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“We can’t get workers.”

“No one wants to work anymore.”

“People are being lazy.”

Nahhh. I don’t think people are being lazy. I think they’re finally allowing themselves to breathe. And the combination of unemployment benefits and stimulus checks have given them the leverage to say no to unattractive working conditions that don’t allow them to live a real life.

I can attest to the joy of finding this economic leverage. I discovered it by accident back when I first started my ultralow-footprint lifestyle journey. In the course of cutting my footprint I gained a high level of financial autonomy and occupational freedom. Now millions of other people are getting a taste of this autonomy and freedom. And I’m cheering them on.

This morning my social-media feed served up a couple of good reads that bust the “laziness” narrative:

“Something strange is happening to the exhausted, type-A millennial workers of America. After a year spent hunched over their MacBooks, enduring back-to-back Zooms in between sourdough loaves and Peloton rides, they are flipping the carefully arranged chessboards of their lives and deciding to risk it all.

“Some are abandoning cushy and stable jobs to start a new business, turn a side hustle into a full-time gig or finally work on that screenplay. Others are scoffing at their bosses’ return-to-office mandates and threatening to quit unless they’re allowed to work wherever and whenever they want.

“They are emboldened by rising vaccination rates and a recovering job market. Their bank accounts, fattened by a year of stay-at-home savings and soaring asset prices, have increased their risk appetites. And while some of them are just changing jobs, others are stepping off the career treadmill altogether.

(“Welcome to the YOLO Economy”; Kevin Roose in New York Times.)

And this:

“Some of these unfillable jobs are in places without affordable housing — or, like Missoula, where cost of living has continued to rise over the course of the pandemic. Others are seasonal and/or tourist-adjacent. Many are at restaurants, particularly fast-food. Some are at retail stores with unpredictable scheduling. What goes unsaid in many of these stories is the fact that the jobs are shit jobs, whether because of the unsustainability of the pay, the Covid exposure, or the shit treatment they’ll receive from tourists.

“Stick with me here, but what if people weren’t lazy — and instead, for the first time in a long time, were able to say no to exploitative working conditions and poverty-level wages? And what if business owners are scandalized, dismayed, frustrated, or bewildered by this scenario because their pre-pandemic business models were predicated on a steady stream of non-unionized labor with no other options? It’s not the labor force that’s breaking. It’s the economic model. …

“I’m exhausted by all of these restaurants wondering why they can’t find workers — and I’m also exhausted by all of these corporations wondering why they can’t retain parents (and mothers in particular), why they can’t recruit (or retain) BIPOC workers with policies that stipulate that they have to live in Seattle or Portland, why their barely-paid internship program is so enduringly white, why their workers keep trying to unionize, why their invocations to ‘take some time if you need it’ have been insufficient, why initial spikes of pandemic productivity has plateaued or declined.

“In truth, this isn’t the YOLO Economy so much as the ‘Capitalism is Broken’ Economy …”

(“The ‘Capitalism Is Broken’ Economy”; Anne Helen Petersen, substack.com)

Recently I wrote this post expressing my hopes that we are entering a “seller’s market” for labor. Looks like that’s happening.

So apparently I’m not the only one who’s feeling a bit blah, a bit lacking in “oomph” at times these past few weeks. And apparently there’s an actual term for it: languishing. (My friends back in Texas would just say, “I’ve got a hitch in my git-along.”)

According to this article by Adam Grant in the New York Times:

“At first, I didn’t recognize the symptoms that we all had in common. Friends mentioned that they were having trouble concentrating. Colleagues reported that even with vaccines on the horizon, they weren’t excited about 2021. A family member was staying up late to watch ‘National Treasure’ again even though she knows the movie by heart. And instead of bouncing out of bed at 6 a.m., I was lying there until 7, playing Words with Friends. It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.”

I can relate to this “languishing” state, and I see an additional dimension of it. At least for myself, and maybe for other eco/social activists too.

Early in the pandemic, things felt scary, but at the same time there was more of a widespread shared sense of reality across the general populace than there is now. We’re all in this together; we all need to stay home for the greater good (and because it’s been legally mandated), etc.

During this phase many of us discovered silver linings, both personally and planetarily. I remember feeling quite inspired and energized. Seeing how quickly and beautifully the planet’s air and water and wildlife responded to curtailed travel by humans. Seeing how people rediscovered, or discovered for the first time, the joy of spending long stretches of time in their own homes and neighborhoods. Etc etc.

