Author: jennynazak

Some stuff about my background in case anyone is curious.

I am a lazy person, in that I cannot stand unnecessary work, and I happen to think most of what we USA Americans call work is unnecessary, and I am very adept at avoiding it and helping others avoid it.

Leaf blowing: Just stop it! Pressure washing: stoppppp!!! I swear some of my fellow USA Americans would pressure-wash the Parthenon if they got a chance. Pulling weeds: The word “weed” shouldn’t even be in our vocabulary. Things like cleaning the bathroom are necessary, but if more of us had access to swimming in natural bodies of water or taking an outdoor shower as opposed to only getting to bathe indoors, we might not have to scrub the indoor bathroom shower tiles as often.

That said, I am also a person who cares deeply about meaningful work. Ever since a young age I have identified myself by various work labels: artist, writer, explorer, teacher.

When I was about 11 years old, I told my Dad I wanted to be a desert explorer. Our family had been camping out in the desert frequently. And I found the desert magically beautiful and mind-altering. Not just the nature aspect but its quirky human settlements too. My Dad broke the news to me that the deserts had been pretty well mapped out and probably explorer was not a career path. I was disappointed but still had plenty of other paths so it didn’t bother me much.

When we were growing up, our Dad would motivate us to study in school by saying, “if you don’t study, you’re going to have to DIG DITCHES when you grow up.”

At the time that seem like the worst thing in the world. To have to dig ditches! Not only the hardship of the labor, but also the indignity was somehow conveyed to us kids, such that we could not think of anything worse than having to dig ditches when we grew up. And therefore we studied.

One could hardly blame my Dad for not wanting us to grow up to do manual labor. He grew up in a town of Eastern European immigrants who had been artisans in their own countries but had to toil in factories or coal mines when they came to the US.

My parents always valued education, and they came from families that valued education. We grew up in a house full of books, and we got to travel extensively. Being a military family facilitated travel.

In school I was labeled “gifted”. (What a toxic label in retrospect, not only for the kids not labeled gifted but for the kids labeled gifted. But it was well-meant and I don’t fault the parents or teachers for having this label. Now that we know better, though, I hope we can do better by not saddling kids with this label. It’s great that we are learning about the many many forms of intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a huge one.)

But despite my supposed intellectual giftedness, my favorite subjects in school were art and Home Ec. The subjects that were thought of as not being for smart people were the subjects that I loved from the heart. Naturally I felt conflicted about this because I was supposed to be intellectual and was supposed to like the “hard” subjects. I did not like the “hard” subjects.

Actually I loved English class, but I only loved reading the books. I didn’t love writing papers about them. I was terrible at analyzing literature. And I really loved foreign languages. My language of choice was Spanish. But it wasn’t really considered cool to like foreign language class, so I could only dream of using my Spanish someday in the future.

I really liked sewing. If a career path of sewing had been offered, I might have jumped on it. No regrets though. I still really like sewing.

The phrase “emotional regulation” was not known back then, but in retrospect, sewing and other needlework helped me deal with my anxiety and depression, and with emotional regulation, in addition to being valuable skills that helped my self-esteem.

But, still buying into the programming that going to college and then working in an office was “superior” to going into a trade, I embarked on the expected track of college followed by office job.

A few years into it, I realized I just didn’t like being in an office very much. Pushing paper was another form of digging ditches really. And the fluorescent lighting seemed to bleach everything out including people’s dreams.

While continuing to work, I went to community college and got a degree in graphic arts. Very glad I did that; though I never did work full-time as a graphic artist I was able to use the skills at my existing jobs.

I was still bored and in some kind of existential crisis though, so in 1990 I escaped to Japan. It was an easy path for anyone with a college degree. You could go over to Japan and teach English conversation. Hordes of young people did this. In my off hours I dedicated myself to learning how to speak and write Japanese.

For a while I didn’t think I would come back to the US, I loved Japan so much. But eventually in 1995 I came back. The place I landed was Austin TX.

