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My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

Tags : wage labor, wage slavery, work, liberation

Here's a poll I already posted at the Whywork forum. It concerns the attitude towards work. Which is very wide. Wider than the 9-5 wage labor. Surprisingly for me, most people voted for not wanting to work at all. And there are a lot of people on welfare in that forum. Since this forum seems to be made up of people who do seem to work in some ways, not collecting welfare as much, I'd like to see what people think here. Do what extent do you want to work? I understand a lot of us are very critical of wage labor, but I hope this thread is a good chance to reveal our perspectives in detail.

So the options are:

1. I don't want to work at all. This option to vote for is for those who feel that all work, regardless if it's a corporate job or not, is pure drudgery and they'd be happy if their lives only consisted of either play or doing nothing at all.

2. I'd only do work that doesn't pay. It's for those who feel fulfillment when they perform the so-called "unproductive labor" as opposed to "productive labor", which essentially rolls in the bucks.

3. I'm content with low stress slack jobs. For those who are willing to work, so long as the job is a low status, low responsibility and low stress job where you can slack off for a fair bit of time and where the income is modest, but providing living wage for those who are frugal and have no debt.

4. I'd like to be self-employed/freelancer. For those who know they have to earn money, but who are perfectly willing to work on their own terms.

5. I'd like to find a job doing what I love - This is the least extreme position for those who are leisure oriented and also the dream that most people cannot give up longing for. Still, I expect those who follow the "Do what you love and money will follow" mantra to shun the jobs that are really wage slavish: the ones where people perform grunt labor for low pay and long hours and which is bound to wear the employees out either physically or mentally, so that is included as a poll option.

I voted for 4.

My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

i'm self employed; not working at all sounds great but i am in a position in which i have to earn SOME money, i.e. i'm not living in my tent (i used to-and LOVED it!), but rather i'm in a house.
we live very, very simply and conserve energy/keep bills very low...so i don't have to work much. yay

My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

We strive to work the minimum that pays the bills, which are low and getting lower all the time. We do receive food stamps and heating assistance. I rationalize it by saying I worked full-time for many years, and contributed to the taxing body mightily before child. And now that bit of assistance keeps me from working a full-time job (instead of sporadic part-time employment), which enables me to begin to grow my own food and provide my own heat and hopefully get off welfare sometime. It also enables me to raise my child myself, instead of shuffling her off to uncaring teachers to be brainwashed. I also volunteer a lot of hours to community revitalization, and if I were paid minimum wage for those hours, the welfare we get wouldn't cover it. That's my rationalization about welfare, but really I don't think I need to rationalize anyway.

(A side note about receiving welfare--I've never even when I was middle-class felt anger toward people on welfare. Some people just aren't cut out for the world of work, and trying to make them fit into a world that doesn't flow with them leads to homelessness, alcoholism and drug addiction, and suicide. I'd rather these folks were given the minimum they need to survive than the alternative. In my neighborhood, there are many single moms with several kids who work full-time. The kids have no parents, essentially, no guidance, all freedom and no responsibility. It doesn't work out well. I'd rather these moms were given what they need to survive than insist they work full-time crap jobs and not be able to take care of their kids. Enough ranting by me on welfare!)

I voted for 2, because I enjoy working, but if I am getting paid for it, then it's because I am required to be there & am generally doing something I wouldn't be doing except for pay. I do usually enjoy my sporadic part-time job, but still. I'd rather be knitting socks. If I was in a position where I had to work full-time for some reason, I'd choose the low-stress slacker option. I hope that day never comes. I turn into a robot if I work a lot.

carey

My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

Yeah, it kind of sucks that once you submit yourself to paid labor, you are stuck with obligation to be there. Still, I like freelance work a lot. I write music reviews and I also occasionally play gigs too, some of which get paid. That's what I like the most. Blatantly trading time for money (e.g. 9-5 paradigm) sucks. But since piecework is preferable to timework, freelancing is the best form of paid work.

My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

I wish I had some kind of skillz I could freelance. I'm a graphic designer by profession, and my skills are waaay rusty now. About the only work I could get as a graphic designer is advertising, which I loathe. About anything I can do, I would feel bad about charging someone for it--totally different than writing music reviews, etc. I tried to find my way into the freelance data entry world, but couldn't find anything that didn't require me to pay a lot of money to be signed up. I can type very fast, and my fingers type the words as I think them, which makes data entry doable. But not exciting in the least!

