1 April 2024, Day 661
Happy Spring 🌷 & Autumn 🍁!
Hi! Today feels like a day to share thoughts & goings-ons since I last wrote on 2 February.
It was Ground Hog Day, IMBOLC, that day – a celebrated prediction of how long our winter will prevail.
In the past two weeks, I’ve turned off the heat at the flat & opened windows & door to invite in afternoon sun & warmer breezes. That said, early one of those recent mornings, I watched two small black birds gingerly stepping on the ice crystals which had formed on a metal ledge surrounding a walkway outdoors. Overnight last night again, it snowed as it has been doing regularly, often not predicted by my wholly unreliable weather app. 🥳
Buds are newly-forming on bushes & trees here, there, almost everywhere. Remembering how many changes of season over the 34 years I lived here in The Rockies while I was anticipating either planting or harvesting gardens, I know well that another freezing snow or two can surprise everyone for several weeks yet to come.
I lived in Wyoming for 8 years & grew a magnificent garden then. Essentially, it gestated & germinated either in the 2 months of growing during summer, &/or over the winter & spring covered by several inches of mulch to protect it from the many inches of snow & very cold temperatures. Nature is so amazing that way. The vegetables & flowers produced were so beautiful & bountiful, I ended up walking several neighbourhoods almost begging people to accept bushels of tomatoes, zucchinis or corn & bouquets of irises & other blossoms.
Not having a garden space here in Colorado, I won’t be doing that this Spring.. Will you be gardening (Northern Hemisphere) or harvesting/preserving (Southern Hemisphere)? I’d love to hear about your adventures & activities in this way, if you feel like writing & sharing with me in this way.
In RTC #21, I mentioned an experience of working here in Carbondale & of being released from that work after a short few days. Since then, I have danced with a few possibilities for new employment. Two, closely enough to literally feel the pulse of potential employers & the third (because it’s self-employment) closely enough to select a dance floor & the tango so far, without yet actually getting out there & performing.
One ‘job’ possibility was making a high-end confectionary & learning about the hand-made ‘sweets trade’. I visited & met the current chocolatier to learn a bit about what is required to develop this skill. It would have been a day or two now & again at the beginning, which sounded ideal! After some consideration, we mutually acknowledged that present circumstances weren’t ideal for them to undertake that arrangement at this time. Must admit, I was mildly disappointed as I loved being in ‘the chocolate factory kitchen’ with special equipment & lovely products & then emerging smelling absolutely delectable after only 20-30 minutes!
Another still viable employment possibility is work at a grocery store very near to where I am living. I’ve often worked with foods – on farms, in farmers’ markets, a food co-op. During Covid, when in California, I was eager to work at a nearby grocery store & carefully considered it from every angle. Being in ‘the soup’ of the pandemic is what eventually dissuaded me from doing that. One key factor was that I would’ve had to wear a mask while working hours at a time. In 2003, I had that experience for 9 full months during SARS, in Hong Kong. I knew how uncomfortable & difficult that is from a ‘normal breathing’ standpoint to be willing to do that again.
Here, working at a local grocery store would (I think) be fun for me. A significant percentage of the staff are native Spanish speakers. Were I speaking Spanish on a daily basis, after 3 months, I’d likely be close to being fluent again. When I graduated from university in 1975, I was fluent. After that, I only spoke Spanish for 3 weeks when in Spain in the 90’s. So, I’m ‘rusty’, to say the least.
Am not daunted by re-learning it. In fact, I am excited by the possibility!
Being someone who listens & pays attention to synchronicities as one of many factors while considering a significant change in life, I have noted that there are several things suggesting that a job at this grocery store might not work out very well for me, in fact. One is that I spent over an hour on-line filling out the application only to have it disappear when I clicked the final button that said ‘Click Here’. I contacted the local manager of the store to ask if the system might have stored a draft & if so, whether it would be retrievable or not.
He kindly offered to check on that possibility. He, then, didn’t revert to me in the timeframe he’d suggested. I waited another 2 days & then went into the store again. He wasn’t on duty that day, & I had a chance to talk with his boss who told me to call after the weekend to speak to the person who is their regional hiring manager. She was scheduled to be in the store in person then & he was encouraging me saying that this would be the way to most directly get the ball rolling.