For some years after coming back to the USA, I earned my livelihood as a freelance translator of Japanese to English. This sounds way more glamorous than it is. People assumed I was translating the Tale of Genji or something. When actually it was chewing-gum marketing surveys and such. But some of the documents were at least entertaining, and this occupation afforded me a middle-class-ish income while I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to do in life.

I had always been passionate about the environment and in 2005 I stumbled on Permaculture, a design system for creating sustainable human environments. I went to a sustainability school called EcoVersity in Santa Fe NM for six months, which I was able to do pretty easily thanks to my portable, laptop-based work of translating Japanese.

After getting my Permaculture Design Certificate in 2005 and graduating from EcoVersity’s Earth-Based Vocations program in 2006, I gave myself an occupation that’s directly related to permaculture and the environment. Teaching workshops, organizing events, publicizing environmental stuff. The label I came up with for my tax forms was “sustainability educator, self-employed.”

I was very happy to have figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

I was still into the arts and other things that didn’t directly have to do with the environment. And had various side jobs such as working at a restaurant. I was a terrible waitress, friendly but very scatterbrained, and I will always have the utmost respect for people working in food and beverage service.

As part of my permaculture training, I chose to spend time volunteering on a local organic farm. This was very educational as well as being enjoyable, and came with a fringe benefit of fresh produce every week.

In 2011, a year after moving from Texas to Florida, I had my first solo art show. In 2017 I wrote my first book. (Actually if you want to get technical, my first book was a comic book titled “Why Go To the Beach?” — self-published in 1987.) And I had a side-job as a pedicabber from 2013-2015. And I’ve made and sold jewelry on and off since my 20s. And I did some outdoor odd-jobs clearing brush and, yes, digging a ditch or two. Sometime around 2018 I officially added “eco landscaping business” to my roster of work.

Fun fact about the era of my life immediately after my dad passed abruptly in 2010, and I moved from Texas to Florida in the same summer: At one point during that time I had exactly $.25 in my bank account, and $6000 in credit-card debt. A direct result of my failure to listen to my own intuition about how to run my business, and instead listening to “respectable” middle-class programming about what constitutes being a “professional.”

At one point I took a deep breath, and the viciously mean part of me laughed at myself: You fucking loser, you’re $6000 in debt. Your whole stupid-ass pathetic life isn’t worth $6000, and never will be, to the world or to anyone in it. I didn’t try to argue with that voice, but I did set about getting out of debt, one gig and odd-job and painting at a time. And was able to get to zero debt relatively quickly.

A positive thing that came out of that $6000 debt was that I had this flash moment of realization, that some credit-card company needed me more than I needed them or anyone else. It was a wildly liberating realization, and I was never afraid of debt after that — although I continue to be averse to incurring debt, and have managed to avoid it since then. Not having the fear changes the whole picture, but I still choose to stay out of debt.

Regarding work and laziness … I’m still very allergic to unnecessary work, and am militantly creative at avoiding it. However, there is a lot of work that does need to be done in this world. And there are a lot of things that I do that aren’t strictly necessary, but I do them anyway because they’re creative and bring me joy, and I hope bring other people joy as well.

By the way, speaking of laziness, there’s a book I’ve been meaning to write. Constructive Laziness: How to save the planet by doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. Maybe I’ll get around to writing that book someday …

In my previous post, I mentioned that some people in my wider circle of acquaintances had got the mistaken impression that I am not employed. And I shared my occupational title, and wrote a list of what my work consists of.

Now I’ll discuss the economics. The fact is that a lot of my work is in fact not paid. I consider myself to be a marketing agency for Mother Earth. While she doesn’t offer me a paycheck or a 401(k) or health insurance or anything of the kind, she’s nonetheless the best client I know, and the one I want to serve.

My main categories of unpaid work:

• I spend many hours a week, sometimes the bulk of my day, doing ecosocial communication on social media: posting, sharing, and group-adminning. The social-media aspect of my work sometimes becomes a bit exhausting, and yet I would never be able to not do it. (I do encourage fellow environmentalists to post and share to groups or on their own pages, instead of sharing to me via direct messages and expecting me to then share publicly. I ask this not only because it avoids adding even more to my social-media workload, but also because it gets the word out to a much wider audience, since each one of you have people in your circles who only you can reach.)