I was thinking too, there are not many manufacturing jobs anymore, and what is left do not pay well. Where I grew up, there was a big meat processing plant. In the 80's, it was a sought-after job, despite the grossness, because it paid $20 plus an hour, plus good benefits. Now, 25 years later, they pay $13 an hour, which is why they have to go to Mexico and Africa to import laborers. Manufacturing used to provide a middle-class life, but there's just not much of it left in America. Maybe that's why China's economy is growing! There are so many educated people competing for good jobs, there's just not enough to go around. The arts seem fairly well ignored in terms of providing a living wage. There seems to be a lot of servant jobs, though--getting the coffee, taking care of the kids, etc. It's hard to get excited about being a servant, scraping by. I saw a news story recently that in 200 major cities, working full-time minimum wage will not make you enough to get a place to live. I wonder how many of these folks are doubling or tripling up in houses, trying to get by. Or why welfare seems more appealing than struggling through all that.

I highly recommend the book Unjobbing by Michael Fogler for anyone who feels stuck in the work-screen-shop world of living.

carey

My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

My ideal really doesn't fit any of the criteria. We are designed to perform diverse "jobs" as part of our survival. My ideal is to be part of a community where your job is essentially to maintain the community in communal way. Building a shelter, farming, purifying and storing water, dealing with health issues, raising kids, etc. The community as a whole could develop a marketable skillset that brings interaction between the community and the outside world. I know of one IC that builds hammock, edits books, and makes tofu products which are sold outside. These are secondary to the maintenence of the community itself. Being pigeon-holed into a specialized job doesn't appeal to me much.

My Recent Posts · (11/06/08

You summed it up nicely, Doc. That sounds like something worth spending time doing. No matter how enjoyable, I don't think I could enjoy doing anything for 40 hours a week.

carey

My Recent Posts · (11/07/08

I chose 3, although my ideal (and my current situation) doesn't fit with any of these either. Right now I work a full time job, and it's an ok one. I do computer programming. Mentally challenging, although sometimes stressful due to the compromises that must be made for time constraints. I get to goof off a fair bit by getting my work for the day done quickly, leaving me time to post here, browse the internet (which I don't have at home), write, and think. It also gives me access to a printer. I don't know how long I'll keep doing this though, seeing as the main reason for me doing it for this long was student loans, and I got those finished off last month.

I also do some stuff on the side to supplement my income, too. During my time off work I spend a lot of time learning different stuff, book reading and academic type stuff, but also practical skills too. Some of it is marketable, some is not. I just got my own car and I've been learning a lot about car maintenance and repair from some of my friends who are auto mechanics in training. I could give someone a tune up or change their fluids if I needed too. That's what those friends of mine do. They have an unofficial (grey market) business. They don't have to worry about all the trappings of owning and running an official business. No accounting, taxes, paperwork, regulations, etc. etc. They work for less than minimum wage most of the time, because they know the people they do business with (pretty poor neighborhood) and they love what they do! I have some black/grey market operations of my own too, although I won't discuss most of the details here (for obvious reasons). There is the mostly legit farmers market money (selling food that cost me nothing to grow to rich folk), and also scrapping (when I see a car that's totaled, I buy it from them, get the title transferred, and have it towed to the scrapyard and make a profit of ~$50-100). Eventually I hope to make enough money off of those operations so that I don't have to work hardly at all, although I'll probably keep a very part time job just for consistency, and right now a lot of the money that comes out of these operations goes right back into them. There are a lot of education related part time jobs that I can do easy: subbing here and there (this has the added bonus of a flexible schedule, usually), and bus driving. I can always pick up a job in food service too, delivering pizzas, waiting tables, etc. I live near a few colleges (in a large city) so I could type up papers, do microsoft office stuff, or even write papers for other people (I hear this is lucrative). I could get a job at a college, too, and maybe get to take some classes with free or reduced tuition. I could even go get a full time programming job and do that for a few months and make enough money not to have to work for a long time.

I have kind of shifted my focus here in the last couple months from not working, to working when I need to, and expecting to need to work sometimes. This flexibility will be sure to keep me out of the real depressing jobs, jobs that are physically and or mentally taxing that don't pay a lot, jobs that don't have flexible work schedules (full time salary jobs), jobs that require mental restructuring to the extent that I can't be myself or won't let me be myself (military), or worse, some combination of those three.

My Recent Posts · (11/07/08

my category isn't among the five choices

My Recent Posts · (11/07/08

do not let the poll train you! make your own categories!

My Recent Posts · (11/07/08

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I'd like to make enough money being self-employed doing what I love in a low-stress manner, offering work not for pay at times, and not working at all when I don't want to. So I'm not voting. Chuckles.

