Time is flying
A bit ironic, I suppose, to use such a subject line on a "timeseeking" blog! But seriously I have trouble fathoming that it's already late November. The next thing I know it'll be Christmas and I'm not even remotely prepared for that...
This fall has been a real mix of busy and make-work. The busy times are busy indeed -- running back and forth between Kelowna and Kamloops and Kelowna and Penticton and trying to foster a few new living communities to come together to make their communities happen. The make-work is the in-between times, the hours when for that particular day maybe I just don't have 7.5 hours of work to do and would prefer a world where it was okay to be honest about that and just go and do something else. Understanding, of course, that there will be other 9 and 12 hour days which will make the easy-load ones seem like a pleasant dream. I think in my ideal world I'd be rewarded for efficiency in work instead of inefficiencies... You know, that if it takes me only two days to write a business plan instead of two weeks that that would be a *good* thing, instead of a reason to find make-work projects to fill the extra 8 days someone else might have needed to produce the same document... Alas. The growth economy mode of capitalism doesn't leave a lot of room for that sort of calculation, does it?
I've been re-reading Chris Turner's The Geography of Hope and it's filled with all these wonderful adaptations and inventions in the face of a woefully unsustainable world. The crazy part is that we could *all* be doing the kinds of things that he outlines in the book, but we aren't. I was driving by myself in my fossil-fuel burning single occupancy vehicle back from Kamloops the other night and I suddenly realised why it is that so many Canadians don't see the urgency of climate change. I was on the 'open road' all by myself as though I was the protagonist in some car commercial and there was no obvious reason why that kind of lifestyle was a problem. Indeed, I could see why some people actively enjoy the solo car experience -- it's freedom of movement in a pretty radical way I guess, compared to the vast majority of human history and even for the vast majority of humans right now in history. But still. Radically unsustainable as well. Somehow there has to be a way to live in this huge land without covering it with asphalt in the name of mobility...
This fall has been a real mix of busy and make-work. The busy times are busy indeed -- running back and forth between Kelowna and Kamloops and Kelowna and Penticton and trying to foster a few new living communities to come together to make their communities happen. The make-work is the in-between times, the hours when for that particular day maybe I just don't have 7.5 hours of work to do and would prefer a world where it was okay to be honest about that and just go and do something else. Understanding, of course, that there will be other 9 and 12 hour days which will make the easy-load ones seem like a pleasant dream. I think in my ideal world I'd be rewarded for efficiency in work instead of inefficiencies... You know, that if it takes me only two days to write a business plan instead of two weeks that that would be a *good* thing, instead of a reason to find make-work projects to fill the extra 8 days someone else might have needed to produce the same document... Alas. The growth economy mode of capitalism doesn't leave a lot of room for that sort of calculation, does it?
I've been re-reading Chris Turner's The Geography of Hope and it's filled with all these wonderful adaptations and inventions in the face of a woefully unsustainable world. The crazy part is that we could *all* be doing the kinds of things that he outlines in the book, but we aren't. I was driving by myself in my fossil-fuel burning single occupancy vehicle back from Kamloops the other night and I suddenly realised why it is that so many Canadians don't see the urgency of climate change. I was on the 'open road' all by myself as though I was the protagonist in some car commercial and there was no obvious reason why that kind of lifestyle was a problem. Indeed, I could see why some people actively enjoy the solo car experience -- it's freedom of movement in a pretty radical way I guess, compared to the vast majority of human history and even for the vast majority of humans right now in history. But still. Radically unsustainable as well. Somehow there has to be a way to live in this huge land without covering it with asphalt in the name of mobility...
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