I called, as invited, & encountered one of the most unpleasant, least-welcoming, bordering-on-being-rude person I have had the misfortune to speak with in a very loooooong time. I acknowledge that this makes me a very lucky person & I do feel fortunate that this is a true statement – meaning I generally, relatively-pleasantly interact with most people.
Upshot of that conversation: bad taste in my mouth generally with a terse command (this word used deliberately) from hiring lady to ‘Re-do the application & wait for notice of an interview‘. No, she had NOT checked to see if my application had, indeed, been saved by the on-line system – as requested of her a week prior by the local boss at our local store.
I was aware of & compassionate to the possibility that she was stressed & overwhelmed with things that had nothing to do with me before she answered my phone call & request for help.
I have shopped as a customer in this store for over 6 months now. Every time I have been there, I have been very aware of & observant, interested in how the staff seem to function & feel.
Two days after my conversation with the hiring manager, I returned to sit in the in-store Starbucks from which it is possible to observe a large, lively area of the grocery store.
I carefully watched & felt into the atmosphere of the store with a keen eye & heart as to whether I would literally enjoy earning minimum wage ($17.00/hour) here enough to continue on this hiring pathway.
Later, after seriously pondering this, I was going through a check-out lane at the store. While waiting in line, I overheard two cashiers complaining (in Spanish) how they’d each asked for a ‘toilet & lunch break’ 30 minutes prior & neither had been ‘relieved’ yet for that.
That night, I wrote to my cousin who has worked in the grocery business for a very long time. His Father, my uncle had owned several & I was aware of that as we cousins spent time together during summers at their home.
My interest in grocery stores, food co-ops, gardening, food preparation & safety, nutrition, soils, permaculture, reforestation, & & & – all things to do with the whole cycle of food for humans & other species on Earth – are, & for a very long time have been, very real top-of-mind interests for me. It all feels fundamental, continually motivating me to learn & pay close attention.
Whether this passion & curiosity is sufficient to take me back into the actual process of applying for this grocery store possibility, I don’t yet know. Me generating a decent revenue / income must start soon for practical reasons. I will know a grocery option is a possibility if/when I apply again on-line.
Watch this space. 😀 And, now for something actually happening .. 🎉
I have recently re-launched (after 3.5 decades of providing it in Asia) my love-services for organising, clearning*, time, space & motion optimisation to people, businesses & others. *Clearning is a term I use for cleaning & clearing.
I do this in-person & on-line. Anyone genuinely ready to streamline, increase productivity, optimise processes, create atmospheres for living & working which are beautiful, functional, supportive, clean, enjoyable & efficient is my ideal client!
If you are (and know of others) keen to optimise your own environments, processes or other aspects of how you organise, this may interest you. I love this work. It makes things easier, more pleasant & enjoyable in very immediately practical & sustainable ways.
I hadn’t planned to announce this in this RTC & then realised that it’s one way I can tell you what I am currently up to & demonstrate how sincerely I appreciate your support & interest in what I am doing.
Happily, if & when you’d like to do this sort of thing with my help, I’d like to offer you (at the risk of sounding corny here), a RoadTrip Chronicle Special deal.
Interested? Please email me on SweetEasewithDiane@gmail.com & let me know what you are interested to do with your own spaces, places & processes! And we’ll discuss the RTCS Deal then! 😀
On another topic altogether .. comedy.
Sometime last year (I think I mentioned this previously in a RTC), I was inspired by the thought of learning how to do good stand-up comedy. Being in Maine for the winter then, I found doing research by watching on-line comedians & shows was a great way to begin paying close attention.
Attention to what? To what I personally find humorous, funny, entertaining. Also to what I don’t find to be any, or all, of those things.
Learning about comedians’ career paths as well as how hard & long most well-known comedians worked to gain a foothold in the industry was intriguing. Wow. This is not a career for lazy or work-adverse souls who think they might be funny enough to ‘easily’ entertain audiences.
In the months after a winter of comedy, I traveled. That is, until autumn 2023, when I broke my wrist & began living unexpectedly here in Carbondale, Colorado .. I didn’t do additional research on humour, comedy & comedians during that stretch of months, until last week.