• Other unpaid work I do includes massive amounts of reading in my fields, and attending conferences and classes (virtual only, or in short ground-transport distance). I do love reading, and love attending classes and conferences. I love the people I meet, and that we are living in the solution and rippling it out into our communities. Actually this work is not only unpaid: I actually have to pay to do it in a lot of cases although many webinars are free these days. Still I would never not want to do it. And the popularization of virtual conferences has opened up a wide world to me. In the past three years I have probably invested $2000 on conferences and classes, which in the conventional in-person world would have cost upwards of $20,000 and I would not have been able to justify the expense, even if I had been willing to incur the eco-footprint of the travel.

• Also unpaid are the many hours per week that I spend doing various experiments at my house and in my neighborhood. Rainwater collection and distribution, heat mitigation, stormwater absorption, waste-stream diversion, community-building, etc. All my findings I endeavor to share in various ways with my communities (both my geolocal community and my worldwide online communities). I love my “Mr. Wizard science experiments” so much! (If I should ever settle down with some nice old man and end up with a bunch of Brady Bunch grandkids, such eco experiments will be part of their unschool life if I have anything to say about it.)

Occupationally, I do not consider myself a civilian. Basically, I consider myself sort of an eco-soldier. In the grand scheme of things I am a minor foot-soldier only, but very dedicated just the same.

Monetarily, I believe in only earning what I need, and circulating the rest into my neighborhood and community if I should have extra. I also do not aspire to stockpile property or money beyond my needs.

I will always do what it takes to continue my work. The unpaid work is very important, and whatever (ethical) work I need to do to subsidize that, I will. I have got my expenses down to a minimum, so that I only need to do five or 10 hours of paying work a week. I’ve written about my stance on money, wealth inequality, the global middle class, and so on in previous posts; you can search for them on my blog.

Not having health insurance would be too scary for a lot of people, and I don’t fault anybody for not being willing to take that risk. However, as one who sees herself as a kind of soldier, I feel like it’s fine for me to take risks. If military soldiers are allowed to die just because the government named some other country as the enemy, then I’m allowed to die of some disease or accident if I can’t pay for the treatment and our society doesn’t have a good healthcare system because my country prefers to spend most of its resources waging war on people and planet.

(In a few years I will be 65, and have basic Medicare coverage assuming that’s still around.)

I aspire to live to be 120 in order to help solve the problems that our industrialized, colonialist, capitalist society has wreaked upon innocent people, other species, and the planet. Problems that I too have contributed to. Whatever I die of, I will consider myself to be in the line of duty. And whenever I die, even if it’s today, I can accept that it’s my time to go. My Living Will sets forth that no extreme measures be taken.

Side note: Whatever your wishes are for your own life and death, I highly recommend you write them down and share them with your family and friends, as I have. We don’t talk about death enough in our society, and it is to our detriment. Death is a part of life, and if we thoughtfully prepare for it, we can live with more joy and freedom.

In the Degrowth group, someone shared a quote from a famous book by a Native American. He says he trained himself to need and want as little as possible so he’d only have to work when he felt like it. Said he didn’t want a steady job in an office or factory, because “any human being is too good for that kind of no-life, even white people.” I share his attitude. (Book title: Lame Deer, Seeker Of Visions; by John Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes.)

Being in service is a blessing. Work is a blessing. That said, having simple wants and not needing to earn much money is priceless.

Onward to a big busy workday, but a workday which will include plenty of sunshine and leisure and friendship, as always. Make no mistake, I love leisure and pleasure.

Thank you all for being on this earthly journey with me. Each one of you is a treasure, and I love you and am here for you.

It recently came to my attention that a group of people in my wider circle of acquaintances somehow have gotten the impression that I do not work. Maybe they thought I was retired? But I am too young to retire even if I wanted to (which I do not, ever). And far too old to have a sugar daddy, ha ha.

