Idealists and Work - Can We Ever Get Along?

It's 2 days before Thanksgiving and a familiar feeling is kicking in. I've been in this position before: unemployed around the holidays, with little hope of finding a job until employers are free from seasonal distractions. Meanwhile the days have gotten short and night comes early, pushing me indoors and making cabin fever set in that much faster. Projects exist, but nothing critical, and they don't call as loudly as the cell-level remembrance that between now and February, I get pretty squirrelly.


So I usually plan a trip to Mexico in January. This year, however, with no regular incoming funds, husband unemployed, and an unsettling economic forecast, it's not looking good. Help wanted ads are dwindling. I just finished interviewing with the only employer of eight in the last two months who responded to my application. They must have liked me, because I was invited back for a second interview. Though I put on my best face, I was not called back for round three.

Maybe they sensed my ambivalence about work. I fluffed up my best internal arguments for wanting such a position, with all the growth and social opportunities it would provide. I like to work – in fact, I need to for my happiness. And, I enjoy doing almost whatever is needed for any employer, since service is my raison d'etre. As long as the organization's mission and values are akin to my own, I will last a couple of years in such an environment.

But for years now there's been a lot of foot dragging on my part to commit to a permanent "office job" – the kind that binds you to one location all day, waiting for your measly two weeks vacation to arrive. As I told the women I just interviewed with, if I'm not learning and growing, I probably wouldn't stay longer than a couple of years. I usually begin to get itchy around 18 months. Also essential is that I have a lot of contact with various types of people, and can talk and problem solve and move around. In fact, I'd probably be happy as a barista or deli counter person, or some hospitality position. But there's the rub: they don't make more than minimum wage. And, I'm not getting the impression that many employers want middle aged females in their customer contact jobs. (Never mind the fact that I would be the best employee they could hope for, with high energy and a passion for helping people get what they want and need.) The other dilemma is the old "you're overqualified" argument. I think making a dumbed-down résumé just rose to the top of my to do list.

Regarding foot-dragging and work, is it because of unreachable idealism or realistic, listen-to-your-soul information? Probably both. Trying to match the ideal to the real in our imperfect world nearly always leaves a gap. Then there's the fear of becoming trapped or stuck. What's that really all about? At some point, all of this needs to be put aside until survival-mode passes. It's nice to know I can do that now, because it wasn't always the case.

To be in limbo was agitating, waiting to hear if I made the "final cut." But, the deadline has passed with no word. I feel an odd mix of relief and worry. "Good," a large part of me says. "This leaves room for something better to come along." There's a vacuum now where the energy and hopes put into this were, and so here's another transition to pass through. Funny about us seekers – having something solid robs us of the search. Not seeking feels passive, a feeling I personally have trouble with. Active, proactive, learning, moving, growing, problem solving – now that sounds exciting. Is that really too much to ask from work?

A Guardian's Last Stand

Chainsaws awoke me this morning, and a wood chipper. They were loud enough to be in the back yard, but as I padded into the kitchen for a cup of tea, I saw the Tree Service truck parked across the street. They were cutting branches from somebody's lone, towering Douglas fir. A similar tree in my old neighborhood was nearly four stories high, planted fifty years ago the day after Christmas.

Although all trees have an energy - a profound presence - these sky-scraping firs seem to radiate a wise elder spirit that watches over time and change, holding the ground and sense of place steady amid surrounding developments.

As I watched through the window, with rain and wind pummeling the workers, more branches came off than was wise for a simple pruning. (Rule of thumb: don't take more than a third of any plant.) The crampon-clad worker climbed higher and then even the skinniest limbs began to fall. My heart sank: the whole tree was going to come down. The thought of this old but robust beauty being sliced to pieces and stuffed in a shredder made me sad. It did not seem to be diseased, or split-trunked (dangerous in high winds). It was simply blocking light from the west-facing windows of a newly-sold house.


"Well," I sighed to my husband, "if they're going to do it, I want to see how it's done." (I wish I could say the same for watching a blood sample being taken, but so far I just pass out.)

The process was careful and systematic. Each branch was stripped from the trunk and carefully guided on a rope down to the ground crew. The smaller chunks were chopped, dropped, and landed with a thunk on the lawn below. The trunk soon resembled a bumpy phone pole. "I wonder if they'll make a totem pole from it," hubby mused. Crampon Guy dug in hard with his feet, herringboned to the top, roped himself around it, and began to slice away at the apex. When the trunk got too thick for his chainsaw, he descended the tree to fetch a bigger one, climbed back up, and started anew.

Roaring like a jet plane engine, the wood chipper had been churning for two hours, recycling the tree into compost and mulch. It finally stopped. Thick slabs of trunk too large for the chopper were hauled away and seasoned for firewood. Soon the stump grinder demolished any above-ground evidence that an old, majestic life had been there. Only sawdust remained.

As in the forest, the fallen tree will go on to support other life, just in a different form: the mulch will help grow stronger gardens, the wood will heat somebody's living room. There's no right or wrong, no good or bad here. When whole tracts of them are razed, the picture changes. But the demise of the noble tree that watched over our corner for fifty years is just another reminder of life's essential dance of dark and light, of letting go of the old to make room for the new, of reconciling nostalgia and potential.

At the moment, the space where the tree lived feels like the scene of a fatal accident, a place of stunned limbo where the old energy form (and our perception of it) needs to disperse and neutralize. But soon the neighboring shrubs and trees will sense new space in which to grow, to strive toward light that once eluded them. And next spring, their branches will bud with new purpose and energy. Round and round it goes. It's all good, isn't it. It's all good.

