[860] Built To Last

I woke up today with a lot of energy. For the last week (indeed about the last 3 months) I've been physically active in the form of an array of “dirty jobs.” I've deconstructed sheds, moved bricks, and cleaned up an array of gross and heavy things from weed-laden and not-the-best-smelling areas. I've turned “rather Black” as an associate put it from my time in the sun. My cardio has improved. My arms are bigger. My pants are slipping. I'm getting marks and callouses less as a result of my picking, and more from scrapes from brush, wood, or bugs.

I've never been a morning person. I'm groggy, stiff, often rushing to piece together the clothes or food I didn't set up the night before. I remember running for the bus as a child after waking up late and then feeling like I needed to puke (indeed doing so a few times) my morning coffee or Pop Tart. I still don't consider myself a morning person, but in having things I look forward to or that require a certain kind of energy, I regularly wake up by 8am or earlier, not dragging myself out of bed, but ready to go. I fall asleep shortly after I go to bed without feeling like I'm “missing something” that should keep me awake.

I used to be annoyed by this. While it may be new that I have a meaningful amount of labor that might be expected of me each day, the energetic feeling from exercising is not. I've had bouts of hitting the gym, feeling good, and then been left with nowhere to put the energy. I'd get amped-up to come home, find no one available or willing to hang out. They didn't want to work out with me. They weren't interested in helping me experiment or play with whatever was going on at the time. I was perhaps too broke or uninterested in stepping up creative ways to exploit the energy. So I'd read and destroy my mood, or settle back into TV or noodling on an instrument.

“Holistic” has become one of my favorite words. To have a deep appreciation for a broad picture is often an exercise in futility or irony. We celebrate when someone can achieve higher levels of specificity in their education or craftsmanship. To be an “everythingist” is to look kind of foolish or like a lack of focus and direction. In spite of this, a holistic impression of your place in life is vitally important. You are you in every moment, at work, in your community, and in history. There's as much of a “work/life balance” as there is a “personal/interpersonal” one or “money/happiness” one. As my balance seems to come into focus, I think it's worth describing how and why it feels that way.

In this moment, I have a job that keeps me physically active. It's with an organization that is concerned about conservation, health, and revitalizing a small-town that is rife with all of the problems you'd associate with a bygone era of middle-class exceptionalism. I'm getting paid $30 an hour as an independent contractor. I'm willing and able to remain within their budget as this job hopefully bolsters my available tools and clout for the ongoing needs that will be associated with developing this trail. I can work when I want, and I want to work “now,” like I usually do, and the contacts I make could influence my access to heavy machinery and decades of knowledge related to farming that can translate to the land.

It's still rough work, and I'd prefer help or to be delegating more than navigating wasps and sweating. But it feels like a genuine investment and opportunity. It's a short-term gig with hopefully long-term relationships. That's what work should be. There should be manageable bits where each available skill can contribute to an overall goal that benefits all parties. You should be enabled proportionately to what you're bringing to the table, but if that's an imperfect calculation, the effect and respect you have on or for each other should remain stable. In an ideal situation, that happens with open communication, honest exchanges, and achievable measurable benchmarks.

In less ideal circumstances, you need to claw these standards out of the block of whatever has been put in front of you. Practically, you're doing this regardless of your best will, intention, or beliefs in the parties involved. Create the contract. Insist on reiterating your standards. Continue to demonstrate what you're about and how you work so it isn't lost in the fray of disappointments, miscommunications, or outright lies and exploitation.

I see something of an endless parallel. Whether you're in child welfare, or tearing down a shed, you can do it right, or you can waste a lot of effort pretending otherwise. Whether you're conducting your life along a set of prescribed beliefs, or finding a hodgepodge of examples to serve conflicting selfish narratives, the task is the same. Are you asking if you're able to make an honest evaluation of your circumstances? Are you able to contribute meaningfully? Have you worked out definitions for success? Do you even feel good?

The more I experience my life as a fluid transition between things that meaningfully contribute to the different areas I'm aware of, the more fulfilling and worth it it seems to be awake and aware. The probabilistic chain of life events takes on a significance that is no longer theoretical guesswork or series of “hopes.” I don't get the job without the girlfriend who also doesn't get her job without an earnest opportunity and pursuit of her areas of expertise and interest. We don't have plans for a garden without the land, that didn't come without the savings, which didn't start without the ethic of ownership and cost reduction. I don't advocate for my hourly rate without eschewing culturally-imposed guilt and a deep desire for the ongoing narrative verses opportunistic cash-grab.

I wasn't compelled to think in those terms without a persistent reckoning with how miserable the “regular” expectations at work or school sat with me, and how dishonest people seemed to be in relaying their satisfaction of their own life. You have to be the progenitor of every important detail missing from the pictures you pose for. I currently need to see someone putting fliers out to a community I feel is underserved, someone sweaty and sneezing as he tears down derelict structures, and someone sitting pretty in and on what he owns and the ongoing work it will take to develop.

I'm still an asshole. I still have every worst thought and written sentiment. I'm still prone to levels of antagonism, defiance, or obscenity that seem to make me very small and petty. But I'm willing to cede to the conditions that make those behaviors harder to allow for. I feel less motivated to make “fun” of easy targets. I find it possible to distinguish when a personal grievance might interfere with my ability to advocate from a broader lens. I can take my time, not because there aren't a dozen things to do or that urgency isn't important, but because I can actually probe for and demonstrate what's needed in the moment to ensure one thing is done correctly in service to everything.

What that one thing is is different for everybody. It can't exist without the capacity for honest evaluation, and honest evaluation is severely hindered by the environments you are plugged into. It's hard to see what you can't speak truthfully about, and it's impossible to see what you refuse to imagine. I genuinely hope you are using your place in life to turn you out into the ongoing work that coincides with your best self. I don't really hope things, but the world will be better if the processes that have worked through me happen to you too. I don't “just feel better” about my life, I can demonstrate how the ongoing acts speak to the robustness of the system across layers.