Some things I like to do, like DJing or writing, I wouldn't mind getting paid for, but they'd require lots of self-promotion and whatnot that I'm not motivated to do. The little bit of formal stuff I do for money is fairly low-stress, and very very part time. I do a lot "work" not for pay, such as helping out with the Food Not Lawns network here, urban homesteading chores (cut wood, haul greywater), and unschooling our daughter. Even when it gets tiresome (like sharpening the chainsaw), it feels a LOT better than employment drudgery I could force myself to do on someone else's schedule to satisfy someone else's requirements. I tell myself, well, I could put the ol' necktie back on and go back to the cubicle. Or go back to stocking shelves at Wal:(Mart. Ugh!! Working informally at home for myself and my family, I can take a break when I need to, and do stuff under conditions that help motivate me (like playing loud music while housecleaning).

Ideally, really, I'd like to live in a culture where we can all satisfy all our needs without money entering into it; I liked how Ran elucidated the way in which money draws more and more of the world into the realm of money, so soon we have to pay someone for just about anything. Heck, I pay for internet access so I can correspond with "friends" on facebook & myspace.

I think the long-term returns on my volunteer efforts at promoting DIY sustainability in my town will be worth more than what money I could squeeze from people if I tried to promote myself as a sustainability consultant and charge for teaching them how to make a worm composting bin, or kombucha, and so on.

My Recent Posts · (11/09/08

My choice isn't on the poll either, because I have two main criteria for my ideal job:

1. Don't work with assholes. Right now I have two jobs and both of them are with people I like, respect, and don't mind spending time with. It makes things so much easier! Interpersonal weirdness is the number one reason why I have dreaded getting out of bed to go to work in the past.

2. A job that contributes to the human race. What this means is going to be different for every person, but for me it would be something like helping people in need, or doing something to mitigate the tide of endless consumption, or developing future technologies for good. Of course, that would include stuff like being an office manager at Beneficial Future Technology Company or something like that. The bonus is that good companies and especially nonprofits are usually way cooler about flextime and part-time work. Right now this is something I do not have in my life, and I miss it and am looking for ways I can get it back.

I go back and forth with the whole job thing, but for the last year I have been at a point in my life where it has been very psychologically helpful for me to go somewhere every day and be a part of a larger organization. This is a pretty big departure from where I was at for most of my adult life, so I've just been going with it to see where it leads me. I'm hoping I can take my recent work experience and use it to find a situation where I am part of something I feel ethically positive about.

My Recent Posts · (11/10/08

chicken lady wrote:
My choice isn't on the poll either, .....

1. Don't work with assholes. .... Interpersonal weirdness is the number one reason why I have dreaded getting out of bed to go to work in the past.

AMEN!

I found a category.

One of the reasons I'm "job"-free right now is that I am very unwilling to put up with psycho drama and meanness while I'm "working." I'm also don't want it at "home" either but that's another post...

I have a volunteer position right now that I love. It's a fiber arts class at a mental health arts organization and all my "students" are there by choice. We have a blast! Plus the low-key administration is very nice to the volunteers!

RE: Interpersonal weirdness

that and office politics... don't get me started... I haven't had to "play" office politics very often in the last ten years but when I see or hear about it, I cringe. Reminds me of ass-kissers and creepy informants in high school... bleech

My Recent Posts · (11/10/08

Umf. I work sixty hours a week for low pay and love it. Sorry. Screwing everything up again. I can cover my bills, including my land payment without which I would never have been able to own anything (I absolutely despise people with office jobs who say they'd never go into debt for a homestead- neither would I, if I had skills worth more than $9/hr) and I find time for other projects. I lived as a crusty for several years, and am completely confident I could do it again if I had to, but what I've found is, the people who need what I have to offer don't ask the bum on the corner (or the hermit in the national forest) They call 911. The ones who go find the woods hermits have trust funds and don't need me. I've considered escaping to an intentional community as an in-house provider but I have yet to find one where the needs were as high as they are here in the streets and in the hollers of northern Appalachia, so I don't sweat it. If I die and someone says "wow, she could have had a much easier, more comfortable, more fulfilling life, too bad" I will rise up from the grave and pop them on the nose.

My Recent Posts · (11/10/08

what's a crusty, tagonist?

My Recent Posts · (11/11/08

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusty

(damn, I love wikipedia! never heard of freetekno though)

My Recent Posts · (11/17/08

I enjoy spending a few hours a day performing basic subsistence tasks. I like gardening, hunting, and performing simple repairs. I hate working for a living. I'm not sure where (or if) this fits in the poll. Mostly I just like to play with my kid and pick guitar (for I am a lazy ass).

My Recent Posts · (11/18/08

Just out of curiosity, how many of us are unemployed?