Accordingly, I have taken the opportunity to set forth a written description of my occupation. Here is my “occupational umbrella” and the types of work that it includes:

My job description: Sustainability educator, self-employed (yes, this is what I write on my tax forms)

Types of work that I do under this “green occupational umbrella”:

• Writing (books, blog)
• Social-media marketing
• Speaking (informational and motivational)
• Teaching/co-teaching workshops
• Visual art
• Home organizing, decluttering, & downsizing services
• Eldercare / end-of-life doula services (CEOLD in training)
• Eco landscaping services (problem-solving, design, installation, maintenance)

The people who didn’t think I was working said something to the effect that they “had heard I was working at one point.” It turned out that they were thinking of my side-job as a pedicabber (2013-2015). Or my later side-job working in a sewing shop (2016-2017).

Apparently, in the eyes of some people, just being self-employed does not qualify as working. One person actually said, “Well, it seems like you spend a lot of time doing things that aren’t work.”

Now understand these are people in my wider circles, who rarely see me to know what my days are like, so … I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Maybe that person was referring to the fact that I spend a lot of time doing activism in my community. But this is normal behavior for a small business, especially one that is very deeply tied to their community.

The people who were thinking that I don’t work are older than me by about 15-20 years or more, and retired. And back when they were working, they inhabited the higher echelons of management, formal educational system, and other rarefied strata.

In other words, retired people who, back when they were working, had the kind of jobs that included health insurance, pensions, certain set hours, and so on. To a lot of them, being self-employed might not seem like really working.

Also, if a person’s work is just the things that person would want to be doing anyway if they weren’t working, I guess that could give the perception that the person is not really working.

Maybe if people seem too happy, they must not be working. (That says a lot about how badly some jobs in our society suck.)

I hope this post is helpful to any of you who may be facing similar lack of occupational understanding from people in your circles!

PS. I want to express my appreciation to all my friends and family members who are so supportive of my work, and who understand that, yes, I DO legitimately work!

PPS. Yes, WRITING AND MAKING ART IS WORK too! If you don’t believe me, try writing a book or making a painting and selling it sometime. <laugh-cry emoji>

Small success of the morning:

An unhoused friend/neighbor had put their tent by the trash cans because obviously the elastic had come out of one of the sets of pole-segments in the storm, rendering the tent useless.

Friend usually sets up tent right at 7 AM, which is the time after which local gendarmerie does not bother people for setting up tents on the beach. It was getting on toward 8 AM.

Friend was asleep in their folding chair a few meters away and I did not want to bother them so I just quietly experimented w the setup.

The elastic was nowhere in sight, so I walked the couple blocks home and brought some fresh elastic. (Have a large stockpile of elastic; part of my inheritance of three generations’ worth of sewing/needlework supplies from the women in my family.)

But alas, the poles though hollow are so skinny that even the improvised long wire needle I made to thread the elastic through would not fit into the skinny poles.

However, the tent itself was still totally fine and I was hoping would not have to be thrown away.

Fortunately one of the two sets of pole-segments had its elastic intact, so I used that to put the tent halfway up like a semi circle.

And then I found a super skinny bamboo segment from the stockpile of bamboo cuttings at my house to serve as a flexible segment of pole. (The bamboo poles I gathered from a fancy riverfront mansion’s curbside “trash”; am using the various-sized poles to make shade trellis structures in my yard. My yard serves as a “3-D business card” for my eco landscaping business.)

It’s not gorgeous, but it’ll do. On second thought … maybe it IS gorgeous because the tent didn’t have to be thrown away and is therefore still available to shelter my friend from rain and sun.

Friend was still asleep in chair at the time I finished repair. Friend may wake up and decide they still don’t want the tent for whatever reason, but at least now they will have an option for keeping it.

PS. The little repair project was FUN!! I think sometimes we forget how rewarding it is to do little repairs instead of tossing & buying new.*

Also, I have this belief that even inanimate objects such as tools and supplies possess some kind of spirit or feeling, such that they feel sad to go through their whole lives without being used, and feel joy when they finally get to be in service.

