perils of volunteering 2

After 25 jobs and 8 volunteering experiences (over a span of 30 years), I’m only just now starting to figure out what conditions I need to thrive.

What I haven’t been able to figure out is how to obtain those conditions.

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I’m in limbo at my latest volunteering spot. I went through training for a specific kind of thing that I did honestly think I would like. Then I observed 3 seasoned leaders doing that very thing. And only at that stage did I realize that there are certain logistics I don’t think I’ll be able to manage. But also, and more troublingly, what I hoped to get out of the entire process? Isn’t available, at all.

Yesterday, I was at the volunteering place as a last-minute substitution for someone who had to cancel. Someone asked me why I hadn’t taken the last step, and I started answering, truthfully (about the logistical problem). She looked at me like I’d grown another head — like what I was saying was completely unintelligible.

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The things I need from a job or volunteering experience seem to be antithetical to what everyone else needs or wants.

I cannot be happy if:

• Everyone (but me) has, more or less, exactly the same background.

If there’s no real diversity of any sort, everyone bonds over how similar they are. And, inevitably, I stick out like the lone freak. I’ve been part of a few online groups that I fit into, but face to face, it’s never happened. Yesterday, I was at my volunteering place, and 2 people who had never met bonded over living in the same general neighborhood, and eventually figured out they know each other’s families. I’m from the next county over, and no one but Spouse knows any of my relatives (not that knowing my relatives would be any comfort). In Philadelphia last week, people bonded over being teachers, but I was there because I was a writer. The one connection I made was with someone who recounted part of her harrowing childhood. And other than that, she and I had almost nothing in common — which, to me, is interesting, because I didn’t know what to expect. When everyone else seems to be following a script, I’m bored out of my gourd.

• The job itself is well-defined, and its borders are ironclad.

My very best skill is cross pollinating, so I have to have opportunities to talk to people from all over, interact with ideas from everywhere, and then implement what seems like it could work.

• I’m required to do things exactly the way someone else has already done them.

I have to have “wiggle room” so I can create some kind of innovative approach to the problems the job aims to solve.

• I’m not allowed to fail.

True creativity and innovation requires trying a lot of things, and most things don’t work, so failure is inevitable. I actually learn more from failures than I do from successes, but in a culture where failure derails your career, no one really learns anything except fear.

• I’m not valued for my unique talents.

I guess other people are fine with being just another anonymous worker in an immense ant colony — maybe that’s how they fulfill needing to feel like they’re part of something larger than themselves — but I need to feel I’m doing something that no one else can do. If, instead, it becomes clear that I’m interchangeable, I will sink into despair. When I leave that job or volunteering opportunity — and it’s only a matter of time before I will leave it — my self-confidence will be crushed, and I may be suicidal. It will take me months, if not years, to recover my equilibrium.

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After 30+ situations where I haven’t been valued, I’m running out of hope that things can work for me. Maybe I can’t fit anywhere.

Instead of being terrified by that idea, what if it’s an opportunity?

If I consider what I need from a positive direction, my list looks like this:

• People of widely (wildly?)-diverse backgrounds {pluralism}
• Ambiguous responsibilities {liminal spaces}
• I define, and then pursue, only the design problems I want to work on
• Failure is encouraged
• I’m recognized and appreciated for being uniquely valuable

I think this list actually describes my life right now, with a few judicious additions. That is, I also need:

• an aesthetically pleasing environment
• frequent opportunities for movement and/or physical activity
• time and space to lie fallow in between periods of inspiration and attempts
• just enough resources that I have to get creative in making things work

Plus one thing I definitely don’t have right now (besides Spouse):

Friends who encourage me to do what I need to do (not what “normal” people would, or would feel like they should, do). Friends who are interesting because they are unpredictable — who have cool ideas that I never would’ve thought of. Friends whose own lives are sources of inspiration. Friends who evolve.

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I won’t be looking for new places to volunteer anytime soon.

I need to rethink a bunch of things.