Seeing how my own life improved as so many conferences and classes and civic meetings went online, turning my world into an activist/education bonanza free of transportation hassle and footprint.

But now, consensus and compliance are fraying. Part of the population seems to be living in another world. Those folks are hopping on planes, going to bars, all excited about “getting back to normal.”

And meanwhile I (and maybe some of you) feel like … “Meh” about a lot of what passes for normal.

Theme parks reopening, woohoooo!!
Kids getting back to the public consumerist indoctrination boxes called “schools” — woohooo!! Battle of the bands, 169 bands on 13 stages, yeeeehawwwww!!!

And I’m over here — Meh.

And then there’s the introvert-shaming. I’ve seen articles where psychologists are diagnosing all sorts of morbid syndromes just because not everyone wants to be all out in the world, hugging everyone etc. Some of us introverts found our piece of truth and paradise and maybe we’re SMART to not want to give it up so easily.

Then there is the labor-shaming. How dare these workers not want to go back to their shitty jobs churning out goods & services for the overlord classes! How could they possibly prefer to just collect $300 a week (literally 275 here in Florida) and stay home, than to get their butts back to work???

(BTW I am struggling to muster the will even to write this … just another example of what languishing looks like for me.)

The tension/pressure for “return to normalcy” can be quite demoralizing and languish-inducing.

So can the lack of solidarity and consensus regarding simple things like CDC guidelines, and the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.

Just my take, I’m curious to see how others feel. I mean, overall I’m still basically doing well — just in sort of a phlegmatic, slow-mo kinda way. Like I’m moving through the gravity of Jupiter.

That said, I have found ways to move through the “Meh’s” and get on with my day, without going all drill-sergeant on myself. And even recover a spark of energy and aliveness through simple mundane actions. In case others might find it helpful, I wrote a post “Just … Start!”

Today I had my first vaccination. One down, one to go in a month! I felt anxious about ingesting a pharmaceutical, going inside a hospital etc., but feel that getting the vax is the right choice for my circumstances + the public health, so I will be OK. I choose to go with the CDC guidelines and scientific consensus to minimize my risk of being a carrier and infecting someone.

The vaccination was so painless I could not even tell they’d done it! Afterward, while sitting in an area where they had everyone stick around for 15 minutes to make sure we didn’t have adverse reactions, I found a little baby ladybug crawling on me!!! (I’m sure it hitchhiked in on my clothes LOL).

So after my vaccine I had an additional mission of getting him/her/them safely outdoors in 15 minutes. I’m happy to report that the little cutie was last seen crawling into the nice shady shrub I chose as a drop-off point. A happy outcome for all.

(I always do better when I have something/someone to focus on besides myself.)

On a pandemic note, many parts of the USA and the world are seeing a new spike in cases. But leaders in most USAmerican states are either outright opposed to new shutdowns, or are not finding the political will to implement them because there’s so much public opposition to sacrifice for the greater good. This country could end up being a very sad illustration of what happens to a me-first culture.

The backlash against further shutdowns can also be taken more broadly as a cautionary tale for any environmentalist who’s still tempted to believe that some kind of top-down “green program” imposed by governments will be able to save us from trashing our own planet. By now it should be clear that a grassroots cultural shift is our best hope. Good thing so many of us are doing it! Thanks for being part of the #GrassrootsGreenMobilization

If you ever find yourself struggling to accomplish further reductions in a certain category (or in general), join the club! I’m starting a list of “hacks” for each category of daily consumption.

Gasoline/jet fuel/transportation: If you simply don’t feel able/willing to make any further reductions in your travel at this time, remember, if all else fails, carbon offsets are your friend. (Gold Standard are the ones most highly recommended by experts I trust.) They add a mere pittance to the cost of a trip, and you can also use them to offset the footprint of your everyday commute, errands, etc. With some creative hacking, you can even purchase carbon offsets to mitigate the impact of your activities in non-transportation categories.

Electricity: The best electricity-reduction workaround I know of is to spend more time outdoors. If kids or other family members are involved, you might need to bribe them. Becoming more outdoors-centered has a dual benefit: 1) You can turn the climate control in your house way down, or off, during the hours you are out; and 2) Spending time outdoors widens your temperature-tolerance envelope. One fun way to get kids to spend more time outdoors is to set up an outdoor lounge with all sorts of cool fun amenities (solar charging station? rock-climbing wall? trapeze? outdoor kitchen?); they can lounge around outside using their tablets/smartphones to their heart’s content. (Maybe let them design & build it!) And use the many resources now available to get your family interested in shared outdoor nature-based activities; here’s one great resource (Getting Kids Outside & Learning About Nature, with Dr. Jenny Lloyd Strovas). And, teach the kids how to cook outdoors! and let them plan family cookouts. They may never come back inside.

