A confession

I am a work alcoholic. I thought I was cured but apparently it is a lifelong condition that can only be treated and slightly controlled. It never completely goes away.  Throughout much of my later work years I typically worked fifty hours or more at the office, I frequently took work home and for virtually all of my work life I was on call. Not that I got a lot of calls at home that required me to go into to work on the weekends, but the awareness that every time the telephone rang it could be work was tiresome and draining. There was a time in my life that I think I held my breath when the phone rang, afraid it would be for me while at the same time enjoying that brief surge of adrenaline.  However unlike perhaps more traditional work alcoholics I did manage to spread out my "disease" across both my home life and work life. I had, on my desk at work, a constantly updated to-do list; I had the same sort of list at home. In both places I could never relax until everything was crossed off of that list. That virtually never happened.  There were weeks and weeks when it seemed as if for everything that I crossed off the top of the list, two things got added to the bottom.

When I stopped working full time, I thought it would get better. In fact for awhile it did. I made a conscious effort to relax and to just do nothing. It was difficult but it did feel good. But slowly the addiction to keep busy crept back into my life. I didn't realize it at first. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do and it was fun (which in hindsight is exactly the same excuse I used throughout my work life). Going to school was hard work but it was incredibly rewarding. I have told countless classes that the trick of getting through school is not how smart you are but rather how well you manage your time. I managed mine by keeping to a rigorous schedule; by using lists to manage my time.

Nothing has changed. This past semester was a very busy one for me in terms of teaching load (I had six classes). It was also somewhat chaotic because five of those classes were different subjects and two of the subjects were brand new to me. It was a fair amount of work. To get through the term I really did need to be organized. At home I also had things that I needed to do (perhaps I need to start replacing "needed" with "wanted"). I had purchased eight or nine fleeces in the late spring of last year and was determined to get them all processed by the end of this semester. No particular reason why - I just set that goal.

Now that I am almost finished all of my weaving projects I am starting to get panicky that I won't have anything to do; I am starting to creating impossible schedules that mean I will be very busy. For example I have decided to rent a stall at the local Farmer's Market to sell some of my weaving. I made that decision because I have too much weaving around the house. I am running out of places to store it. But if I do sell stuff at the market then I will need to make more so I have lots for the Christmas sales. Which means that I will have to buy more wool and then process it and then....... It will never end.

I wake up most morning early. By 6:30 I am up and ready for the day. I have done the list of things to do, compared it with the master list on the fridge and started working. This is silly. I need to slow down. I am retired.

Perhaps my trip this summer is exactly what I need to slow down. One of the most exciting things and perhaps the scariest things about hitchhiking is that I have no control over whether or not I get a ride. It is hard to be a control freak or a work alcoholic when you have no power, no job and all of your current possessions are on your back. Perhaps just confessing that I have a condition is the first step to dealing with it.

Clouds on my Table

I have spent bits and pieces of the past few days washing my last fleece. It is a beautiful gray fleece (which means that there are parts that are almost white, some a soft silver and some black). Once it is washed and then dried, I then need to card it (get it ready for spinning). Because it is not all one colour, I need to figure out how to blend the various shades of gray so that when it is woven - the rug will look interesting and hopefully attractive.

 

This process of blending is not a science. I never know how it will look until the rug is off the loom.   It is also a very messy process. For days on end I have wool scattered throughout my apartment drying or being sorted on every flat surface available.  Most nights I need to clean off the bed before I can get into it and the dining room table is often too full of wool to sit at.

Wet towels are draped across the radiators to dry and on my kitchen counter is the drum carder. Throughout the space, dust bunnies float across the floor.  There is wool everywhere including occasional a stray hair in my food. There are times when I despair of ever having a clean house again.

I was sitting on the couch eating lunch when I looked across the room  to my dining room table. In between two piles of wool was my Christmas Cactus. It looked to me as if there was a tree poking its top branches through the clouds.