 

 

Philadelphia: snapshots

muddy rivers, hidden sloughs, sparkling seas

National Train Day, but I’ll miss the festivities

towers billow and gallop across the Schuylkill River

dewy rambling afoot over U Penn campus

The Sun while wind and rain and balloons (blue and white)

“carving out our stories” ~

quilted world map as mural, 15 feet high

concentration began not with coffee but orange juice

31 women in the dark, straining to hear hushed words of Chimimanda Adichie

second-guessing my choices after lunch conversation goes awry

dream of a potter, Her living works

“possible connection between courage and rage”

Brave Robin and shy rabbit

ambiguous Egyptian hieroglyph — gazelle? butterfly? angel?

“Pollen, the holy water of Native Americans…”

Southwestern pottery — black lightning and stars on red clay

“Hausaland renowned for its textiles since the 14th century”

catalog of Mediterranean fish, grey and brown and rust tesserae

iridescent curlicued Roman glass

spicy, spicier, and spiciest sandwiches ahead of me at Subway

white young blind Baltimorean woman and her Californian mother, going to Peabody

African-American father and son invoke Antman to change altitudinous lightbulbs

sun sets into clouds over Delaware Bay

what’s my story?

When I meet new people, and we go around the room introducing ourselves by “the things we do” (which for most people are their jobs), and I say, “I’m a poet and a blogger”, people are slightly interested, until it becomes clear that I’m not “making a living at blogging”, or indeed, making any money at it. In fact, when I say I do it (simply) because I enjoy it, people look puzzled, sometimes pitying. They change the subject as quickly as possible.

Every time this happens, I’m confused, and then confounded.

+++

Despite feeling certain since circa 2005 that I wanted to be a writer, I guess I was waiting for opportunities to fall out of the sky. I didn’t actually do anything.

In 2007, I had an undemanding part-time job that I sort of enjoyed, but was also wondering how I could make it more interesting. Spouse suggested that my employer should have a blog, and I should write the blog posts. I liked the idea of a blog, with caveats. I definitely didn’t want my first experience with a blog to be for a job, for money. I wanted to find out what I wanted to say, on my own terms. But I still didn’t write.

After I got fired from my last job, in 2009, I finally started this blog.

Before I began, I might have guessed that writing mostly about one person’s ordinary life wouldn’t be engaging enough to sustain 4 years’ worth of material. Instead, I have found that I have lots of interesting ideas. And I have interesting things to say about them. And they generate new ideas, that often take me to uncharted places.

I have learned more about myself and about how to function (better) in the world through blogging than I’ve learned from anything else, by orders of magnitude.

Even though I don’t have words for the great big meta-project my life seems to be now, it’s way more challenging intellectually, way more engaging spiritually, and certainly way more aesthetically enjoyable than paid employment ever was.

I can also dimly perceive possibilities that were literally unthinkable before.

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Is there any way to convey any of this to other people who currently dismiss me because I don’t have a job? I don’t know. I haven’t had any luck so far, but trying a different approach couldn’t hurt.

rain and revelry

It’s been a cool and rainy spring here, with temperatures rarely as high as the 60s and 70s. It rained all day today, and was chilly. But I’m grateful we did not get snow, as did my brother in Minnesota.

I have a solution to the problem with photographic software, but I’m not entirely happy with it. So I haven’t been taking a lot of pictures lately, nor have I uploaded anything to Flickr in the last 10 days. Annoying.

The technical conversation I was looking forward to two weeks ago didn’t turn out the way I expected, but good things may yet come of it.

Some part of me wanted to stay in the poetry meetup group, so I posted a question about whether there was any ‘wiggle room’ with the prompt, since 2 gloomy prompts in a row were not working for me. No one responded for two days. So then I quit the group. (I certainly don’t miss the drive to Arbutus.)

