Sovereign Nations

First of all, it’s hot.  Crazy hot.  And it’s been hot for a long time and it’s not even August so it’ll continue to be hot for a long time to come.  Why, oh why, did we move to Baltimore during a record-breaking winter and remain through a ridiculous summer?  Oh, right - the sure thing.

For the most part, I like the sure thing.  I think a sure thing is a lovely planning tool.  It’s easy to make a budget when you know what kind of income you’re going to have.  Working for the census, I didn’t know how long the job would last (and I’ve already made it safely through two layoffs, with another set of pink-slips being handed out on Friday the 30th).  I didn’t know how much overtime would be allowed.  But I sure as hell did the math on the guaranteed 40 hours at $18.54 plus the health and wellness payout of $3.35 (for the first 40 hours, not on overtime).  And that money pays the bills.

There’s a problem with the sure thing.  It’s limited.  It’s sure, but it’s not going to result in fabulous unexpected gains.  It usually doesn’t even result in fabulous unexpected happiness.  It is what it is.  It’s sure.

James has long been a proponent of the gamble, the hope, the wish, the maybe.  If there’s a sure thing, it’s a trap.  And you know what?  He’s right.

Hawaii was hard on me.  It was hard on James, too, but he felt it more socially/interpersonally.  I felt it more as a contraction of options.  We had so few places to go, so few jobs for which we could apply.  Sure things were hard to come by, and every one we found spoke the same language of wait, wait, wait.  We were looking at a decade in Hawaii before we’d be in a financial position to leave.

That was unacceptable.  We’re leavers by nature.  Four months is our average comfort time, and we can sometimes stretch that by moving within a geographical area.  But there weren’t enough options to keep us in Hawaii for ten years.  Even at six months each, that would have required twenty marinas, and Hawaii doesn’t have that many!

There are more marinas in Arizona than Hawaii.  True story.

So the sure thing in Hawaii was the biggest bummer.  And because I couldn’t find a decent sure thing, we gave up a boat that was capable of taking us anywhere, any time, in comfort and safety and happiness.

Doggedly plugging away at debt, at the boat work, at our books…this is a good and needful thing.  But also needful is the opening up of opportunity.  I’m ready for leaps and bounds.

We have a friend (hi Jason!) who has a grandfabulous idea.  It’s an idea that needs the kinds of energy and skill that we have.  And it could very well represent a leap in our traveling lives.

It’s not a sure thing.  It’s a gamble.  And I’m in.  I’m throwing my time, energy, and expertise into the pot and watching the cards turn.  If I can make it come out right, it will.  If not, I will be richer for experience even if I’m poorer for some hours and attention I could have spent elsewhere.

So here goes.  I’m entering a new phase.  I will plug away and leap at the same time.  I will open myself up and budget myself simultaneously.  I will take on too much and make myself bigger so that I can handle it.

I will:

• Finish my book-in-progress and write the one that’s obsessing me right now.
• Bring our boat into condition to be more comfortable for the next winter than it was for the last.
• Maintain a connection with my body through exercise and other feel-good stuff.  Wink.
• Earn extra dribs and drabs through piecework editing.
• Explore the idea of being a hands-on sex coach.

And last but not least:

• Build a socially and environmentally sustainable company from the ground up and reap the benefits of an entirely virtual business structure.

Leaping and bounding toward so many kinds of happiness.  Keep your eyes open - who knows where we’ll be this time next year!

I’m reading philosophy.  Not something I’ve done a whole lot of since school, mostly because I’ve always found it more interesting and urgent when framed in a story.

For example, Sherri S Tepper is certainly a person who has a philosophy that rings throughout her books, and her characters argue this philosophy through their actions, their interactions with each other, and sometime overtly in written conversation.  Or John Barth and Salman Rushdie, who do the same things in more elegant, ornate ways, with less of a traditional storyline structure.

Now I’m planning on exploring basic life themes through the book I’m going to write.  I have a character who is warming painfully from the frostbite of guilt and, strange to say, I’m not terribly familiar with guilt.  I know shame better but don’t even have much sense of shame.  Forgiveness, redemption, retribution…I need to get to know these things in order to question them deeply.

