I don't only need dollars

Spring is often a time of new beginnings. For the last five years, it’s always been the time when school ends and a new summer job starts.  It is usually a time riddled with the anxiety and anticipation of living in a new place, working a new job, and making new friends.  But this spring has an additional element of anxiety.   I am still moving to a new place, but instead of working for someone, I am starting my own business with three friends.  We are leasing a four acre parcel on an organic farm to grow chickens, vegetables and staple crops (dry beans and grains) on Vancouver Island.  This is essentially my ideal job: a wee bit of office work, but mostly building fences, shoveling manure, planting seeds, hoeing rows, hauling bins of zucchini, selling at markets, and the like. 

I am nervous and excited to be self-employed as a farmer.  

I am nervous because when you’re on someone’s payroll, you get paid after you put in your hours and get to go home when your shift is over.  But this year, making a net profit is not dependent on the hours of work I do, but the result of the hours of work I do.  This is scary because the result of my work is at the mercy of the weather, soil fertility, pests, available infrastructure, marketing opportunities, and many other variables. 

I am excited to be self-employed in this manner, because my work will largely provide my basic needs.  We are exchanging labour for rent at the farm house, we are getting paid in firewood to work for the neighbours, we are growing food we can preserve, and we are brewing our own beer.   It feels good to push away from our economic system that is based on money—to acquire our basic needs from soil and work, and to rely on neighbours and be able to return the favour.  

It is odd that I feel more secure being on a pay-roll rather than working directly for my own food and shelter.  But it is a bold, and perhaps false, assumption to say that our economic system is more stable or secure than the weather and agreements made with people. 

Don’t get me wrong, our goal is not to be self-sufficient or stop using money; we aim to have an economically profitable business so we can expand the business, put savings away, and go on adventures.  But it is nice to be able to “stick it to the man” a bit, and feel more connected to the people and place we live with and depend upon.   

No Parking Fire Lane

OK, birthed out of our cumulative experience of unemployment, I/we have created a short film. This film explicitly brings to bear our previous musings on both censorship and meaninglessness. Censorship in that it contains explicit language, such that it definitively would not make it through the fearsome church filter. If you are offended by the word F#%k, please do not watch this video unless you desire to be offended. Please note that the word is not directed at the audience but rather shared with the audience as an evaluation of the meaninglessness of the monotony and repetition of life. While in the film this is depicted in the form of unemployment, it is my definitive experience that employment can be both just as monotonous, repetitious, and meaningless. I think that it is not too much of a stretch to consider this film a modern paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 1:2. It has been an interesting and worthwhile process to step into the void of unemployment and not find myself scooped up into the safety of employment immediately. According to Ernie Zelinski (The Joy of Not Working, 2003) employment often provides, by default, three things that we crave as humans: structure, purpose, and community. I think this is an accurate assessment and I would like to add that our identity is directly related to two of those three and perhaps not entirely disconnected from the third. It can be easy for people either unemployed or retired to lose track of their identity because without their job, which society reinforces defines you, one can lose self identity entirely. It has therefore been crucial in our journey of self discovery and reassertion of identity to build structure, purpose, and a sense of community into our lives outside of work and beyond school. I think that I have learned the importance of having one's identity rooted in something larger and more stable than employment.

The title "No Parking Fire Lane" makes reference to both the sign in the hallway as well as a reference to the socially unacceptable nature of unemployment. While on the one hand we are plugged into the machine with dreams and promises of "retirement" a carefree time of leisure "later". On the other hand, those who are unemployed are often berated with accusations of laziness and forced to struggle with issues of self worth along with the obvious financial challenges. Part of the challenge in the midst of this is that we evaluate everything in dollars and so, without income, it is easy to internalize the idea that one's time is worthless. In a job one is paid in some fashion for one's time, in school one pays large sums to spend time learning. In both cases time is valued highly. However, for the unemployed or retired, time becomes socially meaningless because it is no longer evaluated financially. Minutes, hours, days blend together. Time can be measured in books, cups of coffee, or Farmville crops harvested, resumes sent, or cover letters written...

This film is a comment on life and gives voice to a particular perspective. It should not be interpreted as an absolute perceptive or as Silas's perspective, rather it is a piece of art attempting to make social comment based on a single interpretation of a certain experience.

Remember?

Does anyone remember myspace? I think a few bands still use it right? or xanga? my first blog was on xanga here. I wrote this:
"Look at us flaunting our lives, our problems and triumphs. Displaying our lives and thoughts for all to see. Things that were once sacred and kept in a diary under lock and key are now published worldwide for everyone to read. And we look and we read in glib fascination of total strangers daily lives. We watch reality tv and read random blogs. Watching, reading.....the unknown listener. Is it that we long for community but can't quite commit? Is some how the internet deemed safer than our neighbourhoods where we pass those who live around us without a word. Is it that its convenient?... I can have friends and interact with them when I want to, and disappear without explanation or trace when I don't. I don't have to worry about schedules, or time zones, or distance. I can scream profanities and blasphemy and complain about everything at all while still remaining in the beautiful safety of anonymity - free from responsibility or consequences from the things I say, free from being confronted by real people and their emotions, which I might hurt. Instead, everything and everyone is kept that beautiful arms length away on the flickery screen. We are all exhibitionists and voyeurs." - 2006

Do you remeber MSN? When we used to actually talk to each other instead of just creep pictures and profiles. Do you remember ICQ? and the question a/s/l? asked often as you talked to strangers?

I think back to 2006 and its difficult if not impossible to measure progress in my life beyond the diploma. I don't think I am smarter or nicer. Maybe I am a little bit more mellow... or maybe not. I am married, which is complicated. I am closer to death but seem no closer to a career. I somehow have stalled and am stuck in ambiguity and so like in 2006 (clearly I haven't changed much) I am trying to process out loud on a blog. Is progress a myth? and how do we measure it? I may be older, more knowledgeable, more experienced, more mellow and more married, but I am still working for free. I wouldn't mind working for free if grocery bills and rent and tuition didn't exist... How do I escape money? Why is my existence worth nothing? I can't even be a surrogate mother! and you have to be over 6 feet to donate sperm! F*#&%!