Home Oil/Gas: Same advice as for electricity above.

Garbage: Feeling stuck in this category? Give each household member their own set of 3 bins labeled Compost, Recycling, and Trash; have weekly “How Low Can You Go” contests with fabulous prizes (later bedtime? getting to choose their favorite meal one night? etc.) Another fun idea for radical reduction in your overall garbage volume: Get a worm bin, introduce the kids to the concept of scraping their plates to feed the precious worms and soil microbes.

Water: Great one for “How Low Can You Go” competitions. (If your family members aren’t into it, have a contest with some of your eco-minded friends.) Also: Build an outdoor shower and rig it so the water irrigates your yard or tubs of plants. Good one for if you just can’t get household members to take shorter showers. Make the outdoor shower really fun and attractive to use. I keep ruminating about an outdoor shower that looks like a rock waterfall grotto.

Food: The top three recommendations I hear (and try to follow to some degree) are grow your own, buy local, and eat vegan. Not everyone is willing or able to be 100% vegan or vegetarian; I myself am omnivore. Full disclosure, I even eat fast food sometimes! I find that placing super-rigid restrictions on myself in the food category tends to backfire (your mileage may vary; I’m a survivor of an eating disorder). What’s working for me is to 1) focus on “eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables” (usually homegrown, foraged, or purchased from local farmers), and 2) expand my awareness of tasty vegan foods and recipes. For meat and dairy, I source from small local farmers as much as possible. The price can be higher by a factor of six or more, but that actually helps me stay motivated to be mindful of the quantities I’m consuming — a good choice for me and for the planet. (I wouldn’t try to impose this on someone of limited means who’s shopping for a large family.) I also find that the less I try to stop myself from indulging in fast food, packaged snacks, etc., the less often I end up wanting to eat those things. USAmerican culture has some seriously pathological attitudes around food, and I can feel those attitudes losing their grip on me. Another thing that helps me reduce my food footprint is to eat with other people. An amount of something that I would eat by myself can magically become enough for two or three people when friends are around to share it. Another food footprint hack I like: When friends/neighbors are throwing away food (vegetables that have spoiled, etc.), divert it from the landfill by composting it. Helps reduce the collective food footprint (as waste is a big part of our food footprint in the USA). You can also teach others to grow an easy vegetable or two, and to forage for local wild edibles.

Consumer Goods: Honestly, there are times when even the most hardcore footprint-reducers need to buy stuff new. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to get something used or make it ourselves. When it’s an option, I buy something made locally. But it’s not always an option. If you’ve reduced all you can in this category but still want to do more, you could help other people repurpose their unwanted stuff or find new homes for it. Check out “freecycle” or “buy nothing” groups in your area. You could also set up a community freebox in your neighborhood or at your workplace, church, or school. Also: if you find yourself compulsively buying stuff you don’t need, try checking in with your inner feelings, beliefs, etc. For example, if you grew up with never having enough, you could be unconsciously continuing to act that pattern out now by wanting to have “plenty extra” of everything. Increasing your awareness of your patterns is a positive action you can take today.

And – some useful resources on reduction in general:

• Definitely check out the group Zero Waste, Zero Judgement if you haven’t already. People from all over the world sharing detailed tips for reducing consumption and waste in every conceivable category.

• You might also find it helpful to read my post Footprint isn’t everything.

In this blog (and in my book), I devote considerable space to writing about mental/emotional and spiritual wellbeing. There’s a reason for that. Inner peace is the foundational building block of world peace. It also affects ecosystem health: Mental suffering creates inner conflict and interpersonal conflicts, all of which consume huge amounts of resources as well as causing great pain in the world.

One of the keystones of inner wellbeing is the willingness and ability to face our own feelings and be present with those feelings. We might choose to talk about them with another person or we might not — depends on the circumstances — but at the very least we have to be willing to face them in ourselves.

Here are some good links I’ve stumbled on over the past week. Hope you find them helpful!