On a fundamental level, I am fascinated by, and confused by, the kinds of negative emotion that can ruin a life without any outside force whatsoever.  I believe in personal responsibility.  I believe that one must act in accordance with one’s own personal ethics in order to be a person of integrity.  But when I fail to do so, my next belief is that I should learn and do better.  I have never acted so out of accord that I have carried a debt of guilt.

One of the concepts I’ve been reading about is that people have a right to be punished.  That only in punishing misbehavior can society help a person exorcise guilt.  That guilt is responsive to punishment and forgiveness, not to change or an intention to do better.

Is this true?  Capital T True or true in some limited way?  Only in fiction can I ask all the questions and have different characters resolve them in various ways.

Externalizing punishment - is that the point?  Making it overt and discrete, with a specific duration and an understood amount of pain?  In this way, can a person release their guilt?

Do they have to trust their jury?  Can one be punished improperly for the crime, given a leniency one does not agree is warranted and therefore not be released from guilt?

One of the twelves steps in AA involves contacting the people you’ve hurt.  This has to be about guilt - only guilt can be expiated by forgiveness or punishment.  Right?  Shame is yours until you are no longer the person who acted in a way to create the shame.  But then maybe it’s about proving to oneself that you have changed, that you’re not the same person and so deserve not to feel shame?

I’m all question, no answer right this minute.  But that seems like a promising place to be at the beginning of this book.  I know what she did, I know how she has responded to her actions up until the beginning of the book.  She never dreamed a thaw was possible and is in horrific pain - worse than the shock-cushioned pain of understanding what she’d done.  (No, I will not give any hints about what that act was.)  Now I get to ask, through her and the people around her, all the questions I’m fascinated by.

Is self-punishment valid or does one need to be sentenced by the affected parties?

Does forgiveness by others equal release from the burden of guilt?

Can one live and love separately from one’s experience of guilt?

Once irrevocable action has been taken, can any further action balance out or pay back the harm done?

There’s a few of my questions.  Answers?  We’ll see.

After all the happiness of getting out of the city, riding my bike to work…nice neighbors like these:

There are two major problems with this new marina.

I discovered the first one last weekend.  There’s a gate that is open only when the office is open.  Other times, we scan a card to open the gate.  It opens automatically when you drive up to it.  Can you catch the catch?  It doesn’t work when I’m on my bike.  James went to work on Sunday and I couldn’t get out of the marina!  I’m stuck in here again today, but I’m just working on the boat so it’s okay right now.  But please!  And they’re going to combine 1st and 2nd shift at work, so I’m going to have to switch to 6:30am-3pm.  How will I go to work when I can’t get out of the damn marina?!?

The second one introduced itself this morning.  I got up about 9am and made coffee.  The boat wasn’t moving much, but whatever.  By 10:30, the boat was heeling heavily.  They were wrong about how deep this slip is.  Want to see why this is a problem?

Sigh.  Here’s another view that shows how badly this sucks.

This head-shaving thing has turned into quite the big deal.  It seems that most people couldn’t really conceive of it before it happened, but now everyone is blown away.  But, aside from the general wows and whoas, I’ve been reminded that this is serious stuff.

One good example of the importance of these efforts:

It was unseasonably warm - in the 90’s.  Yep.  Of course, being unseasonable, it was also changeable.  We’re back to the 60’s, and we had some time in the 50’s.  Still warm compared to the Baltimore we arrived to, with the snow and near-zero wind chill.

While it was bitter cold out, I developed a relationship with my friendly local propane suppliers.  A couple of good people - the lady in the office and the guy who went out in all weather to fill my tanks for me.  The guy is a practiced bull-shitter, but really nice about it.  The lady is a bit taciturn and careful in measuring out her smiles.  I earned a few, a fact of which I am proud.

With the down-turn in temps, I needed to refill our propane tank for the heater.   Arriving at the supplier’s, I realized that they hadn’t seen me since the big shave-down.  I went in with a big smile and did the show-off thing I do so well.

The lady seemed quite affected by the whole story and was shaking her head as I left the office to see the tank-filler.  He and I joked around about baldies and hair growth (I have more hair than he does, even when shaved to a millimeter).