But! Very excited about this Saturday, which is simultaneously (1) my first writer’s retreat, and (2) my first visit to Philadelphia! The retreat — Many Women, Many Stories — is co-sponsored by the Philadelphia Writing Project and the A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO).

spring in the garden

On 4/21, I wrapped up this iteration of The Artist’s Way. I’ve continued with morning pages, usually every other day. It’s harder to remember artist dates, but maybe writing them on my calendar will keep them on my mind.

Now that I have a new first name that I like, I’ve been finding social events to attend. I had three last week.

Also last week, I had my last scheduled observation of a field trip. (I’m dragging my feet a bit on leading my own groups.)

The perennial plants in our balcony garden have sprouted new leaves. I’m not sure what they all are, but last week, the columbines started blooming. (Last year, when we bought the columbine plant, the flowering period had already ended.)

I started a second compost box. Then scrapped it because, like the first attempt, it seemed to have attracted ants. Compost attempt #3 is situated away from our apartment, on a pile of decomposing leaves, at the edge of a forested area.

I’d like to attract more pollinators to our balcony. Perhaps herbs?

Yesterday, Spouse and I visited our local plant nursery, and picked out 5 pots of flowering plants. (I’ll post photos once I figure out and fix the new glitches in my photo software.)

I’m getting ready for a solo trip to Philadelphia next month, for a one-day writing seminar.

Spouse and I are talking about a week’s vacation in June. A place we’ve been before, but would like to explore further.

Before my big trip in August, I’m starting to feel internal pressure to bring things I’ve written. (Except that I haven’t written anything that I want to bring.)

I haven’t dropped out of my poetry meetup, because part of me wants to stay in it. But the prompt is something that I have no desire to write about. This is the second prompt in a row that I don’t like. The next meeting is this-coming Sunday, and I haven’t written any poems since last month. Not sure yet if being part of the group is actively hindering my poetry, or not.

I’m experimenting with folding paper into sculptural shapes. Right now, playing with the paper — without any expectations — keeps me engaged with exploration.

rethinking energy

Yesterday I was thinking about honey. Honeybees ingest nectar and pollen, add their own metabolic processes, and extrude honey.

I remember reading someone who suggested we not think too hard about honey’s origins, because he compared honey directly to poop.

Thinking about that guy reminded me that apparently koala mothers feed actual poop to their babies. If I remember correctly, the food being predigested helps the babies make use of it. I wonder now if doing that also helps colonize the baby koala’s intestines with the right kinds of bacteria.

Consuming poop directly seems gross to us. But maybe that’s because human poop (and mammal poop generally) isn’t directly useful to us for anything. Our feces and urine generally require rather elaborate means of disposal: toilets, sewage systems, and wastewater treatment plants; or septic tanks and their fields. And yet we still have all sorts of problems when untreated sewage (say, from a large storm) flows directly into waterways that drinking water is drawn from. Runoff from farms and CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)  create similar issues, including fish kills, algal blooms, and the introduction of diseases to human populations.

What if we could transform mammal poop into energy?

• That would give us incentives to keep mammal poop out of waterways. Like rain barrels or composting bins, maybe each household could have some sort of holding tank for poop from its inhabitants, both humans and (mammal) pets.
• Wetlands worldwide would become a lot healthier if they didn’t have to filter the bodily wastes of 7 billion human beings, in addition to whatever organisms live in the wetlands.
• Scientists and engineers could study mammal poop, and maybe the rest of us would learn to appreciate it more. Innovative new applications could be developed.

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We would probably still have to rethink our conventional ideas about energy.

I read somewhere that (most, if not all) animals can be considered tubes: they take in food with a mouth, extract nutrients through digestion with (perhaps) a crop, stomach(s), and intestines, and expel what’s left over with a rectum/anus/cloaca.

Trees and other plants are not tubes. They don’t have mouths, they don’t have a digestive system like animals, and they don’t expel wastes like we animals do. Yet, the metabolic processes of plants produce sugars — energy — that feeds most of the planet, one way or another.

Why is it potentially gross if a honeybee extrudes honey from its rear end, but it’s not potentially gross that plants take in sunlight and create leaves, flowers, fruits, bark, etc., that we eat?

