Happy “Clear Blackberries From Your Fartichoke Beds Day” to all who celebrate.
#Gardening #Food #FoodForest #Sisyphean

@Mrfunkedude #Sisyphean, like all cleaning

The lockdown broke me. And the reason it broke me was because I got to experience my perfect day. And I got to experience it repeatedly:

At the time I had maybe $9000. My rent was $750 a month. I was unemployed (though heavily paid the #ADHDTax by not applying for unemployment). I had managed to secure some staples (especially flour. I've always been a baker, and when I saw the way the bread section looked at Market Basket I wandered over to the baking section and bought 20lbs of flour and figured I'd be able to keep myself fed and entertained for a bit.) So my emotional state was calm. We just needed to ride this thing out, I have food, I have money, there's nothing I can really do right now but chill the fuck out. And I did. I never do that.

I'd wake up in the morning and brew myself a pot of tea. As it steeped I'd fold up my bed and sit in the middle of the tatami my bed was on in my attic bedroom. I'd turn on my stereo I had scavenged and pick an album. I had just started exploring ambient music. This morning I pick Green by #HiroshiYoshimura. I pour myself a cup of tea and bask in the sun streaming through my skylight. As I blow across the tea I watch the ongoing drama at the bird feeder I had installed to the window a few weeks ago after a bout of hyper-fixation on bird watching. Three mourning doves have become regulars, and they are the dumbest birds I've ever seen. They are much too big for this feeder, and they are too dumb to take turns, so all three of them try to perch and end up shoving each other off and begin a perpetually cascading fountain of feather, coos, and struggle as they keep unseating each other. A pair of nuthatches watch, frustrated from the large tree just outside my window. I finish the album and still have tea left. The temperature is mild so I climb out our front window onto the roof with a blanket and a book and sit. I don't read much and instead watch folks walking up and down the middle of the street, commenting on this odd new liberty in our ongoing apocalypse. I decide I want to be a little closer to these conversations so I walk down to the front porch and set up my hammock. I make myself a grilled cheese and another pot of tea and sit in the hammock while I continue to people watch. My street had never been this interesting before... or maybe I've just never had time to observe it. Eventually I decide I should maybe move or something so I get my bike out and go for a ride. There are no cars. Cycling has never been this enjoyable before. I bike smack down the middle of Elm Street, my hand's behind my head as I stretch in the sun and look around at the new, slow pace life has taken on. I pedal lazily through the streets of Somerville and up the minuteman until I get to the meadows and do a little bit of languid trail riding. When I find a quiet spot I set up my hammock again and just rock and listen. As the temperature drops I make my way home. I make myself dinner and split a beer with my roommate while I watch him play Skyrim and we banter. Eventually he turns in and I make a pot of herbal tea and sit on the roof wrapped in a blanket and watch the neighborhood around me settle down for the evening. I hear people coughing, and I shiver. It's time to head inside.

I recognize this was a scary, awful time for so many people, as it was that for me as well. I was lucky that no one in my circle had contracted it, and I was actively wrapped in anxiety or mourning over anyone I knew. That being said, I had never taken a vacation before in my life, and I think this was the closest I've ever been. There was nothing I could do in those days, nothing was expected of me, so I just... vibed. It was something I've never experienced before in my life, and I wish I could just have an hour like that each day. That shouldn't be too much to ask, but these days it's always just out of reach. I got to taste the good life, and slowly that's been taken away from me piece by piece as we "return to normal.

#WeatherIsHappening #ClimateCrisis #IWW #antiwork #ADHD #greencollargrunt #greenwashing #greenwash #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean

My new coworkers are nice enough, but this being an outdoor recreation bike shop, there's a lot of talk about the utter lack of snow during this sickly-warm winter... but purely from the "We can't ski/snowboard/ice fish" angle, not the "SWEET FUCKING SHIT ITS JANUARY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY SNOW, WE ARE IN A DROUGHT, ITS ONLY GETTING WARMER, THE SHIP IS GOING DOWN!" angle my brain operates on. It's utterly maddening.

They are all at least a decade older than me, and try to tell me about long-term financial investments, swap stories about maintaining their rather new Tacomas, International adventures, talk about their apartments they don't have to share, and I'm getting paid $17 an hour and living in a cramped apartment with a galley kitchen with 3 other people. I just want to scream.

I like these dudes. I like working with them. And I have always only wanted to work with bikes and car alternatives. I'm very lucky to be where I am right now. But I'll be moving on in a few months when we move, and I have no idea where to go from here. Since the death of Metro Pedal Power every green-collar job I've had has let me down and I utterly despair of the possibility of finding a job that my ADHD-ass can handle for more than a year so I can get the health benefits to let me access the therapy I need to square living a life where my sanity depends on devoting 99% of my spoons to work that doesn't serve me or the world I want to live in?

#WeatherIsHappening #ClimateCrisis #IWW #antiwork #ADHD #greencollargrunt #greenwashing #greenwash #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean

My new coworkers are nice enough, but this being an outdoor recreation bike shop, there's a lot of talk about the utter lack of snow during this sickly-warm winter... but purely from the "We can't ski/snowboard/ice fish" angle, not the "SWEET FUCKING SHIT ITS JANUARY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY SNOW, WE ARE IN A DROUGHT, ITS ONLY GETTING WARMER, THE SHIP IS GOING DOWN!" angle my brain operates on. It's utterly maddening.

They are all at least a decade older than me, and try to tell me about long-term financial investments, swap stories about maintaining their rather new Tacomas, talk about their apartments they don't have to share, and I'm getting paid $17 an hour and living in a cramped apartment with a galley kitchen with 3 other people. I just want to scream.

I like these dudes. I like working with them. And I have always only wanted to work with bikes and car alternatives. I'm very lucky to be where I am right now. But I'll be moving on in a few months when we move, and I have no idea where to go from here. Since the death of Metro Pedal Power every green-collar job I've had has let me down and I utterly despair of the possibility of finding a job that my ADHD-ass can handle for more than a year so I can get the health benefits to let me access the therapy I need to square living a life where my sanity depends on devoting 99% of my spoons to work that doesn't serve me or the world I want to live in?

#WeatherIsHappening #ClimateCrisis #IWW #antiwork #ADHD #greencollargrunt #greenwashing #greenwash #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean

What does #success mean in this #postpandemic #world?

#money? #power? Or, #personal and #professional #fulfillment ?

More importantly, being #successful in a #hyper #speed #planet, is both a #false #positive and a #sisyphean #treadmill to nowhere?

My #twocents on #wiining and #losing and about #winners and #losers.

https://rammohansusarla.in/2021/12/06/living-a-losers-life-in-a-winner-take-all-world/

#NewWordWednesday

Damoclean: a precarious situation.

Those help desk tickets I've been putting off are becoming damoclean and will kill me if I don't finally deal with them.

It feels related to #sisyphean to me. Just because you're tired of moving the rock, you can't just stop or the rock's owner will get you.

Black Friday hasn't helped, but it seems unsubscribing from email lists is now as fundamental to my daily life as eating, sleeping and bathing. #spam #Sisyphus #sisyphean