My Recent Posts · (11/18/08

What do you count as unemployed? I work and play my butt off, but I have no scheduled paying dollars work in any amount for the foreseeable future. (I am so blessed!!!!!)

carey

My Recent Posts · (11/18/08

I guess I meant in the most generic sense. Who holds a position with a business where you exchange hours of your life for dollars?

My Recent Posts · (11/22/08

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stereomouse wrote:
3. I'm content with low stress slack jobs. For those who are willing to work, so long as the job is a low status, low responsibility and low stress job where you can slack off for a fair bit of time and where the income is modest, but providing living wage for those who are frugal and have no debt.

I picked #3, but it's really more complicated than that. Right now I'm in the military, so I can only base my answer on current desire and former lifestyle (working over 30 jobs before enlisting at age 22). Most of the time I'd prefer not to work at all, but I notice that I get unmotivated quickly on weekends and on leave, sometimes to the point of apathy. Maybe living up to some expectations keeps me motivated, as I often do more home clean-up and errands on Mondays after work than I do all weekend. This is probably a function of stress debt and much unwinding that needs to be undone. Assuming that self-determination would kick back in after a period of employment detox, I would still pick up the occasional odd job for a variety of reasons, though boredom would probably set in before too long. These are just a few examples from a list I've been compiling:

Benefits. I'm talking about employee discounts and shoplifting opportunities, not health care. Many needs have a matching part-time job from which to reap: hardware store, organic market, horticulture nursery, bookstore, outdoor recreation store, bicycle shop, and more. If I'm co-housing with several others, it'd be synergistic for each of us to take a job at a different retailer for our communal advantage. And if one of our own were to forget to pay, well, who would be the wiser?
Training. Given enough time, I can probably teach myself anything that I want to learn. But why waste time and energy when I can paid to learn the same faster? I volunteered 18 months at the Green Building Institute in MD and gained access to seminars with a combined worth of over a thousand dollars. There are others across the U.S., including the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA. A number of internship programs will exchange labor for room and board in areas of natural building, wilderness survival, spiritual retreats, farming, and intentional community living. Want to learn how to cook Indian food? Get a job at an Indian restaurant! The applications are expansive.
Subversion. Muahahaha! Ideas include alarm specialist, security guard, police dispatcher/officer*, billboard advertisement installer, loss prevention manager/secret shopper, refund counter staff, retail clerk for surveillance equipment, disguises, costumes, or uniforms. Work at Starbucks and pretend to beat up an accomplice provocateur. Manage a McFastfood and refuse to sell items and/or explain the health content with every order. Get one cubical job after the next, surfing the internet and doing absolutely no work. Turn termination into a game. Other options incubating.
Fun. Wouldn't it be a riot to teach radical history as a substitute teacher? Or meet colorful characters while driving a city bus or taxi? I could probably enjoy the exercise and thrill of a bicycle messenger, at least until the first near-miss. Even serving coffee at the right joint could be interesting.
Passion. Wildlife rehabilitation, park trail maintenance, and ecotourism guide all come to mind, as well as growing a remote forest garden** or intercity lawn garden. For adventure I could janitor in Antarctica, teach English overseas, deck hand on an oceanliner, temp jobs with a national agency or WWOOF while traveling by motorcycle, campervan, train hop, or hitchhike. Of course I hope to have lots of unemployed time, too, so that I can focus on reading, writing, volunteer work, collectives, activism, travel, spiritual endeavors, and the like. It'd be worth the experience to spend time in an intentional community as well.

* Oh, how I'd love to be riot officer who attempts to arrest another officer for police brutality at a protest.
** Ran didn't introduce me to the idea, but has since become both an inspiration and a guinea pig.