Human beings who believe in “human exceptionalism” [human beings are the “pinnacle of creation”; we’re more special than anybody else, etc.] often claim that human beings are conscious and self-aware, but nonhumans aren’t, so obviously human beings are better than nonhumans. I don’t agree with that assertion — that only human beings are conscious — but even if I did, nonhumans like honeybees, like plants, can do things with their bodies and minimal inputs from their physical environments, that we can’t even imagine doing. We need factories and laboratories and teams of scientists, engineers, technicians, workers, to accomplish  . . . a lot less. And our factories and laboratories produce biohazards and other toxic waste products that no other organism wants to, or can, eat. Stuff that, in some cases, will stay potently toxic for a million years. How do you look at all that, and still claim that human beings are better than everyone else?

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Environmentalists and others say we human beings have to find (or rediscover) ways to fit into our environments, rather than trying to dominate them. One way of doing that could be to produce waste products that are useful to other organisms.

But I think we also have to radically rethink how much energy we consume. We wouldn’t have a worldwide energy crisis if collectively we used a lot less energy.

There’s always something other people should be doing, to be more responsible, more sustainable. If only those people were smarter, or more responsible, not so greedy.

Three years ago, I developed a bunch of health problems that my doctors haven’t been able to figure out. I’ve experimented with all sorts of lifestyle changes, some of which do make me feel better, to some degree. But, so far, nothing gives me back the levels of energy I took for granted, pre-2010.

There are projects I want to do, that would require sustained and consecutive efforts I can’t currently make. If I ever got another job, it could not be anywhere near a 40-hour / 5 days per week job. Even making small trips requires carefully husbanding my energy and other internal resources.

Before 2010, I never thought about any of these issues. Because I didn’t need to. My body produced more than enough energy — without my conscious awareness of how that happened — so I just assumed that those processes would continue indefinitely. I squandered energy recklessly: I was greedy and wasteful. And then it ran out.

I have to do things differently now.

I can still do some things that I want to do. Which ones are important enough to deserve those outlays of energy?

1. Is the thing itself an experience I haven’t had? [I want to experience as many things as possible.]
2. If I have previously experienced this thing, did I enjoy it? Would I like to do it again?
3. Can I learn new things that are desirable to me by doing this thing?
4. Will doing this thing help me grow/evolve in directions that I’m currently drawn to?
5. If there are social aspects, will the other people involved converse with me, and value my contributions? [Or will they talk at me, and ignore or dismiss or harangue me about whatever I say?]

When I use this new filtering system to examine many activities I unthinkingly did in the past, I quickly discover that most of the activities I did not only depleted my energy, but probably poisoned the source.

There were so many things I did that I had never enjoyed, but were things that other people insisted that I should enjoy. So I kept doing them, hoping . . . by magic? . . . they would improve for me. They didn’t.

There were so many things I did that “helped me” learn how to hate myself more. How to feel even more like a freak, and an abomination. A monster.

There were so many things I did, with several distinct groups of people, where I was subjected to monologues or tirades. Or “debates”, but whatever I said was ruthlessly squelched, or just belittled. When I was actually interested in the subject matter, I showed that by asking questions. Which were ignored. Or they were answered at length, far beyond my interest. But the one thing in common all of these encounters had? No one ever asked me any questions. No one ever wanted to hear what I had to say. When I said it anyway [rarely, but it did happen], no one ever responded with interest.

These are the things I squandered 44 years of my energy on.

If I could have that energy back! I would be smarter. I would care about myself more. I would honor my own values.

But some things can’t be fixed. So here I am.

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These days, I’m learning to honor my unconscious processes. I’ve noticed the information they give me is much more robust, and of much better quality, than the sorts of things my conscious mind insists on.

I wasn’t much of a planner before, but I’ve pretty much stopped long-term planning all together. Things with me (can) change so quickly, that plans are just . . . more squandering of energy I can ill afford to lose.