When I reentered the office, the lady was wiping tears from her face and had obviously told a coworker about my head-shaving.  I handed the ticket to her, with its propane totals written on the damp triplicate form.  Though she took it from me, her head shook from side to side.  She clutched it, wrinkling the paper where it was wet from the drizzle outside.

“You just get out of here,” she choked out.  “This one’s on me.”

Incredible insight was not required.  I wondered who she’d lost or watched through the torture of cancer “therapy”.  I asked, “Shall I put this through the website properly?  You can make the donation on behalf of someone if you like.”

“No,” she managed, head turned to the side as though dodging something.  “This is for you - to say thanks to you.”

I smiled at her, trying to offer sympathy, understanding, gratitude, delicacy, strength - heavy freight for a single moment of eye contact.

So after all the hoopla of attempting to get donations, having my head shaved on stage with six other women, and budgeting generous amounts of time to walk anywhere at work, due to the multiple conversations on the subject…it was a lady selling propane who rewarded me directly.

And I’m not talking about the free propane.

It’s less than 3 weeks until I go under the clippers!

I’m excited, not nervous at all.  That shows my privilege, of course.  I’m not losing my hair to cancer treatments.  I don’t have to deal with the sense of powerlessness along with the feeling of air on my scalp.  And of course, it’ll grow back.

I’m getting a lot of kick-back on this…it’s amazing to me how much.  I interviewed for a job and was told that it was terribly unprofessional to shave my head bald.  The owner of the sailing club I was (yes, was) working for said, “Parents won’t trust their children to the club,” and “You’ll have to wear hats at work.”  I’m more determined than ever to go through with this.

The other not-so-great area is in the fundraising.  I’ve gotten some very surprising donations and I’m excited about every bit of it.  But I’m way behind my goal and would need some hefty figures to reach it.  Or a lot of little ones.  Hey - you know the math - every little bit helps if everyone gives a little.  A little or a lot - either way I’ll be thrilled.

For a lot of people, times are hard and charity is last in line for financial priorities.  Most of my friends, however, have been struggling most of their lives.  It always seems like $20 is a significant amount of money.  It is, and yet I’m still asking for it.

If you’re not comfortable giving the organization your personal information, I get that.  I don’t like being on mailing lists either.  There’s an alternative - send me the money on paypal and I’ll pass it along.  I can use your name or I can put it in as anonymous, whichever you prefer.  If that sounds good, send it to me under the email address dena@svsapien.net.

I’ve never done anything like this before, and I won’t be doing anything like this again.  Asking for money isn’t a comfortable thing for me.  So if you have any thought like “I’ll contribute next time”…please do it now.

https://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/participantid/364043

I know, it doesn’t sound much like what the newspapers are saying, but I’ve always enjoyed bucking a trend.

We keep going through these cycles of stagnation and action, over and over again.  We race through the cycle compared to most people, because stagnation isn’t really an option for us.  There is a point in the cycle, however, that is stressful and exciting and irritating and labor-intensive, all at the same time.

We’re there.  Right now.  Or maybe one small step past that point.

I’m talking about the point where we’re resolved to settle some short-term questions and knuckle down for a while.  Where we’re open to opportunity and keeping our options open, but seeking the best path forward with an eye to following it.

Moving to Baltimore was a direct result of tearing ourselves out of a stagnant period - back from India and depressed about it, back on a boat and happy about it, working for West Marine and depressed about it.  The bottom line was unhappiness with Norfolk/Hampton, with the driving, with the bosses, with the expenses.  When the census applications showed signs of fruit, we did what it took to make it happen.

Now here we are.  My job pays pretty well.  We more-or-less like our new neighborhood, though the ubiquitous dog shit is a real irritant.

We moved onto the dock for Getaway Sailing and immediately got wrapped up in figuring out whether or not we’d be able to adopt the company and make ourselves happy there.  That answer was not slow in coming.  For financial reasons, for business-style reasons, the answer was no.  However…

Getaway was for sale and a new owner with an influx of energy and money would change everything.