Author	Comment
stereomouse	Work attitude poll	Lead	[-]
Posts: 24 (11/06/08 03:11:53) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tags : wage labor, wage slavery, work, liberation Remove this ad Here's a poll I already posted at the Whywork forum. It concerns the attitude towards work. Which is very wide. Wider than the 9-5 wage labor. Surprisingly for me, most people voted for not wanting to work at all. And there are a lot of people on welfare in that forum. Since this forum seems to be made up of people who do seem to work in some ways, not collecting welfare as much, I'd like to see what people think here. Do what extent do you want to work? I understand a lot of us are very critical of wage labor, but I hope this thread is a good chance to reveal our perspectives in detail. So the options are: 1. I don't want to work at all. This option to vote for is for those who feel that all work, regardless if it's a corporate job or not, is pure drudgery and they'd be happy if their lives only consisted of either play or doing nothing at all. 2. I'd only do work that doesn't pay. It's for those who feel fulfillment when they perform the so-called "unproductive labor" as opposed to "productive labor", which essentially rolls in the bucks. 3. I'm content with low stress slack jobs. For those who are willing to work, so long as the job is a low status, low responsibility and low stress job where you can slack off for a fair bit of time and where the income is modest, but providing living wage for those who are frugal and have no debt. 4. I'd like to be self-employed/freelancer. For those who know they have to earn money, but who are perfectly willing to work on their own terms. 5. I'd like to find a job doing what I love - This is the least extreme position for those who are leisure oriented and also the dream that most people cannot give up longing for. Still, I expect those who follow the "Do what you love and money will follow" mantra to shun the jobs that are really wage slavish: the ones where people perform grunt labor for low pay and long hours and which is bound to wear the employees out either physically or mentally, so that is included as a poll option. I voted for 4. So, what's your take on work? (Result) I don't want to work at all I'd only do work that doesn't pay I'm content with low stress slack jobs I'd like to be self-employed I'd like to find a job doing what I love
xscoutx		#1	[-]
Posts: 13 (11/06/08 03:22:55) Moderator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	i'm self employed; not working at all sounds great but i am in a position in which i have to earn SOME money, i.e. i'm not living in my tent (i used to-and LOVED it!), but rather i'm in a house. we live very, very simply and conserve energy/keep bills very low...so i don't have to work much. yay
zombans		#2	[-]
Posts: 320 (11/06/08 07:36:28) Moderator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	We strive to work the minimum that pays the bills, which are low and getting lower all the time. We do receive food stamps and heating assistance. I rationalize it by saying I worked full-time for many years, and contributed to the taxing body mightily before child. And now that bit of assistance keeps me from working a full-time job (instead of sporadic part-time employment), which enables me to begin to grow my own food and provide my own heat and hopefully get off welfare sometime. It also enables me to raise my child myself, instead of shuffling her off to uncaring teachers to be brainwashed. I also volunteer a lot of hours to community revitalization, and if I were paid minimum wage for those hours, the welfare we get wouldn't cover it. That's my rationalization about welfare, but really I don't think I need to rationalize anyway. (A side note about receiving welfare--I've never even when I was middle-class felt anger toward people on welfare. Some people just aren't cut out for the world of work, and trying to make them fit into a world that doesn't flow with them leads to homelessness, alcoholism and drug addiction, and suicide. I'd rather these folks were given the minimum they need to survive than the alternative. In my neighborhood, there are many single moms with several kids who work full-time. The kids have no parents, essentially, no guidance, all freedom and no responsibility. It doesn't work out well. I'd rather these moms were given what they need to survive than insist they work full-time crap jobs and not be able to take care of their kids. Enough ranting by me on welfare!) I voted for 2, because I enjoy working, but if I am getting paid for it, then it's because I am required to be there & am generally doing something I wouldn't be doing except for pay. I do usually enjoy my sporadic part-time job, but still. I'd rather be knitting socks. If I was in a position where I had to work full-time for some reason, I'd choose the low-stress slacker option. I hope that day never comes. I turn into a robot if I work a lot. carey
stereomouse		#3	[-]
Posts: 25 (11/06/08 07:40:40) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yeah, it kind of sucks that once you submit yourself to paid labor, you are stuck with obligation to be there. Still, I like freelance work a lot. I write music reviews and I also occasionally play gigs too, some of which get paid. That's what I like the most. Blatantly trading time for money (e.g. 9-5 paradigm) sucks. But since piecework is preferable to timework, freelancing is the best form of paid work. Last Edited By: stereomouse 11/06/08 07:43:36. Edited 1 times.
zombans		#4	[-]