I take each day as it comes, and make the best of whatever is possible within it. Some days, that’s a lot of resting. I spend a lot of time on our balcony, hanging out with plants. Watching birds, bees, wasps, spiders. I get a lot of good-quality thinking done, some days; other days, I’m just a sensing animal, at peace.

I continue to experience a steady stream of ideas for art projects. But now I have to edit at many stages of the process, so there are even fewer tangible results than before. Because I’m winnowing more ideas sooner, I find the ideas that persist to be more intriguing, more complex, more useful.

Reading uses a lot of brain energy (although comparatively little body energy), so I’ve been spending a lot of time reading. And because I’ve concentrated on finding books about my specific areas of interest, when I find a book on one of those topics, I’m probably a lot more well-informed about that topic than more-casual readers. So many books that start out very promising fall off the rails at some point. They are sharpening my critical thinking skills, and also, my appreciation of really-excellent substantive and developmental editing. I’m even more convinced than I was a year ago that I could make a real contribution as a substantive and developmental editor. I just need to figure out how to find a client or two.

It no longer makes any sense whatsoever to me to spend time with people whose company I don’t enjoy, and who clearly don’t enjoy spending time with me. Even if we are related. I want to weep with the waste of the years I spent trying to inspire my relatives to like me.

When I really deeply want something to happen, it’s still possible for it to happen. But when it does, I appreciate it 1001x more than I would have before. Because I can’t take it for granted anymore.

I can’t take anything for granted anymore. And that seems like a really good thing.

exploring gender diversity

For years and years, I thought my dreams were trying to tell me about my waking-life relationships with other people. When there was a character in my dream who looked like my father, I thought I was (potentially) learning something about my relationship with my actual father. This confused me, because characters in my dreams that looked like people I knew often acted very differently than I’d ever seen them do. For that matter, I acted very differently. And of course, dream situations themselves are often rather fantastical.

Some of my recurring dreams seemed to be flashbacks (from my PTSD), but often the situations were slightly different than had actually occurred. Still traumatic though. Those dreams were generally long and involved, and I remembered a great many details when I woke up.

Other dreams were equally long and involved, but filled with people I’d never met, doing things I’d never seen done . . . but wanted to! In fact, the people (and settings) in these sorts of dreams were people I would love to meet in waking life. I gradually realized that characters in the these kinds of dreams were just as recognizable as the characters in traumatic dreams. I named some of them, and tried to sketch out their personalities, whatever was distinctive about them.

Most of the characters in my dreams that are most memorable and that have occurred the most often are either male, or I don’t know what their gender is. My point of view character is probably an indeterminate gender the most often, occasionally female, or nonhuman (where gender isn’t relevant). Other characters are female.

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Jung says that women have an animus (male) and men have an anima (female), which often appear in their dreams. I tried to figure out which of my dream characters could be my animus, but there were way too many to choose from. Plus, most of my dream characters — and definitely the ones I really really liked — either didn’t have a gender, or were a gender I didn’t know how to categorize. A third gender, if you will. So where could these characters fit in Jung’s schema?

As it happens, I have always despised polarities, dichotomies, and dualities wherever I find them. For any schema to feel valid to me, there have to be at least 3 options, but preferably more. Complexity with its inherent tensions makes way more sense to me than simplicity (or, gods forbid, unity).

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When I was 10 or 12, I read something about how really smart kids were more likely to hold unconventional ideas about gender, both their own and that of other people. According to this study or whatever it was, really smart kids tended to not think they had to shoehorn themselves into gender stereotypes.

Reading that was reassuring, up to a point.

The thing is, for me on the inside (not social me), my gender seemed completely irrelevant to . . . well, everything. Which was good in a way, because I didn’t know what gender I was. But everyone around me did seem to know not only what they were, but what everyone else was. Everyone else was very sure. And there was some way they could tell, just by looking at you. Well, usually.

