Poor 'Possum
So I work at a bike shop now, which I've wanted forever, but our client base is outdoor recreation, so like... I sell and maintain toys to tech bros so they can drive their oversized battle wagon or adventure van out to rip down a mountain on a bike so over-engineered that they'll barely feel anything but the wind. Even when I "win" I lose.
Jan 14, 2023 at 4:44amWeb
Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 14, 2023

My new coworkers are nice enough, but this being an outdoor recreation bike shop, there's a lot of talk about the utter lack of snow during this sickly-warm winter... but purely from the "We can't ski/snowboard/ice fish" angle, not the "SWEET FUCKING SHIT ITS JANUARY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY SNOW, WE ARE IN A DROUGHT, ITS ONLY GETTING WARMER, THE SHIP IS GOING DOWN!" angle my brain operates on. It's utterly maddening.

They are all at least a decade older than me, and try to tell me about long-term financial investments, swap stories about maintaining their rather new Tacomas, International adventures, talk about their apartments they don't have to share, and I'm getting paid $17 an hour and living in a cramped apartment with a galley kitchen with 3 other people. I just want to scream.

I like these dudes. I like working with them. And I have always only wanted to work with bikes and car alternatives. I'm very lucky to be where I am right now. But I'll be moving on in a few months when we move, and I have no idea where to go from here. Since the death of Metro Pedal Power every green-collar job I've had has let me down and I utterly despair of the possibility of finding a job that my ADHD-ass can handle for more than a year so I can get the health benefits to let me access the therapy I need to square living a life where my sanity depends on devoting 99% of my spoons to work that doesn't serve me or the world I want to live in?

#WeatherIsHappening #ClimateCrisis #IWW #antiwork #ADHD #greencollargrunt #greenwashing #greenwash #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean #WarOnCars

Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 14, 2023

I'm in a spiral. I've known it for over a month. It's been happening for years. I don't know how I let it sneak up on me, but it's here, and I'm less equipped, poorer, and more isolated than I've ever been. I've joined the IWW, but I couldn't build any relationships in the branch that made me stick. After all, they are there because they feel overworked too. We're all too tired for meaningful socialization after our jobs and trying to change the world. I've made aggressive organizing pushes in past jobs, I've helped lots of other people realize their worth, that they didn't need to take the shit this job was handing them, and move on to better jobs (Shit, more than once when I've quit the entire store or department quit less than a month after departure. I'm good at tearing down the temple on my way out of bad jobs... but never fast enough for my own benefit). They were meant for and wanted the kind of work those better jobs did anyway. They trained for more. Me... I like the fucking work that keeps my boots on the ground and my hands dirty. I like maintenance, I like preservation, and I'm devoted to keeping useful things useful. I want nothing more, and nothing less.

I've hauled what was basically garbage by bike, I've raked human shit, I've farmed, I've cooked, I've served, I've driven, I've delivered, I've experience in disaster relief, wildland fire mitigation, public speaking, advocacy... Shit, I know what it means to do all kinds of work, most of it the kind that is utterly unappealing at it's surface, but because it was useful, and it served my community... I was glad to do it. But fuck me, absolutely none of it has paid the goddamn bills. It has all fed on my passion to be useful and fucking stole my time and I'm now I'm a husk. My life passes in an existential malaise and I help no one.

Fuck it. Maybe (though I'd be shocked if this is the case) you haven't really questioned the 9-5 (or whatever fucked combination of cobbled-together shifts you get if you are one of the many of my brothers and sisters in the service industry) but that shit was from the era where one income could support two adults + dependents. One person worked for an employer, one maintaining the home. We're not saying that's how it should be, but if we are to be getting the same deal now, 40 person-hours a week should be more than enough to support a family of four, whatever its configuration. If two of you are working adults, you should only need to work 20 hours a week each to support that lifestyle. And then think of all the time you'd have to live the kind of life you ACTUALLY want.

#WeatherIsHappening #ClimateCrisis #IWW #antiwork #ADHD #greencollargrunt #greenwashing #greenwash #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean

Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 14, 2023

The lockdown broke me. And the reason it broke me was because I got to experience my perfect day. And I got to experience it repeatedly:

At the time I had maybe $9000. My rent was $750 a month. I was unemployed (though heavily paid the #ADHDTax by not applying for unemployment). I had managed to secure some staples (especially flour. I've always been a baker, and when I saw the way the bread section looked at Market Basket I wandered over to the baking section and bought 20lbs of flour and figured I'd be able to keep myself fed and entertained for a bit.) So my emotional state was calm. We just needed to ride this thing out, I have food, I have money, there's nothing I can really do right now but chill the fuck out. And I did. I never do that.