Posts: 321 (11/06/08 08:03:04) Moderator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I wish I had some kind of skillz I could freelance. I'm a graphic designer by profession, and my skills are waaay rusty now. About the only work I could get as a graphic designer is advertising, which I loathe. About anything I can do, I would feel bad about charging someone for it--totally different than writing music reviews, etc. I tried to find my way into the freelance data entry world, but couldn't find anything that didn't require me to pay a lot of money to be signed up. I can type very fast, and my fingers type the words as I think them, which makes data entry doable. But not exciting in the least! I was thinking too, there are not many manufacturing jobs anymore, and what is left do not pay well. Where I grew up, there was a big meat processing plant. In the 80's, it was a sought-after job, despite the grossness, because it paid $20 plus an hour, plus good benefits. Now, 25 years later, they pay $13 an hour, which is why they have to go to Mexico and Africa to import laborers. Manufacturing used to provide a middle-class life, but there's just not much of it left in America. Maybe that's why China's economy is growing! There are so many educated people competing for good jobs, there's just not enough to go around. The arts seem fairly well ignored in terms of providing a living wage. There seems to be a lot of servant jobs, though--getting the coffee, taking care of the kids, etc. It's hard to get excited about being a servant, scraping by. I saw a news story recently that in 200 major cities, working full-time minimum wage will not make you enough to get a place to live. I wonder how many of these folks are doubling or tripling up in houses, trying to get by. Or why welfare seems more appealing than struggling through all that. I highly recommend the book Unjobbing by Michael Fogler for anyone who feels stuck in the work-screen-shop world of living. carey
Doc Agape		#5	[-]
Posts: 63 (11/06/08 08:51:34) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	My ideal really doesn't fit any of the criteria. We are designed to perform diverse "jobs" as part of our survival. My ideal is to be part of a community where your job is essentially to maintain the community in communal way. Building a shelter, farming, purifying and storing water, dealing with health issues, raising kids, etc. The community as a whole could develop a marketable skillset that brings interaction between the community and the outside world. I know of one IC that builds hammock, edits books, and makes tofu products which are sold outside. These are secondary to the maintenence of the community itself. Being pigeon-holed into a specialized job doesn't appeal to me much.
zombans		#6	[-]
Posts: 322 (11/06/08 17:41:31) Moderator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You summed it up nicely, Doc. That sounds like something worth spending time doing. No matter how enjoyable, I don't think I could enjoy doing anything for 40 hours a week. carey
symbollocks		#7	[-]
Posts: 31 (11/07/08 08:41:59) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I chose 3, although my ideal (and my current situation) doesn't fit with any of these either. Right now I work a full time job, and it's an ok one. I do computer programming. Mentally challenging, although sometimes stressful due to the compromises that must be made for time constraints. I get to goof off a fair bit by getting my work for the day done quickly, leaving me time to post here, browse the internet (which I don't have at home), write, and think. It also gives me access to a printer. I don't know how long I'll keep doing this though, seeing as the main reason for me doing it for this long was student loans, and I got those finished off last month. I also do some stuff on the side to supplement my income, too. During my time off work I spend a lot of time learning different stuff, book reading and academic type stuff, but also practical skills too. Some of it is marketable, some is not. I just got my own car and I've been learning a lot about car maintenance and repair from some of my friends who are auto mechanics in training. I could give someone a tune up or change their fluids if I needed too. That's what those friends of mine do. They have an unofficial (grey market) business. They don't have to worry about all the trappings of owning and running an official business. No accounting, taxes, paperwork, regulations, etc. etc. They work for less than minimum wage most of the time, because they know the people they do business with (pretty poor neighborhood) and they love what they do! I have some black/grey market operations of my own too, although I won't discuss most of the details here (for obvious reasons). There is the mostly legit farmers market money (selling food that cost me nothing to grow to rich folk), and also scrapping (when I see a car that's totaled, I buy it from them, get the title transferred, and have it towed to the scrapyard and make a profit of ~$50-100). Eventually I hope to make enough money off of those operations so that I don't have to work hardly at all, although I'll probably keep a very part time job just for consistency, and right now a lot of the money that comes out of these operations goes right back into them. There are a lot of education related part time jobs that I can do easy: subbing here and there (this has the added bonus of a flexible schedule, usually), and bus driving. I can always pick up a job in food service too, delivering pizzas, waiting tables, etc. I live near a few colleges (in a large city) so I could type up papers, do microsoft office stuff, or even write papers for other people (I hear this is lucrative). I could get a job at a college, too, and maybe get to take some classes with free or reduced tuition. I could even go get a full time programming job and do that for a few months and make enough money not to have to work for a long time. I have kind of shifted my focus here in the last couple months from not working, to working when I need to, and expecting to need to work sometimes. This flexibility will be sure to keep me out of the real depressing jobs, jobs that are physically and or mentally taxing that don't pay a lot, jobs that don't have flexible work schedules (full time salary jobs), jobs that require mental restructuring to the extent that I can't be myself or won't let me be myself (military), or worse, some combination of those three.