(*Or in my friend’s case it probably wouldn’t have been buying new, but *receiving* new from the donation stream, which comes with its own pitfalls. Anyway my friend has had this tent for a super long time, knows and likes it, so I wanted to offer an option for keeping it.)

# landfilldiversion #improvisation #solidarity #coliberation #housing #houselessness #Florida #permacultureactivism #DegrowthMindset

You can see pics at my post in the Transformative Adventures group on Facebook.

To see more of my permaculture / ecosocial activist posts, please follow my Facebook page DEEP GREEN book by Jenny Nazak, and my blog jennynazak.com. Thank you!

#GreenSmackdown : housing; transportation; NIMBYism

Warning!! Salty cranky post ahead!!

If you consider yourself an environmentalist, but you consistently fight to keep out apartments, multi-family dwellings, mobile home parks, et cetera, I have bad news for you. Same if you consistently oppose commercial developments offering basic services such as grocery store, drugstore, etc.

Here’s the bad news: By fighting this type of development, you are actually being less eco-friendly. You are being a NIMBY. There’s nothing environmental about a monoculture neighborhood of single-family homes sprawled out on large lots.

That’s about a million big-box-store trips waiting to happen, and a bunch of toxic lawns.

Consider the possibility that multi-family housing adds life to a neighborhood, and that it can actually benefit you! Some of the people you want to come work for you (landscaping, petsitting, house-cleaning, in-home care, delivery etc etc etc) could live in the apartments near you, and therefore may be more available to work for you. Just a thought.

If it’s traffic you’re worried about, then advocate for expansion of public transit routes. And for sidewalks to make things friendly for pedestrians. You may not ride public transportation but public transportation benefits you by keeping cars off the road. If you don’t think anyone is willing to live without a car, that may be because you’ve never lived without a car.

If it’s the water consumption of a new development that you’re worried about, then one big thing you can do is push the developer to use native / water-wise landscaping and gentle maintenance. Also, apartments and other multi family units, and mobile-home parks, automatically use less water than single-family suburban-type homes simply because the lots per household are much smaller.

If it’s ugly architecture you’re worried about, I feel your pain. I find almost all new buildings garish and hideously tacky. However we’re not going to solve anything by preventing people from putting up buildings. And trees and other lush landscaping can serve as a buffer that helps screen the glaringly ugly buildings from our view. “Plants fix everything,” as I’m fond of saying.

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“Green Smackdown” is a new series on this page. If you have enjoyed this post, watch for further instances of this hashtag. By the way, in the grand scheme of things, I never want to hurt or shame anyone. But some people learn differently than others, and there are times when some of us can only obtain nutrition from a smackdown-spiced nugget.

1) Saxophone Tommy is back! He had been gone so long, between this, that, and the other. Now he is back, and his sax is back as well — musician & instrument reunited!! I heard him all the way down the block, stopped what I was doing and ran up to the A1A to investigate and sure enough it was him. That unmistakable sound. Ran back to my house to get some thank-you $ to put in his case. When I went back to give him the money and say hi glad you’re back, he was beating himself up and saying how terrible he sounded. I know what that’s like to be an artist and beat oneself up because of not meeting one’s internal standards, what one has done in the past etc. I tried to tell him I understand but your playing is still the best sound anyone might get a chance to hear today.

Because, unlike in some other cities where I have lived, musicians out on the street — beautiful live notes just floating free through the air, winding their way down the streets touching people’s hearts — are next to extinct here. Tommy gave me permission to take this picture and let everyone know he is back. Support and show some love if you see him. He used to play gigs on Main Street and some other places sometimes and maybe that will start happening again.

Though unhoused, Tommy has lived in this neighborhood for years, his notes have been the light of the neighborhood, and we do our best to keep up with him, and we miss him when he is gone.

2) Business card of another local musician. John and his wife are good neighbors who live a few houses down from me. He has a band The Wildcard Band and they play in various places locally. Upcoming gigs include Port Hole and Down the Hatch. He gave me the good news they will probably be playing on Main Street again sometime soon too.