Meanwhile back at the ranch…

Carefree, the boat club James had been dockmaster for in Hampton, has locations up here.  As a franchise, the various locations have individual owners and James had conversations coming from all directions.  He started juggling opportunities.  One owner dabbled in the idea of buying Getaway and having James run it.  Another took James on a tour of his locations and introduced him around the organization.  Wined and dined (or beered and dined, I guess), James kept an eye on the possibilities and the complicated geometry of which had the best combined experience of boss, boats, job, environment, etc, etc, etc…

And I was working on the books for Getaway.  And talking to parties interested in buying.  I imagined an Office Manager/Bookkeeper position that also did business development.  James imagined a Dockmaster position that ran the fleet and facilities with a good dose of storytelling and community-building.  But it wasn’t moving fast enough and the pressures to decide were getting stronger.

So James accepted a job in Edgewater, MD.  This job lacks opportunities for me and means an hour-long commute to the census building.  It’s well-supported with a great mechanic staff, plenty of dockhands, a dynamic boss…sounding good.  I could look for work in Annapolis and reduce my commute to a biking distance…maybe.  It’s a short-term irritant with some long-term potential.  However - it’s motor city…not a single sailboat in the club location.

This decision didn’t do it.  It didn’t settle in and become our new direction.  It felt temporary, conditional.  We discussed, again and again, what we would want, how we could be convinced to stay with Getaway.  We wondered, again and again, what kind of person the new owner would be, whether or not the interested party was going to move forward and buy.
To confound the issue just a bit more, I got “shortlisted” for Quality Inspector at the census job.  Suddenly, I’m looking at a couple dollars an hour more, plus the benefits that I’m not getting as a team lead.
Will Getaway sell?  Will we dedicate ourselves to resurrecting and succeeding with Getaway under its new owner?  Will I get the QI job?  Will James work for Carefree again?  Why do we feel in flux if we’re on a path to Edgewater?
So.  Last night, James and I were fifteen hours away from sailing.  We were going to move south, a six-hour adventure with a new set of photos to be taken, a new set of restaurants and grocery stores to explore, new people and work.  The taste of adventure was on my tongue.  On the other hand, once we arrived, we would be hours from good sailing - too far up the South River to reach the Bay on a casual evening sail.  Another summer of rarely sailing doesn’t sound so good.  We looked at one another and said it again - we were off for a new adventure.
Or were we?  Just before this moment, we had finally discussed possible employment with the very serious prospective buyer of the Getaway Sailing club.  He offered us both jobs but not at the pay we wanted.  We had to think.

A good-money job on a government contract.  A promotion and raise on that same contract.  A waterfront office job and inundation in the Baltimore boating community.

A dockmaster here, a dockmaster there.  A powerboat fleet, a sailboat fleet.  A rural or city environment.

If you’re reading this because you know me or because you know James, I’d like to know what you think we did.  Did we go with the sure-thing jobs?  Dive into the most accessible adventure and sail to Edgewater, dedicating ourselves to that version of the next year or so?

Well?

Here’s what we did.  We wrote a letter.  A pretty damn good one, if I do say so myself.  In no uncertain terms, we told the prospective buyer of Getaway Sailing what we were worth and what we wanted to do.  We told this poor man that we had to know before 9am this morning, Sunday morning, whether or not he was going to employ James.  He gets a little leeway on negotiating with me because I can give notice anytime.  But if he didn’t say what we wanted to hear, right now, we would sail off into the sunrise.  So call as soon as you get this.

When I called him to ask him to check his email, I went straight to voicemail.  When I looked at James after leaving the message, we shared a wide-eyed moment of floating hopes and expectations.  Would he get the email?  Would he agree to our terms?  What if he backs out of buying the business?  Can we put off a sure thing for a more exciting maybe?

Would we sail away or would we stay?

He called at 8:49pm.

We’re still in Canton.

I forgot to do a “we are here” post when we arrived in Baltimore, but here it is:

We are at the end of the small dock that has no boats shown.  The image was taken in 2007, and there are boats on the whole dock now.  I like it on this dock, though the red coloring on the floats gets on the boat…

One of the things I like about me (yes, it is going to be that kind of post) is that I get to stick to my principles and be pretty damn comfortable at the same time.