“Dealing with powerful emotions can be challenging, especially when we are going through chaotic, sad, or cruel experiences in our lives. Often, it can seem like we have only two options for dealing with our feelings so they don’t become too overwhelming. We may let our feelings out in an immediate and visceral way, or we may bottle them up by suppressing our emotions inside our bodies. Most people make the second choice, repressing their feelings in an attempt to deny them. The truth is that there are many positive ways to deal with emotions, and experiencing your negative feelings doesn’t have to constitute a negative experience. Denying your feelings is not only unhealthy for the mind and the body, but it may also rob you of valuable information you could be learning about yourself and your life. Suppressing your emotions can even impede your short-term memory. Acknowledging your feelings can help you better understand them and help you recover naturally from change, stress, and grief.” (From “Denying Your Feelings,” by Madisyn Taylor, DailyOM.com)

“As many of us have found out, silence can be violence when it is used in an effort to wound. It is one of the most potent ways to cause deep suffering. And its very effective, particularly when utilized on highly relational beings. Because highly relational beings are built for dialogue. They are ready, willing and able to process the material that comes up between them and those they are connected with. They don’t know any other way. When they are denied that opportunity, they suffer. Because all those unsaid words and unprocessed feelings congeal inside, risking their physical well-being. If you are someone who is still carrying the remnants of unresolved material that was denied expression by silent treatment, do your best to move that material through you. If you can’t do it with the silencing aggressor, do it with a therapist, or with another friend. Don’t allow someone else’s silence to imprison you in a museum of old pain. Express it fully, move it on through. It’s not yours for the keeping…” (From Soulshaping book by Jeff Brown, Soulshaping Institute)

“Befriending Confusion,” a reading from Soulshaping by Jeff Brown. In my personal experience, being willing to simply be present with an unknown, rather than instantly try to “fix it,” “figure it out,” is an incredibly powerful tool for navigating reality and for enjoying life in a deep constant way. I like how Brown talks about shifting from a survivalist way of spending your life to a more authentic one; witnessing what’s true in yourself. The path of disengaging from what he calls our “survivalist culture” (that pooh-poohs inner work as an indulgence), is an uncomfortable path but essential to discovering the bones of who we truly are, and leading our most authentic lives. Great stuff and so relevant to the permaculture concept of “right livelihood.”

(Important note on “silence”: Sometimes it’s appropriate to refuse to talk about an issue with someone (or talk about it at all). That falls under the heading of setting healthy boundaries. The “silence” Jeff Brown refers to above, is silence used as a weapon. Silence as attack, oppression, suppression, gaslighting. If you’ve experienced the latter, you can feel the difference.)

Unfortunately, even when there are cans for both trash and recycling (as there are along the beach in my county), folks routinely disregard the labels. Trash ends up in the recycling bin and vice versa.

But honestly, other than aluminum cans, not much is really getting recycled these days at all, from what I hear. (Maybe it’s better in your geographic area. I hope so.)

Based on what I regularly see in the barrels, a couple of the top ways to reduce the trash problem at the root are:

• Stop buying bottled water, and refuse it when it’s offered;
• Refuse plastic bags;
• Buy soda at the convenience-store fountain by reusing your 7-11 cup etc, instead of buying it in disposable bottles.

Reduce, Reuse, and best of all REFUSE single-use packaging as much as you possibly can!! I know it’s difficult to impossible sometimes. But it feels great every time I manage to avoid one disposable item. Every little victory adds up!!

Local columnist “The Darwinian Gardener” (Mark Lane of Daytona Beach News-Journal) has long been one of my heroes for his hands-off, chemical-free approach to landscaping. But today’s column bumps him up to a whole new level!

(Personally, I have always found it ironic that modern social norms banned cottage businesses such as welding shops and cabinetmakers from residential neighborhoods long ago, yet in more recent years have rolled out the red carpet for a level of industrial noise and air pollution that is every bit as obnoxious or more.)

“The Darwinian Gardener is morally opposed to gas-powered leaf blowers. He would rather live next door to a death-metal band’s practice garage … He has awakened on too many Saturday mornings to nearby landscaping crews operating heavy-horsepower single-stroke engines blowing leaves into the street and nearby lawns, sounding like a mobile sheetmetal works. Now that he works from home, his hatred of oversized leaf blowers that look like Ghostbuster backpacks has grown in ferocity.”

Also this! “Oak leaves are yard waste when they’re in a green plastic bag; they are yard mulch and nutrients when they’re left on the ground.”

Go here to read the rest – it is priceless!

#NeedMoreLikeThis #QuietLandscapingRevolution #LazyLandscapersWillSaveTheWorld