One last thought...

I know this blog is officially "done" but would it really be my blog if I didn't break protocol somehow? I was emailing with a friend about the end of GU and what had happened in my life and we were talking about how nutty it can be where you end up; you really, really never know where life will take you. And he summed up in 6 words what took me 50+ days to trip over to figure out - in 6 words, stated the best way I think you could possibly live life:

Be free, be honest, be you.

Thanks, Ricardo.

Day 58

It's time to end Gainful Unemployment. Did I find a job? Nope. A job found me. It's not really taking the form I expected, because I have no employer. I'm just responsible for myself, and sometimes I get paid and sometimes I don't. I've decided I'm no longer unemployed for these reasons:

1) Contract work is picking up and keeping me busy - and paying the bills. I actually have submitted proposals now instead of hoping someone remembers me and thinks up some work for me to do.
2) I have steady volunteering hours at Second Harvest Gleaners and The Learning Corner. The nice thing is that I just don't go in if I don't feel like it.
3) I am working for free with the Grand Rapids food reform folks on trying to build up their internal network and communication with each other.
4) I am going to start doing some volunteering with the Community Media Center here, and might possibly teach some classes there on documentary filmmaking (this is TBD).

Life doesn't look like what I imagined it would a few months ago when I started this blog, but I think that's a good thing. I'm glad that I got to be surprised. I've learned a lot of things in my stint of unemployment, and I'll put a few of them out here:

• Taking the leap was worth it. It just might always be worth it. -- It was a huge leap for me to up and quit my job and move in with TM and BA and hope that it all worked out. I've never risked so much before, and my life is scads better than it was a while ago, minus still missing my friends. Yes, scads. I may have made the word up but it conveys the enormity of the situation.
• The only way to worry less about money and having a job is to not make any and not have one for a while. -- I struggled a lot with understanding that worry does no good but still feeling it these last months. After facing a lot of the things that scare me enough to worry about and seeing that it's not the end of the world and noticing once again that Somehow, Everything Will Work Out, I've started worrying less. Yoga Journal would have you believe that you can 3-step meditate your way out of worry and the things that bind you, and old-way Christians would tell you to "give it to Jesus," but I think the only way to worry less is to get face to face with what scares you. Yesterday I heard that a contract that I thought was pretty much a shoe-in I may not get after all. I felt a prick of concern, and then realized that if I didn't get it, I could feel let down but then move on. A week ago I hadn't even heard about the contract - how could it really make or break life?
• Success is lame. -- At least, my old definition of success was lame. My old defintion had a lot more to do with living up to someone else's expectations, someone else's dreams, someone else's idea of success, some American version of success that was all tied in with money and cyclical spending, some version of success that confused being with doing, rather than it did with anything like living for things bigger than myself and true freedom. True freedom. Freedom from greed, from desire. Freedom to say, "I thought this would work and it isn't, so I'm changing." Freedom to quit. Freedom to stop being selfish. Freedom to love. Freedom to be outside of boxes and labels (e.g., nonreligious/spiritual/Buddhist/Christian, etc. e.g., vegetarian/meat-eater/pescatarian/slow foodie/locavore/vegan, etc.. e.g., unemployed/self-employed/employed. e.g., success/failure/climber/Yuppie/dues-payer.)
  
• I still have a ton of work to do. -- I was nosing around on Facebook this afternoon, checking out what jobs all my friends I haven't talked to in a while are doing. Most of them sound like they're doing really cool stuff, and I got a little worried about if my life was boring or if I sound like a failure in comparison. Have I not learned anything? Why am I so...so...human?

I'm not sure what I'll be up to next, but I'm sure there will be a new blog at some point. I always seem to have some kind of learning bent. I'll probably post random bits back at nurkdenflurn until the next focused writing. I'll make sure to link it up when that happens. Thanks to those of you who read, commented, supported, commiserated, and pushed me!