Virtual Vacations

One of the great things about the internet is its globe-shrinking capability. And being a visual person who loves to travel, the idea of virtually revisiting places I've been to gives me a particular kick. My first webcam thrill back in the late 90s came from the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce site, where this camera atop a favorite hotel almost had me feeling sand between my toes again. Tween Waters.

For another beach a little south of that: Sanibel cam

Also in Florida, the cam at Mallory Square in Key West is fun. In the daytime you can watch passengers disembarking from cruise ships, and at night comes the sunset-watching, busker-loving crowd. Here's one with streaming video from Duvall Street, where at the moment people are wearing everything from shorts to winter jackets. Key West Yahoo weather says it's 65 and windy there, at 9:30 p.m. EST.

The one I love most at the moment, though, was sent to me by my ornithologist brother in law - Brazlian Birds. This site is run by a guy who puts fresh bananas out every day from his farm on the edge of the South Brazilian rainforest. The video stream isn't on during their nighttime, but after 2 a.m. PST, you can have these tropical blues, greens, reds and yellows flitter around your screen in real time. What a wonderful way to bring color and nature from far away into your living room!

The Sun and the Truth

I hate to admit it, but way back in college, I read COSMO magazine and others like it. Even though I saw through much of its shallowness, the articles on relationships, office politics and the like held my interest because I was always seeking answers to life's painful mysteries. Over time, still seeking, I replaced these bottom rung resources with somewhat more intelligent and thoughtful ones, like self-help books and natural health magazines.


These days, however, an airport layover leaves me empty handed of new reading material. Rows and rows of magazines yield not one single publication I am willing to spend my energy and money on. In fact, there is only one magazine I feel good about buying, and that's The Sun. You can't find it in an airport, or in most stores. Good book and magazine shops will carry it, but the best deal is to subscribe. It contains no advertising, and it's all in black and white. And, it's pretty slim. I read it from cover to cover each month, deliriously. You know why?

Because it tells the truth.

Each article, interview or poem is written from a personal perspective, usually about a difficulty or dilemma that we all have faced or will face (to some degree) in our lives. The details may differ, but at each story's core is a shared humanity that you can't find regularly anywhere else in publishing. Nor on TV, or in social conversation, or any culturally sanctioned arena.

This is one of the fundamental problems with popular culture and media. You can't write or talk seriously about what life is really like for most of us, in which confusion reigns and solutions are hazy. It just won't sell. People want answers, solutions, techniques, exercises. We don't want to sit with uncertainty, ambiguity, and an eye toward "living into" the answers. We don't want to hear that struggles can last for years, or that things may not turn out how we hoped. It's uncomfortable and frightening, and our society offers no supports for it.

Humans have been trying to get happy or wealthy throughout history. Clearly, few have come up with the solutions, but the "experts" are always eager to sell us theirs. Some may be interesting and valid for our lives, and we can try their ideas on for size. But we are well served to remember that we have the truths we need, the material that matters, inside us. It may not blossom till next season, but the seeds and the wisdom are there. This is a law of growth and nature. Patience with ourselves is the most important tool we need to tend this garden. That, and perhaps the ability to discern and share our deepest truths.

(http://www.thesunmagazine.org)

Backstage at the Election

The time since my last post has been spent doing tedious but necessary work behind the scenes at the county elections office. Here is where more things happen to a ballot than you could ever imagine. Each county and state are responsible for their own voting systems; ours happened to win a national award for the accountability and accuracy of its many-step process. From the initial incoming mail scan to signature verification to the final tabulation, great pains are taken to ensure voter anonymity and that each vote is counted, no matter how long it takes.

Most of the 600 temporary employees recruited for this election have one thing in common: we're otherwise unemployed. Granted, many election workers are retirees there to contribute to an important process while picking up some pocket money. But the majority of us are job seekers in transition, unsure of where this crazy economy is going to take (or leave) us. A lot of us are middle aged women having trouble finding a job; I have spoken to a few who've been searching for close to a year. There is some comfort in numbers.


Working in this warehouse-like space with hundreds of others who need the money makes me remember that getting by in this life often requires tolerance for tedium. Nearly a week after the election, we still have 40,000 ballots to process, all necessitating manual intervention of some kind. Days are long, from eight to six. Our breaks are regulated to make sure bathrooms and cafeterias are not overrun by all of us at once; lunch is just a half hour and then it's back to work. Eyeballing ballot after ballot, one at a time, is exhausting work and enough to make you cross-eyed. On the bright side, we all make fifteen and a half dollars an hour. In another life, we could be slaves in a sweat shop, or cigarette rollers in China making a couple of dollars a day. At least for us the drudgery is temporary and it goes a long way toward bill paying.

In my younger days I might have gotten caught up in resentment for "having" to do this work, or agitation for not being at some elusive dream job that dangles like a carrot before we idealists. These days I am grateful for the work, for the company, and for the chance to be part of the historic, amazing election of Barack Obama, who will try to fix the economy (among other things) and get us back to regular jobs.

And if I feel a twinge of defeatism, I can remember the story of my Uncle George's 3-hour train ride from south Jersey to his Manhattan office each morning; he would do it in reverse at day's end. He did this for fifteen years. I don't know how, really – he was part of that generation that had a more practical and patient attitude toward life. It wasn't all about getting what you wanted, when you wanted it. In his case, he had a family who dearly loved him waiting for his arrival each night. They filled the time between the tedium, year after year, and gave him the strength to do what he needed to do.