lulugraphics		#8	[-]
Posts: 86 (11/07/08 17:21:19) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	my category isn't among the five choices
zombans		#9	[-]
Posts: 328 (11/07/08 17:50:03) Moderator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	do not let the poll train you! make your own categories!
dlollard		#10	[-]
Posts: 15 (11/07/08 19:21:50) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Remove this ad I'd like to make enough money being self-employed doing what I love in a low-stress manner, offering work not for pay at times, and not working at all when I don't want to. So I'm not voting. Chuckles. Some things I like to do, like DJing or writing, I wouldn't mind getting paid for, but they'd require lots of self-promotion and whatnot that I'm not motivated to do. The little bit of formal stuff I do for money is fairly low-stress, and very very part time. I do a lot "work" not for pay, such as helping out with the Food Not Lawns network here, urban homesteading chores (cut wood, haul greywater), and unschooling our daughter. Even when it gets tiresome (like sharpening the chainsaw), it feels a LOT better than employment drudgery I could force myself to do on someone else's schedule to satisfy someone else's requirements. I tell myself, well, I could put the ol' necktie back on and go back to the cubicle. Or go back to stocking shelves at Wal:(Mart. Ugh!! Working informally at home for myself and my family, I can take a break when I need to, and do stuff under conditions that help motivate me (like playing loud music while housecleaning). Ideally, really, I'd like to live in a culture where we can all satisfy all our needs without money entering into it; I liked how Ran elucidated the way in which money draws more and more of the world into the realm of money, so soon we have to pay someone for just about anything. Heck, I pay for internet access so I can correspond with "friends" on facebook & myspace. I think the long-term returns on my volunteer efforts at promoting DIY sustainability in my town will be worth more than what money I could squeeze from people if I tried to promote myself as a sustainability consultant and charge for teaching them how to make a worm composting bin, or kombucha, and so on.
chicken lady		#11	[-]
Posts: 24 (11/09/08 12:28:13) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	My choice isn't on the poll either, because I have two main criteria for my ideal job: 1. Don't work with assholes. Right now I have two jobs and both of them are with people I like, respect, and don't mind spending time with. It makes things so much easier! Interpersonal weirdness is the number one reason why I have dreaded getting out of bed to go to work in the past. 2. A job that contributes to the human race. What this means is going to be different for every person, but for me it would be something like helping people in need, or doing something to mitigate the tide of endless consumption, or developing future technologies for good. Of course, that would include stuff like being an office manager at Beneficial Future Technology Company or something like that. The bonus is that good companies and especially nonprofits are usually way cooler about flextime and part-time work. Right now this is something I do not have in my life, and I miss it and am looking for ways I can get it back. I go back and forth with the whole job thing, but for the last year I have been at a point in my life where it has been very psychologically helpful for me to go somewhere every day and be a part of a larger organization. This is a pretty big departure from where I was at for most of my adult life, so I've just been going with it to see where it leads me. I'm hoping I can take my recent work experience and use it to find a situation where I am part of something I feel ethically positive about.
lulugraphics	found a category	#12	[-]
Posts: 87 (11/10/08 09:13:19) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	chicken lady wrote: My choice isn't on the poll either, ..... 1. Don't work with assholes. .... Interpersonal weirdness is the number one reason why I have dreaded getting out of bed to go to work in the past. AMEN! I found a category. One of the reasons I'm "job"-free right now is that I am very unwilling to put up with psycho drama and meanness while I'm "working." I'm also don't want it at "home" either but that's another post... I have a volunteer position right now that I love. It's a fiber arts class at a mental health arts organization and all my "students" are there by choice. We have a blast! Plus the low-key administration is very nice to the volunteers! RE: Interpersonal weirdness that and office politics... don't get me started... I haven't had to "play" office politics very often in the last ten years but when I see or hear about it, I cringe. Reminds me of ass-kissers and creepy informants in high school... bleech
tagonist		#13	[-]
Posts: 28 (11/10/08 10:18:07) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Umf. I work sixty hours a week for low pay and love it. Sorry. Screwing everything up again. I can cover my bills, including my land payment without which I would never have been able to own anything (I absolutely despise people with office jobs who say they'd never go into debt for a homestead- neither would I, if I had skills worth more than $9/hr) and I find time for other projects. I lived as a crusty for several years, and am completely confident I could do it again if I had to, but what I've found is, the people who need what I have to offer don't ask the bum on the corner (or the hermit in the national forest) They call 911. The ones who go find the woods hermits have trust funds and don't need me. I've considered escaping to an intentional community as an in-house provider but I have yet to find one where the needs were as high as they are here in the streets and in the hollers of northern Appalachia, so I don't sweat it. If I die and someone says "wow, she could have had a much easier, more comfortable, more fulfilling life, too bad" I will rise up from the grave and pop them on the nose.