Because my first principle is flexibility.

I believe quite strongly that adapting to my situation is not just smart - it’s a necessity for happiness, safety, and, yes, comfort.

I bought an electric blanket.

Now, this might not seem to you a large thing, but I believe quite strongly that it is possible for me to live within my ability to create electricity. My boat has a wind generator (howling in these 45 knot gusts), two solar panels that are hooked up, and one that is not. Once I get the mount built for the third solar panel, I will be able to function in anything short of still gloom.

Or so I thought. Now I realize that there’s a new need in my life, and that need is for an electric blanket. It’s my own fault - I moved north in December, entered the Baltimore life in the middle of snow, and thought that we’d be able to stay warm by cuddling.

This morning, I woke up, sated with sleep, stretching my comfortable limbs and marveling at the fact that my hips didn’t ache. It was the electric blanket, for sure, because there was no portlight on my boat that wasn’t, literally, covered in a sheet of ice - on the inside. The sides of the trunkhouse were icy (and are still wet).

Last year, James and I returned from India on February 4th. We moved aboard our new boat a week later, and only a week after that, a cold snap hit. One night, we tried to go to bed and our sheets were frozen to the hull. That is not acceptable.

So, my belief in avoiding non-renewable energy whenever possible has bowed to my belief that pragmatic flexibility is first. Take care of now; plan for later.

Before another winter, I will have more natural sources of power available (at least that last solar panel). I will also have a method for distributing the heat created by my wonderful propane heater and a system for keeping spare tanks of propane full and at the ready.

I will adapt and always, always, I will head to a way, a place in my life, a road I can follow that will bring me into line with as many of my principles as possible.

The good life is self-respect, and I’ll have to strive to meet my own goals in order to respect myself. But in the meantime…

I love my electric blanket.

I have three full days of work under my belt, 4pm to 12:30am. I’m working for the Census – well, I’m working for the Bureau of the Census’ contractor (Lockheed Martin), or for their sub-contractor (CSC – Computer Sciences Corporation). Something like that. So, I’m a government contractor working at the Baltimore Data Capture Center.

As such, three days of work means no work at all. I have been in training, and my training is yet to be completed. The training before I get trained on the work itself, I mean.

We spent 4 hours the first day in Orientation. I found out about the origins of IBM in a contest for census employees and how many people don’t know that the census is constitutionally mandated in order to determine representation in the House.

Then it was 2 hours of Diversity (yes, with a capital D) and 2 hours on ADA. By the end of the first day, I knew the names of many of my co-team leads (that’s my job title) and I knew that the training sub-sub-contractor has some pretty good materials and trainers. I didn’t learn much about diversity or working with differently-abled people and people with disabilities.

Oh, wait. That’s not true. I learned about the diversity among my peers on subjects like cross-dressing and gayness. Many (happily, or I would have had a much harder evening) are live-and-let-live types. But there is the moment when the pins-and-needles of preparing to defend myself and others turns to the sinking quagmire of the “too much” argument.

The dress policy calls for casual clothing with no logos, symbols, words, or pictures that can offend. Easy enough, and the exercises exploring this all referenced overtly Christian symbols. But one exercise had a person coming to you because he didn’t want to work with a coworker who is lesbian and wears a locket with a photo of her partner. A locket. The group agreed that he was in the wrong, but it’s always in the chatter that things get sticky. “It’s not like it was a photo everyone could see.” “As long as she isn’t always talking about her partner.”

Okay, people. You’re not being on my side, and you think you are. Diversity training is good, but people often think of themselves as open even in the same moment that they’re trying to push someone in a closet.

Wonderfully for me, the trainer picked up the argument on the side of removing double standards. Anything it would be okay for a straight person to say about their loved one is okay for a queer person to say. And contrarily, anything not okay to say, dot dot dot.

The hardest thing in these conversations is avoiding the golden rule. It’s so natural to appeal to someone’s sense of fair play by asking “Wouldn’t you be insulted if you tried to talk about a dinner party you threw and someone told you it was inappropriate to go into personal detail?” But so often you get a response that sounds something like this: “I wouldn’t, I’m a very private person.” Well, whether that’s a mistaken self-perception or not, the rule cannot be made to conform to any individual person’s comfort levels.

