Free-lancing, reading and the Slow Life
So I've been doing this free-lancing thing for about a month now. The days of dragging myself to pretend to work are largely past and it feels much more natural to define for myself what my days will look like. I turned 34 last week and it came as a bit of a surprise that I'm more than a third of the way through my projected life-span on this planet. But I'm pretty happy with how things are in my life, on a general level. I have enough financial security that I could finally go and look after 'maintenance' items like getting my teeth cleaned and buying new glasses and having an eye exam and purchasing those 'foundational' clothing items that every woman needs :) It has been an expensive month though with all of that coming down: I am not looking forward to doing my "Your Money or Your Life" accounting this time -- I expect that the income line is going to be below the expenses line, which is so not the point. Still.
I read Bill McKibben's new book "Eaarth" this weekend. It was, as expected, an excellent book, but the first half (also as expected) was brutal in its blunt laying out of the state of the environment, our society and the impacts we in the developed North and West have had on our fair planet. Filled me with the desire to make concrete steps towards reaching my own personal low-impact goals, too. I tend to get caught in social expectations periodically. After all, where is my husband? My house? My kids and my picket fence? None of these quasi-traditional markers are present in my life, despite all of the other things I have accomplished. And for that matter, where is the prestigious well-paid career that every over-educated person is meant to aspire to? It is not in the offing, and I think that there are reasons for that: my values, first off. I expect that even when I try to hide my personal conflicts about the corporatisation of education, consumerism as citizenship and "big" as a lifestyle choice in my applications for work, that it sneaks in anyway. And as a hiring committee, members must be used to reading between the lines for that sort of "she's just not going to fit in here in the long run" kind of information. So, in some ways, my persistent inability to find conventional work is a blessing. It allows me to step out of my socially prescribed middle-class white existence, or at least to one side of it. Superficially, of course I am still all of those things. I have an income, I have a home (a rented one, but still, a respectable dwelling in a nice neighbourhood -- brawling neighbours on the weekend notwithstanding!), and my hobbies are of the leisure class, I guess. Gardening, baking, reading, dancing... But still, reading Cecile Andrews "Slow is Beautiful" showed me that I am in some important ways, not part of the "we" that she tries to invite me into. The "we" that believes leadership is showing the poor uneducated of the world a better way of doing things, or the "we" that has already reached the pinnacle of the consuming life and is stepping back (and down) gracefully, secure in the knowledge of a paid-off mortgage, a partner who remains in the regular workforce and friends with the time and inclination to be "slow" with me. I'm not part of that "we."
And that is where many of the voluntary simplicity books and groups fall down for me. I haven't "arrived" in any real sense of the word. If I lived in the States I'd be one of the silent majority that would be in serious debt if a bus hit me while I walked to the grocery store. In Canada I'm not in danger of that, but equally, if I fail to attract any more contracts for work in the next six months I will not be able to afford to live in my community. Certainly I can choose to *never* be part of the ladder-climbing majority, but my choice will be more fraught than choosing to downsize might be for your average middle-class white professional who has already put aside money for retirement and has paid for her home.
I do believe that the world as I grew up to know it has already changed irrevocably, a la McKibben. I do believe that over the next 20 years we are likely to feel the pinch, even here in the comfort of the over-developed world. Will the pinch be war over water and arable land? The tarsands? Or will it be a gentler nostalgia for things we once took for granted, like being able to visit a family far-flung around the globe in the space of 24 hours? I am not sure, but I do know that I want to be on the right side of history. I would rather be the tear-gassed protester than the person living in a security-ridden gated community protecting my consumer things. Or the cop tear-gassing the protesters, for that matter. But more even than all of that, I would like to be living in a community of people who together have worked towards creating sustainable, sane enclaves of the good life, open to anyone who is willing to work hard and play and dream together of a better way to live on this precious planet. Takers, anyone?
I read Bill McKibben's new book "Eaarth" this weekend. It was, as expected, an excellent book, but the first half (also as expected) was brutal in its blunt laying out of the state of the environment, our society and the impacts we in the developed North and West have had on our fair planet. Filled me with the desire to make concrete steps towards reaching my own personal low-impact goals, too. I tend to get caught in social expectations periodically. After all, where is my husband? My house? My kids and my picket fence? None of these quasi-traditional markers are present in my life, despite all of the other things I have accomplished. And for that matter, where is the prestigious well-paid career that every over-educated person is meant to aspire to? It is not in the offing, and I think that there are reasons for that: my values, first off. I expect that even when I try to hide my personal conflicts about the corporatisation of education, consumerism as citizenship and "big" as a lifestyle choice in my applications for work, that it sneaks in anyway. And as a hiring committee, members must be used to reading between the lines for that sort of "she's just not going to fit in here in the long run" kind of information. So, in some ways, my persistent inability to find conventional work is a blessing. It allows me to step out of my socially prescribed middle-class white existence, or at least to one side of it. Superficially, of course I am still all of those things. I have an income, I have a home (a rented one, but still, a respectable dwelling in a nice neighbourhood -- brawling neighbours on the weekend notwithstanding!), and my hobbies are of the leisure class, I guess. Gardening, baking, reading, dancing... But still, reading Cecile Andrews "Slow is Beautiful" showed me that I am in some important ways, not part of the "we" that she tries to invite me into. The "we" that believes leadership is showing the poor uneducated of the world a better way of doing things, or the "we" that has already reached the pinnacle of the consuming life and is stepping back (and down) gracefully, secure in the knowledge of a paid-off mortgage, a partner who remains in the regular workforce and friends with the time and inclination to be "slow" with me. I'm not part of that "we."
And that is where many of the voluntary simplicity books and groups fall down for me. I haven't "arrived" in any real sense of the word. If I lived in the States I'd be one of the silent majority that would be in serious debt if a bus hit me while I walked to the grocery store. In Canada I'm not in danger of that, but equally, if I fail to attract any more contracts for work in the next six months I will not be able to afford to live in my community. Certainly I can choose to *never* be part of the ladder-climbing majority, but my choice will be more fraught than choosing to downsize might be for your average middle-class white professional who has already put aside money for retirement and has paid for her home.
I do believe that the world as I grew up to know it has already changed irrevocably, a la McKibben. I do believe that over the next 20 years we are likely to feel the pinch, even here in the comfort of the over-developed world. Will the pinch be war over water and arable land? The tarsands? Or will it be a gentler nostalgia for things we once took for granted, like being able to visit a family far-flung around the globe in the space of 24 hours? I am not sure, but I do know that I want to be on the right side of history. I would rather be the tear-gassed protester than the person living in a security-ridden gated community protecting my consumer things. Or the cop tear-gassing the protesters, for that matter. But more even than all of that, I would like to be living in a community of people who together have worked towards creating sustainable, sane enclaves of the good life, open to anyone who is willing to work hard and play and dream together of a better way to live on this precious planet. Takers, anyone?
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