lulugraphics		#14	[-]
Posts: 90 (11/10/08 13:19:00) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	what's a crusty, tagonist?
tagonist		#15	[-]
Posts: 29 (11/11/08 14:47:43) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusty (damn, I love wikipedia! never heard of freetekno though)
2handband		#16	[-]
Posts: 32 (11/17/08 12:56:24) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I enjoy spending a few hours a day performing basic subsistence tasks. I like gardening, hunting, and performing simple repairs. I hate working for a living. I'm not sure where (or if) this fits in the poll. Mostly I just like to play with my kid and pick guitar (for I am a lazy ass). Last Edited By: 2handband 11/17/08 13:02:44. Edited 2 times.
tonyisnt		#17	[-]
Posts: 8 (11/18/08 12:27:58) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Just out of curiosity, how many of us are unemployed?
zombans		#18	[-]
Posts: 344 (11/18/08 19:08:30) Moderator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	What do you count as unemployed? I work and play my butt off, but I have no scheduled paying dollars work in any amount for the foreseeable future. (I am so blessed!!!!!) carey
tonyisnt		#19	[-]
Posts: 9 (11/18/08 19:20:32) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I guess I meant in the most generic sense. Who holds a position with a business where you exchange hours of your life for dollars?
dameonryan	It's... uh... complicated	#20	[-]
Posts: 80 (11/22/08 06:07:01) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Remove this ad stereomouse wrote: 3. I'm content with low stress slack jobs. For those who are willing to work, so long as the job is a low status, low responsibility and low stress job where you can slack off for a fair bit of time and where the income is modest, but providing living wage for those who are frugal and have no debt. I picked #3, but it's really more complicated than that. Right now I'm in the military, so I can only base my answer on current desire and former lifestyle (working over 30 jobs before enlisting at age 22). Most of the time I'd prefer not to work at all, but I notice that I get unmotivated quickly on weekends and on leave, sometimes to the point of apathy. Maybe living up to some expectations keeps me motivated, as I often do more home clean-up and errands on Mondays after work than I do all weekend. This is probably a function of stress debt and much unwinding that needs to be undone. Assuming that self-determination would kick back in after a period of employment detox, I would still pick up the occasional odd job for a variety of reasons, though boredom would probably set in before too long. These are just a few examples from a list I've been compiling: Benefits. I'm talking about employee discounts and shoplifting opportunities, not health care. Many needs have a matching part-time job from which to reap: hardware store, organic market, horticulture nursery, bookstore, outdoor recreation store, bicycle shop, and more. If I'm co-housing with several others, it'd be synergistic for each of us to take a job at a different retailer for our communal advantage. And if one of our own were to forget to pay, well, who would be the wiser? Training. Given enough time, I can probably teach myself anything that I want to learn. But why waste time and energy when I can paid to learn the same faster? I volunteered 18 months at the Green Building Institute in MD and gained access to seminars with a combined worth of over a thousand dollars. There are others across the U.S., including the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA. A number of internship programs will exchange labor for room and board in areas of natural building, wilderness survival, spiritual retreats, farming, and intentional community living. Want to learn how to cook Indian food? Get a job at an Indian restaurant! The applications are expansive. Subversion. Muahahaha! Ideas include alarm specialist, security guard, police dispatcher/officer, billboard advertisement installer, loss prevention manager/secret shopper, refund counter staff, retail clerk for surveillance equipment, disguises, costumes, or uniforms. Work at Starbucks and pretend to beat up an accomplice provocateur. Manage a McFastfood and refuse to sell items and/or explain the health content with every order. Get one cubical job after the next, surfing the internet and doing absolutely no work. Turn termination into a game. Other options incubating. Fun. Wouldn't it be a riot to teach radical history as a substitute teacher? Or meet colorful characters while driving a city bus or taxi? I could probably enjoy the exercise and thrill of a bicycle messenger, at least until the first near-miss. Even serving coffee at the right joint could be interesting. Passion. Wildlife rehabilitation, park trail maintenance, and ecotourism guide all come to mind, as well as growing a remote forest garden* or intercity lawn garden. For adventure I could janitor in Antarctica, teach English overseas, deck hand on an oceanliner, temp jobs with a national agency or WWOOF while traveling by motorcycle, campervan, train hop, or hitchhike. Of course I hope to have lots of unemployed time, too, so that I can focus on reading, writing, volunteer work, collectives, activism, travel, spiritual endeavors, and the like. It'd be worth the experience to spend time in an intentional community as well. * Oh, how I'd love to be riot officer who attempts to arrest another officer for police brutality at a protest. ** Ran didn't introduce me to the idea, but has since become both an inspiration and a guinea pig. Last Edited By: dameonryan 11/22/08 06:13:08. Edited 3 times.

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Work attitude poll

Work attitude poll

So, what's your take on work? (Result)