It made me smile and then I realized that I didn't really mind the mess at all.

 

What do you wear?

I am not sure if I am angry, irritated, disappointed, pissed off or just ashamed of my fellow citizens.

For the past few days every news cast on TV has been flooded with horrific pictures of the textile factory's collapse in Bangladesh. We get to see over and over again people being carried out of the collapsed structure and their families crying at the side of the road.  Attached to those pictures are others showing the people of Bangladesh protesting in the streets - demanding better and safer working conditions. However, as appalling as these images are, what I find more upsetting are the discussions that are being attached to the lead story.

Every newscast seems to have a segment showing Canadian shoppers figuratively wringing their hands and suggesting that they didn't know that the people who made their clothes worked in such terrible conditions; that somehow the clothing they bought was made in safe and perhaps even enjoyable working conditions by people who had a choice about where they worked; that the factories that they worked in were regulated and inspected by highly competent public officials. One wonders how they could believed that?

The final piece of this news item is usually a representative from some clothing conglomerate (the Gap for example owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic (CBC News)) explaining that they are working on the problem. The spokesperson always insist that the various textile contractors in Bangladesh or other such countries are expected to follow safety rules etc. Again according to the CBC there is some doubt as to how hard they are working on the problem or how serious they are about demanding that safer working conditions exist in the factories that produce our clothing.

It is as if this is a new story; that we are just finding out this week that there are people who are working for a pittance in more than horrendous conditions for long hours so that our need to be fashionable is satisfied. Our surprise at these facts is more than a little bit strange given that on a regular basis for at least the past 10-15 years there has been public discussion as to the problem. According to Reuters, not counting the most recent disaster, in the past six years there have been 700 deaths reported in Bangladesh alone that were directly caused because of fire or poorly constructed/maintained buildings. A quick search via Google will find similar statistics from other countries. Anyone who could read knew what was happening in at least some detail;  anyone who watched the news on occasion would have got at least a glimmering of how and where their clothes were made. Certainly I, for at least the past seven years, have discussed the issue in one form or another in many of my classes.

Some people justify the existence of these factories by either saying that the people are so much better off since the factories came to their cities in at least they now have jobs; that no one forces them to work there for low wages. The second argument is that the countries are better off now that there is  western money coming into their countries. And that is the individual country's responsibility to create and enforce appropriate working conditions. Both of these rationalizations  imply that there is a choice. There is not.

There are no other jobs for the individuals to go to, and if there were - the working conditions would be virtually identical. There is no one for them to complain to. The workers have zero protection. There is quite simply not the infrastructure to provide such help. It is true that countries could increase the building standards and demand that factories treat their employees as if they had some value as humans, but doing so would increase the cost of operation for the factories. The western buyers would not accept paying more. They would just negotiate the contract with another factory/country that did not have those standards. The various political forces in each country have unfortunately been convinced that they need what little revenue the textile business earns. They can't afford to lose that revenue.

The terribleness of the "incident" in  Bangladesh will make the news for another few days and then will be replaced by something else.  We in the west will continue, in our usual fashion, to wail at the injustices of someone else's decisions and as always, refuse to accept responsibility for our own. The majority of our clothing that we buy will be made in some other country by men and women who lack the most basic rights of safe working conditions. Rights that we have because of strong unions and a strong economy ¹. And the next time something similar happens - another building collapses, or catches fire or there is a chemical spill that maims people and it will, we will do the right thing and complain- then once again say that we didn't know.

One has to wonder if this moral and perhaps almost intentional ignorance is because we are not very bright, because we are greedy ,or because we just don't care. I don't know which of the three options scares me the most.

question... how many pants or shirt/blouses do you need?

¹if you doubt the connection between a strong economy and strong unions - look at what is happening to unions and our present dysfunctional  economic system. The tighter times get (according to those are making less) the more unions are under pressure to be less active - less demanding.