacking my feet under a blanket (a timeless classic of feline fun). During the day she’s jumpy and hidey. I feel like I’ve accidentally traumatized this little cat. Then she’s back to normal.

Anyhow. This isn’t intended to be a crazy cat lady post. It’s about people! She made me wonder how all this hubbub affects the humans who surround themselves with it. The last couple of times I’ve been to New York, for instance, my skin crawled with this sense of the television being on everywhere (in New York’s defense, both trips were mostly in Times Square, pretty much a giant teevee). I know everyone gets used to familiar sensations, cancels out the usual noises and smells and such. Do humans – and all animals, really – actually adapt to their buzzing environments completely? Or on some level, is it disquieting?

I appreciate the quiet of my own house more in comparison to these other places. The city around may be loud, but it’s not constant. I feel like people need that – you know, silence, space to think and rest.

things that are hard

Not eating meat at Thanksgiving dinner is surprisingly weirder and more difficult than not smoking at almost all other times.

My family made that much easier, though, by making a bunch of salmon for me (a sort of sacrifice, since mom hates even the smell of fish). Yes, fish is really a form of meat if meat = dead animal flesh, but I haven’t yet put that habit aside. Eating salmon next to the parents’ turkey is still weird. Like smoking, eating turkey is a thing I enjoy. And don’t even get me started on bacon – hey, I know people who are vegan except for bacon – and there’s no moral, health or other exemption you can plausibly talk yourself into for eating industrially farmed diner bacon. I’ve taken to calling bacon a gateway drug.

I haven’t talked much about quitting smoking. It’s just a thing I did, and continue on because I’m ornery and irritated at the tobacco industry (which, come to think of it, is close to the reason I quit eating land animals). Opting out of these things transforms that “irritation” or righteous anger into a small act of peace, in the lighter footprint I leave, even if it does nothing to help those two industries behave more gently.

If I mention the smoking thing out in public, though, I’m afraid self-righteous non-smokers will start congratulating me in ways that make me more irritated in their direction than at Big Tobacco. I’m not sure how to transform that – maybe there’s some constructive way I could help quit-smoking campaigns be more positive and less patronizing. Their intentions are good. And their tactics do work some of the time.