I'd wake up in the morning and brew myself a pot of tea. As it steeped I'd fold up my bed and sit in the middle of the tatami my bed was on in my attic bedroom. I'd turn on my stereo I had scavenged and pick an album. I had just started exploring ambient music. This morning I pick Green by #HiroshiYoshimura. I pour myself a cup of tea and bask in the sun streaming through my skylight. As I blow across the tea I watch the ongoing drama at the bird feeder I had installed to the window a few weeks ago after a bout of hyper-fixation on bird watching. Three mourning doves have become regulars, and they are the dumbest birds I've ever seen. They are much too big for this feeder, and they are too dumb to take turns, so all three of them try to perch and end up shoving each other off and begin a perpetually cascading fountain of feather, coos, and struggle as they keep unseating each other. A pair of nuthatches watch, frustrated from the large tree just outside my window. I finish the album and still have tea left. The temperature is mild so I climb out our front window onto the roof with a blanket and a book and sit. I don't read much and instead watch folks walking up and down the middle of the street, commenting on this odd new liberty in our ongoing apocalypse. I decide I want to be a little closer to these conversations so I walk down to the front porch and set up my hammock. I make myself a grilled cheese and another pot of tea and sit in the hammock while I continue to people watch. My street had never been this interesting before... or maybe I've just never had time to observe it. Eventually I decide I should maybe move or something so I get my bike out and go for a ride. There are no cars. Cycling has never been this enjoyable before. I bike smack down the middle of Elm Street, my hand's behind my head as I stretch in the sun and look around at the new, slow pace life has taken on. I pedal lazily through the streets of Somerville and up the minuteman until I get to the meadows and do a little bit of languid trail riding. When I find a quiet spot I set up my hammock again and just rock and listen. As the temperature drops I make my way home. I make myself dinner and split a beer with my roommate while I watch him play Skyrim and we banter. Eventually he turns in and I make a pot of herbal tea and sit on the roof wrapped in a blanket and watch the neighborhood around me settle down for the evening. I hear people coughing, and I shiver. It's time to head inside.

I recognize this was a scary, awful time for so many people, as it was that for me as well. I was lucky that no one in my circle had contracted it, and I wasn't actively wrapped in anxiety or mourning over anyone I knew. That being said, I had never taken a vacation before in my life, and I think this was the closest I've ever been. There was nothing I could do in those days, nothing was expected of me, so I just... vibed. It was something I've never experienced before in my life, and I wish I could just have an hour like that each day. That shouldn't be too much to ask, but these days it's always just out of reach. I got to taste the good life, and slowly that's been taken away from me piece by piece as we "return to normal.

#WeatherIsHappening #ClimateCrisis #IWW #antiwork #ADHD #greencollargrunt #greenwashing #greenwash #LateStageCapitalism #Sisyphean

Show threadSteve SaleebaJan 14, 2023
@poorpossum beautifully written. We had a newborn at home. Working remotely, he was the first of our four I actually got to enjoy as a baby. We hiked every weekend as a family because we had nowhere we could be. We walked the neighborhood every evening. As horrible as the time was, I miss some parts
Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 19, 2023
@saleeba Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. I wonder a lot about how different families could be if we had the kind of time to spend with them the lockdown gave us a taste of. How much better we could know each other if we didn't have to spend so much of our time toiling and preparing ourselves for, transporting ourselves to and from, and recovering from that toil. I have to imagine that time you got to spend with your newborn was special, but bittersweet as you maybe couldn't help but wonder at the time you missed out on with the others, and wouldn't get moving forward.
Show thread0xADADAJan 14, 2023
@poorpossum whoa this hits hard
Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 19, 2023
@0xadada Thanks, I'm not super confident in my writing yet, so it means a lot that you felt something reading it.
Show threadJackieTechnoHippieJan 14, 2023
@poorpossum Hear you hun. my last job before my back went out was a call center for airbnb protecting THEM from fraud, and before that an airline. Now I write and barely scrape by. Solidarity comrade. we will make it with the help of our communities.
Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 14, 2023
@Doom_Bunny Aye, that's the hope. I just hope we all find each other in time. I'm adrift, and there's a lot of folks similarly positioned, but we can't seem to find each other to move towards. Solidarity.
Show threadJackieTechnoHippieJan 14, 2023
@poorpossum well,I propose that we gather around the great lakes and start unionizing one city at a time. I'm in one of the few progressive towns in SW Michigan, grew up here, and we are surrounded by people scapegoating the LGBT+ community. My spouse and I haven't felt safe in a long time.
Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 14, 2023
@Doom_Bunny Haha, oh god where were you a year ago? I just traveled back to my home town in Wisconsin this past summer and utterly whiffed at setting up anything meaningful. My nuclear circle now is feeling pretty uncharitable towards the idea of the Midwest. New England is their home now and I would be very hard-pressed to shift them. But I agree, yours is a sensible strategy.
Edit: If you ever need connections in Wisconsin, I got you. Found a few potential nucleation communities!
Show threadNight_OwlJan 14, 2023
@poorpossum take their money and sell them add ons. oohhh gotta have the go pro mount or the water bottle attachment
Show threadPoor 'PossumJan 14, 2023
@thee_bad_tripper I mean... I don't get their money. And boy-howdy I do not have enough product knowledge to sell this kind of kit to these bros.