Day 49

You may have thought that I'd found employment by now, but it's not true. I haven't been keeping up blogging because I've been too busy...well...living. There's been a lot going on in life and in my neighborhood that has kept me up and away from the computer. Here's a quick snapshot:

• I finally got my desk put up in the tiny small front room, but didn't have wireless access in it and don't like dragging my laptop around.
• TM and I are watching his ex-dog Harold from mid-March until the end of April. He's a really sweet dog, and I've been spending my blogging time walking him and nursing his ACL injury.
  
• I've been rehabbing old furniture.
• It's gotten warmer outside.
  

But those are all little things. Here are the major reasons why I haven't been on here:

• I started my job search in earnest. Shockingly, it's been taking up time. I find it amusing that it can take up time to get nowhere with it. It's been semi-disappointing. One of the meetings I had with a person at United Way in this last week or so was kind of promising. She told me about their executive loan program that I might be able to do in the fall. It's a paid fundraising crash course that runs from July to November. It might be interesting if I'm still out of a job by then. She did inform me that I'd have to take out my lip ring: "This town is too conservative for that; I couldn't send you out to businesses like that." I informed her that the moment when I think that something on the outside defines who I really am is the moment when I need to reevaluate my life in a serious way. She shut up about it after that.
• There was a gunfight over drugs half a block away from my house.
• Then a couple nights later, 3 men broke into my neighbor's house and beat up her boyfriend and trashed it. She came running over hysterical and I took care of her traumatized daughters while she called the police. It was about a 2 hour ordeal. Later that week the girls came over with thank you cards. "Thank you for everything." "Thank you for saving my life." They were written in big block letters like the kind I used to write, only I would give them to my dad for his office and they'd say things like, "Ski daddy!"
  
• 2 days after all of this I did my first fast. TM, BA, and I all fasted together for 24 hours, drinking only water. I learned a lot about myself and my relationship to food. I thought a lot about what my job in this neighborhood was. That was a Sunday.
• The Wednesday after my first fast, I heard Shane Claiborne speak. Shane Claiborne - celibate and ok with it because he connects to people through community, advocate of the simple way, lover of people and earth, own-clothes-maker, bringing new meaning to "dirty hippy," able to make a nonChristian like me listen up and be curious about his faith - Shane Claiborne who's really living down and dirty Mother Teresa style in Philadelphia, and making a difference. Of course, I heard him at Mars Hill (see GU's Approved Orgs on the side!) so it's really no surprise. But I was thrown in turmoil after it because so many of the audience questions seemed to me to really be asking, "OK, I want to become intimate with the oppressed and help out too. I want to be a revolutionary too. I want to. My heart is in it. But can you tell me how I can do it without changing my life too much and without it being very hard? Can you please show me Freeing-The-Oppressed-Lite?" And I reflected on all that had happened in my neighborhood and about how hard it was for me to do something so simple like a 24 hour fast and I thought, is this me? Do I want Revolution Lite? Is my struggle in life that I want to be this change, but I want Revolution Lite? And if what is really bugging me is the principle that everybody wants everything to be easy, what am I supposed to do about it? I'm always bothered by the principle of things, and I'm not sure if this is something I'm supposed to "overcome" or if I'm always bothered by it because somewhere in there is the secret for what I should be doing with my days.
  
• So I applied for a Community Organizer position in my neighborhood and I'm supposed to talk with the one Community Organizer here soon. Cross your fingers for me.
• I started volunteering. I volunteer at Second Harvest Gleaners where we're working to end hunger in Grand Rapids and at The Learning Corner at Wealthy, where I teach people trying to get their GEDs how to write. More on these later.
  