I feel completely comfortable talking about sex. I did it for years in the sex toy business and I feel strongly that a person’s sex life should fulfill their needs, however hungry or austere those may be, and that I might be able to help people by talking to them about those needs, their attitudes, their partners, their techniques. I really wish that I could go with the golden rule on that stuff, but I can’t.

Similarly, I wish I could ban all conversation about children. It bores me at best and, at worst, I feel put in a tough spot of being perceived as abnormal, unnatural, unwomanly, or incomprehensible.

Through my own experience, I’ve come to see the wisdom of a professional demeanor and the slight distance it gives you from other workers. If I don’t like you enough to want you as a friend, why would I need to disclose things that you don’t need to know?

There will be some people who will hear when I get a kitten. Others will not. If James and I have a fight before I go to work, it is incredibly unlikely that anyone will know. I do not share some things and I do share others.

And it’s not a matter of being in the closet or out of the closet. It’s topicality. And the requirements of the moment. And…

Okay – that was a long side road. Back on topic.

What was the topic? Oh, yeah, my first three days of work.

Day 2 was devoted to Getting the Best from Employees, where we found out our personality types and learned to stereotype others (diversity training?), and another one…wait…nope, can’t remember what it was. And this was the day I enjoyed best so far.

Day 3 was violence and difficult situations. Although I controlled myself well and didn’t actually engage in either myself. Neither presenter knew their material, giving utterly inept and/or incorrect readings of charts, failing to mention or emphasize main points in some sections, etc, etc.

In learning about violence in the workplace, we were told that women shouldn’t engage and that large men should. Thereby shaming them into making bad decisions? I hope not. Also, this guy is telling a story to illustrate the difference between being argumentative as a personality trait and the sort of argumentative that is a warning sign of possible violent situation escalation. He explains that his friend is a Moroccan Jew – as though that explains why she is argumentative! Stereotyping, anyone? (Though I didn’t even know about that one…) Also, he had a terrible way of disagreeing with people. I think someone, some time, told him that he came across too aggressively in correcting people. His answer is to try and sound like he’s joking, but wow – that make it sound like he’s mocking people for misunderstanding. It’s especially off-putting when he is the one who misunderstood, as happened several times.

Ugh. I seem to be in rant mode right now. Let me refocus again.

I’m getting along with the other team leads pretty well. I didn’t expect to find a new best friend, and I think I’m right in that, but I like and enjoy many of them. I keep hearing about how much fun we’ll be having and I’m starting to get an idea of what that means.

My assumptions involved unrelenting repetitive work, but it seems that many departments stop their workers and have them stand and shake it out periodically. There’s a camaraderie being expressed that I hadn’t expected, and a respect for and trust in the Functional Managers (who directly supervise Team Leaders like us) that gives me strong hope for the operations.

There’s also a person in charge of morale. She arranges parties, provides rewards, and gets people riled up for incentives. There’s a ton of work to do, but they talk about pizza parties and cake breaks and potlucks as though they are regular parts of the job.

It’ll be a while before I’ve experienced enough of this to report back. I’m really looking forward to the operational training – learning to do the jobs I’ll supervise, finding and demonstrating my areas of excellence. There’s a particular job that pays more than the rest, and I can’t help but hope that I am great at that one, but I respect the job assignment process.

We will learn every single task and figure out what we’re good at and enjoy. We’ll also figure out which Functional Managers have the most comfortable ways about them. The assignments will be a combination of Functional Managers requesting us and us requesting them (with them as decisionmakers of course, but what process is perfect?), and the hope is that the assessment of strengths will match.

I’ll put my first guesses here and compare later:

I think I’ll like Sorter and Edits. I think I’ll be good at Check-in, Sorter, Imaging, Key from Image, and Edits. I think I’ll do worst at Transcription (I cramp up with large amounts of hand-writing) and Document Prep. Okay, maybe I won’t do poorly at Doc Prep, but it’s the one area that sounds like a drag to me.

Any bets?