I have recently remembered that the concepts of humour and human nature, especially cross-cultural humour (if there is such a thing) have been interests of mine since my early 20’s. In fact, I considered entering a Master’s programme in university in order to formally research & learn about those things.
So, the interest continues and is building. I just very recently revisited one of the more ’successful’ comedians in the USA – George Carlin.
I recall that, when I was younger, I found it difficult to appreciate him. Why? Mostly because his language was punctuated with curse words which I didn’t mind hearing now & again, yet found too intense for my own likings when uttered so liberally by Carlin in his routines. Also, I found his delivery of his perspectives to be, or at least I felt the energy to be, ‘angry’. Much too angry for me to find hearing his thoughts & ideas to be fun.
Watching on-line videos of his shows & interviews from the 80’s-90’s now, I see & experience them very differently, which is mildly surprising. The impact of the cursing has significantly lessened for me. I now perceive a strategy for what he intended by ‘cursing’ as, when & how he did.
I recently watched his 1992 HBO On-Broadway show: Jammin’ in New York. I was inspired as I watched how he seamlessly moved from joke to joke, provocative topic to provocative topic, peppered his intelligent delivery with the words he’s famous for uttering while performing; & addressed myriad social & political issues we are facing today, in the USA & worldwide.
His used, in my experience of it, an incredibly angry tone of voice as he delivered many of his insights & ideas. Then today, I watched a 2007 interview of Carlin. In it, he explained the ‘anger’.
He said:
‘ I root against the species. (My note: species, here, meaning humanity).
I think that this is a species given great gifts and great potential and then squandered them. This species shows poor ways of organising itself socially and politically.
I think it took a wrong turn in buying the okey-dokey that the spiritual leaders gave the high priests. We turned it over to the high priests and the traders. Commerce and religion have spoiled the potential of this species.
In this country it is writ large and this country is the leader in the decay of the soul, if you will.
Anger implies that you have a stake in the outcome. And I don’t really care what happens to this country.
The anger is a heightened kind of intensified theatrical anger that is a reflection of the disappointment and disillusionment and being let down by my species.
You know it, we had such great possibilities and they are not being realised.
The anger is a frustration, it’s a let-down . That’s just a taste of what eats around the edges for me. ‘
I had a flash of insight when I listened to & wrote down these sentences to reflect on later. That insight is how, until today, I didn’t understand why the angriest people I have known & dearly loved might have felt angry. I KNOW they were (maybe still are) angry about mis-use or abuse of the things that they love. I also know that humanity is not at the top of their ‘love’ lists. Even though they found/find humanity wanting in most regards, perhaps it was the frustration, let-down, disappointment, disillusionment that led to judgements which was what I didn’t, couldn’t understand at the time I was with them.
For that not-understanding, I am genuinely sorry. I couldn’t understand what I didn’t feel myself. I love humanity. And, even though I agree with what Carlin says about us as a ‘species’ & about our failings, I am not able, or willing, to intellectually distance myself from being this species enough not to have a stake in the outcome of humanity. (Combining 2 of his points here.)
That said, I still offer my RoadTrip calling cards when I meet people. Just did that on Friday. I am genuinely thrilled when I meet someone who honestly does care enough about something to share feelings & ideas.
I have listed these in past RTCs. Thanks if you’ve sent your thoughts to me. And, if you feel like sharing thoughts about these questions with me at any time, please send your thoughts to me at: dswilcox@netvigator.com.
#1. What do you cherish about this country?
(If not in or about USA, use ‘X’ Country, The World, Humanity, Other)
#2a. What 3 things would you like to change ?
(USA, “X” country, world, humanity – reference your #1 answer)
(*USA, ‘X’ country, world, humanity – use your answer to #1)
#3. Who do you think can make this happen?
(Use your answers to #2a & b)
#4. What would you like your role to be in this?
(Referencing your answers above)
#5: Anything else you’d like to share?
I wish you everything good & wholesome in life, for you & your BeLoveds, for your neighbours, your communities, others you know & care for/about.
This mountain in this part of The Rockies, ‘Wemagooah’ is sacred to the Ute Indians (The Nuche, in Ute language – meaning ‘mountain people’). What a beautiful sight to see at 10:30 this morning.
Sharing her with love ❤️ & appreciation for You & for Life 🙏🏽. Diane 🌹