General note: Artists give so much. Society loves to be entertained, but we don’t always reflect that in a tangible way by materially supporting those who provide that beauty/entertainment. We don’t always take time to acknowledge how much it costs, not just in money but in sheer willpower and human energy, to keep on plugging away making art. Every artist who doesn’t give up deserves our deep gratitude and respect for making the world a better place against so many odds.

Many of you in my Facebook community are musicians, visual artists, and other kinds of art-makers yourselves, and this post is a tribute to you too.

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Special note for the Permaculture in Action: Transformative Adventures! group: Supporting creative and occupational freedom for all is one of my main reasons for being in this group. One of my main reasons for living, actually!!

Of course, said creative and occupational freedom needs to include everyone getting their basic needs met for healthcare, stable housing, etc. Permaculture design principles and ethics can be used to help design and retrofit sustainable human settlements for all.

solidarity; support local musicians; support creative occupations; expand sustainable housing options; dismantle the carceral system; permaculture ethic “care of people and all other living things”

In a few posts over the past few months or so, or maybe it was only one post, and a Live or a radio appearance or two — I don’t remember — I have made reference to what I called “jacking-down the economy,” and “embracing the lower rungs.” This is something that people with the wherewithal to do can do to help alleviate the suffering caused by extreme income disparity and the jacked-up economy in general. I consider it related to the Degrowth movement.

I love it when I find professional expert substantiation for one of my amateur theories or musings. In the past couple of days I’ve stumbled on a great book and a great article, linked below. Will add more as I find them.

• The Divide, book by Jason Hickel (author of the Degrowth book Less Is More). He goes into debunking the horrific myths, criminal accounting, “statistical theatre” regarding international aid and development. Lots of Degrowth object-lessons here.

• “Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich countries“; article by Jason Hickel in The Guardian. “Economist Peter Edward argues that instead of pushing poorer countries to ‘catch up’ with rich ones, we should be thinking of ways to get rich countries to ‘catch down’ to more appropriate levels of development. We should look at societies where people live long and happy lives at relatively low levels of income and consumption not as basket cases that need to be developed towards western models, but as exemplars of efficient living. … The idea of ‘de-developing’ rich countries might prove to be a strong rallying cry in the global south, but it will be tricky to sell to westerners. Tricky, but not impossible. According to recent consumer research, 70% of people in middle- and high-income countries believe overconsumption is putting our planet and society at risk.”

• “Can those who do work, learn to respect those who choose not to?” by Jason Sims, in Esquire magazine. “‘What is needed,’ the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in In Praise of Idleness in 1935, ‘is a new revolutionary movement, dedicated to the elimination of overwork and the reduction of work to a minimum.’ What he could not have foreseen was that it might take a global pandemic to amplify the rebellion. Many people were forced to stop work, giving them the chance to take stock and assess why they felt so burned out. They worked from home and found they actually liked their family. They thought deeply about what the hell they were doing with their lives. At the end of the 20th century the idea of a 15-hour working week was an inevitability. And yet, trajectory has not only stalled, but tech, corporate culture and an ‘always on’ mindset have extended working hours for many. There was also what came to be called ‘The Great Resignation’. Millions, at least those with the right safety nets, quit work — retiring, trading out, changing their lifestyles to subsist on fewer hours and a lower income — leaving a labour shortfall in many nations, and governments desperate to find ways to tempt people back into employment for the sake of the seemingly never-ending pursuit of economic growth. It is, as Elizabeth Anderson, professor or philosophy at the University of Michigan, puts it, ‘screwed up’. … Russell, however, reckoned that the most meaningful work one could actually choose to do comes from our leisure time—it’s in leisure that humans are the most inventive. Einstein, famously, would spend hours just staring at the ceiling. The decline in paid work might spark a resurgence in artistry, craftsmanship and artisan-making, with the economy founded less in consumption as in creativity, in the sense of ‘flow’ that we all find so enriching.”

• Speaking of Degrowth, more than a few people have pointed out that the Degrowth movement has a public-relations problem because the word is not very attractive to people in consumerist societies. Along these lines, some people might find the term “Wellbeing Economy” more appealing. The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEALL) website offers a lot of useful information and ideas.