I don’t remember it happening all that often when I was a kid, but since I became an adult (and therefore, am dressing myself according to my own preferences), I am occasionally addressed by strangers as “Sir”. This has happened when I was wearing a skirt and jewelry. (Also when I was wearing pants.) I’ve spent years trying to puzzle out why it happens sometimes, but not other times. I’ve never actually tried to “pass” as male.

I feel like I’m a person first. Why does my gender matter?

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The usual kind of transgender person was raised as a girl, but feels they are a boy inside; or was raised as a boy, but feels they are a girl inside. I’ve read that trans women are way more feminine than cis women, and trans men are way more masculine than cis men (on average). All of these people, though, still seem to be part of a gender binary: a person must be male or female. No other choices.*

I think parts of me (in the internal family systems sense of ‘parts’) are female, and parts are male, but most of my parts are neither. Which means I can’t use “majority rules” to decide which of 2 allowed genders I am.

Beyond that, though, I hate hate hate models that simplify complexity so much that it’s completely unrecognizable. Having to pick one gender identity, for me, does that. I’m not one of anything.

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The coven I was part of when I was still a Pagan ascribed to “complementary” deities: the Lord and Lady. I couldn’t even bring myself to say the prayers because the whole idea was so oogy. (Although marginally better than the Catholicism I was raised with that only allowed a male deity.) As a female-appearing person, I was supposed to most-strongly identify with the Goddess, or some of her aspects, usually female. I had mixed success with that. Conventionally-masculine gods were no easier for me to identify with.

The gods I really liked the best were tricksters. Like Loki, who had been a genderbender.

I liked deities that were a Divine Child. Those were mostly identified as male, like Hermes, but to me, they seemed . . . something else. Something more like me (whatever that is).

I liked Medeine, the Lithuanian goddess of forests, because I experienced her as not exactly gendered. Again, like me.

But any deity that was very-definitely-one-gender (and only one gender), I felt like parts of me had to be lopped off, or at least denied, to fit with them. That was a price I wasn’t willing to pay.

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Everything I’ve read says that gender identity and sexual orientation are 2 totally-distinct phenomena. And I think I understand what they mean by that. But it’s not strictly true, at least for me. (And other people like me, if there are other people like me.)

“Homosexual” and “heterosexual”, as commonly used, assume a gender binary. And, as Hanne Blank pointed out, these terms characterize you not by what you are, but by what the people you love are. If you’re female and you love other females, if you’re male and love other males, you’re homosexual. If you’re female and love males, or vice versa, you’re heterosexual.

I can’t be completely certain if I’ve ever even met someone who is the same gender as me, so I can’t be homosexual. But if I’m a member of a third gender, how is Spouse my “opposite”? If I had a girlfriend, how would she be my “opposite”? So I guess I’m not heterosexual either. But then, what am I?

I’ve only fallen in love with and had sex with males. But I’ve had crushes on females. Does that make me bisexual? What if I met, and fell in love with, somebody who was a third gender — would that make me trisexual? What if it turns out there more than three genders? If I realized I only wanted to have sex with males, and people like me, is that bisexual? Or something else?

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This week, I’ve come out as nonbinary to two sets of people. The first set didn’t even blink. The second set had a lot of questions. And one person asked me why I wasn’t just a tomboy who grew up to be a slightly-weird woman.

If someone truly honestly thinks that a gender binary is the best description for human beings, I can see why, from their perspective, it makes more sense to shoehorn anomalous people into the binary, even when they massively don’t fit. Because otherwise they’d have to rethink their entire worldview, and who wants to do that if they don’t have to?

I have tried that route. It didn’t work.

How many anomalous people do we need before we can consider that maybe the gender binary doesn’t work?

I am something that includes girl, boy, and other. I can’t be the only one.

What if we could all just be ourselves, whoever that is, and leave gender out of it?

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*Complicating the picture are intersex people, whose genitalia are indeterminate, and so, at birth, may be arbitrarily assigned one or the other gender, but may actually be both, or think of themselves in some other way.