And furthermore, on page 98 in The Overspent American, Schor lays out the new (or not so new?) definition of American progress. And it struck me that the reason nothing in America is sustainable, the reason why everyone wants their business to be Big Big Big, the reason why people want to have their cake (e.g. SUV) and eat it too (e.g. enjoy a clean environment) is because people love the idea of sustainability...but tucked neatly away by some kind of cognitive dissonance that is too horrible for us as a society to face is the truth that our idea of progress is antithetical to sustainability and until Small is the new Big, until Loving Walking Community is the new Suburbia, until Local Food is just called Food, etc etc etc -- until we're reconnected with each other, the earth (and God?) and that's the definition of progress and that defintion has nothing to do with accumulation of wealth, nothing here can ever be truly sustainable. Why do we want what we don't need? Why is this agenda set? Who ever thought this was a good idea?

Also, if you haven't read Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, you have to make it your next book. Have. To. Read. It. Pornified is next, along with several other books that I have on the cue. But to be fair, here's some criticism.

Day 39

I was just taping in all the little scraps of paper that I collect and keep for my journal, and taped in a fortune from some Chinese food I recently ate:

You emerge victorious from the maze you've been travelling in.

Finally, some good news!

Of course, it was situated right next to:

There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead for you.

I am thinking that it would be best to take a glass-half-full perspective on that one.

Day 38

I haven't been writing as much in this blog as I was at the start because I lose interest in things after a while. Perhaps it's a sign that I am more a part of my disaffected, ADD generation than I thought. The newness of unemployment has worn off, and I've started asking some different questions as I feel the craving for employment rising like bile in the back of my throat. I jokingly said to someone else the other day that I was ready for another job because I wanted to "be able to bitch about my job and the people I worked with like everybody else." I'd love to be miserable just like everybody else; it's so familiar and is the glue that cements our hideous excuses for acquaintance-based social circles. When in doubt, start bitching about the personal suffering you created for yourself by agreeing to act in a system you bought into before giving it a hard look.

Dark social commentary aside, I've started asking things like:

Why am I ready for a job now? Need for social interaction. Need to pay off student loans.

What kind of job do I want? One where I get to go to work, do interesting stuff with at least a few interesting people, and come home and not think about it much unless I feel like it. One where I don't have to work ridiculous new-American-industrial-age hours. One where I can take time off according to my idea of time off, whether that's paid or not.

What kind of work do I want? I still don't know.

Why don't I know, after a biblical almost-40 day period of soul-searching, what kind of work I want? Is it that I could be happy doing a lot of things, or that I would be happiest as a societal separatist...a wacko farming with my beloved, clothed in a burlap sack? Maybe. But I think I'd prefer a cashmere sack in the winter and a bamboo sack in the summer. Maybe it's because I still don't have a good idea of all that there is that's out there.

Why is it that I'm still concerned about appearing successful (having an important-sounding job that does social good while getting paid enough not to be a pauper), especially when some of the successful people who I don't want to "let down" are some that are the most miserable? Because I clearly still have some internal work to do.

How stressed out am I going to be if by April I still don't have a job? It depends on if it's warm enough to be hanging out at the beach during the day.

On the bright and unrelated side, I have found biocompostable flatware for the picnic reception at TM's and my upcoming nuptuals. It is by far my favorite part of the planning so far.

Day 32

I skipped Days 26-30. I went with TM to Indianapolis in the middle of the week. He went to a conference and I hung out in bookstores, reading about my latest obsession that I've had time to explore since being gainfully unemployed: porn and sex work. As a feminist I can't decide if I'm for it (freedom of expression, some women find their empowerment through it, etc.) or against it (based on exploitation and objectification of women, feeds false consciousness, turns a beautiful thing into a commodity, cheapens sex, etc.). It turns out, feminists can't decide either, as I've now read a few articles and books from both points of view. And both camps end up decrying the other side as "not really feminist." Gee...I wonder why the female revolution has faltered?

Anyway...it was actually a really mentally hard week, as this one is shaping up to be. I'm having a hard time staying excited about this gainful unemployment shtick, especially after being rejected from my first two applications (one I never heard back from and the other I sent in the resume and cover letter the day after they filled the position, which they were kind enough to tell me). The good news is that I've only heard about these positions through people that I've talked with, so I can't say it's truly been for naught. I also received a mysterious email requesting a meeting with me instead of the other way around, but I have no clue who this firm got my name and background from. We'll see how that all ends up.

All of this is to say that I'm ready for my gainful unemployment to end. In fact, I'm not sure it's been so gainful this last week and a half. The problem is, I'm not so sure still what it is that I'd really like to be doing. And maybe that's part of the lesson here: it doesn't need to be figured out. I don't need to be figured out by anyone, including myself. I can just do something...and if I don't like it, I can stop doing it. I should just stop being so damn picky and pick something.

To clear my head, I headed out to Frederik Meijer Gardens today. It turned out that one of my favorite artists was the featured sculptor this season: Patrick Dougherty. I began my visit inside a cathedral/labarynthian stick sculpture with the smell of lilacs from the adjoining room drifting in. I walked through the arid gardens filled with cactuses and rock. There are plants that grow disguised as rocks (clever!). It felt so incredible to be in this bright, warm garden looking out at gloomy lower Michigan's idea of pre-spring winter.

After the arid garden, I took a detour into a wetter garden filled only with carnivorous plants from South America and doomed midwestern ants. Then I walked through asmall path of flowers so perfect and colorful they seemed fake.

And then...there was the famed butterfly gardens. Only available in March and April. My favorite? The butterfly that looks like a green plant, the monstrous butterfly with layered wings in wild colors that only flies at night, the black lacey butterfly dark as pen ink with sparse designs...all beautiful. But my favorite was the medium sized butterfly all brown with designs drawn in black tightly together on its wings, like the Roots drawing I loved so much a month ago at the UICA. It had a few dark blue and off-white blots on its wings. I was grand without being flashy, intricate without a million colors, elegant without dizzying layers and trailing bits. Confident of itself, it didn't seem to need all the accoutrements of the other insect-birds.













I admire this butterfly. This is the butterfly I aspire to be. But lately, it doesn't feel like I'm doing the best job. My heart has been struggling with an egotistical need to find a job that says "I've made it" all the while knowing that I would be happiest working in a small, local place where I could do a great job in the day and then go home at night free to forget all about it. I feel compelled to take assignments jet-setting around to prove...what? I thought I'd love it, which was fine. But it turns out I don't - it gives me a headache, tires me out, makes me feel disconnected and depressed. It turns out that isn't who I want to be, which is also fine...so why do I still care at all to force myself to do it? Is it about clinging to expectations I set up for myself and for other people to think about me? How do I let that go? Not should I, but how.

And "looking into my heart to find the answer" is not the how. I've been looking. The answer isn't there. Perhaps I should take some more good advice I've heard from a few rare gems: pick something, do it, and if you don't like it, stop doing it. Seems pretty simple. Perhaps I can do a few cognitive roundabouts to make it really fucking complicated.

Of course, this is all cart-before-the-horse talk - there's nobody really clamoring to hire me in this city.

Not a day, but a comment on the days in which we live

Eco-friendly fire
New from Ode Magazine, whose tagline is "news for intelligent optimists"

ENGLAND. The people at BAE Systems, Europe’s biggest weapons manufacturer, have joined a host of other companies in adding a department of corporate social responsibility. The result is environmentally friendly ammunition, including missiles that contain fewer toxic chemicals such as lead. According to BAE’s website, lead in bullets can “pose a risk to people.” The British Defence Ministry supports the company’s initiative and has proposed manufacturing missile heads that make less noise and grenades that produce less smoke in an effort to curtail noise and air pollution respectively. Money is also being spent to develop bombs that turn into manure.
“This is laughable,” Symon Hill of the Campaign Against Arms Trade told The Sunday Times (Sept. 17, 2006). “BAE is determined to try to make itself look ethical, but they make weapons to kill people and it’s utterly ridiculous to suggest they are environmentally friendly.” But the Ministry of Defence has the last word. “The concept of green munitions is not a contradiction in terms. Any system, whatever its ultimate use, can be designed to minimize its impact on the environment.”