Gainful Employment
Jul. 11th, 2007 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormSo there we go. That was a week-and-a-half job search has got me a place with a super-awesome landscape maintenance/design company, a small one, that's both organic and has a leaning towards permaculture. In fact, she has the word permaculture in her brochure.
It's in North Van, but I think I'll learn a lot from her. This is better than just working outdoors. This is doing something close to what I wanna be doing right now.
I start either Friday or next week, so today is a Wreck Beach day for sure.
I'm slowly peeling people off the need-to-talk-to list. It feels good. I think I'm down to six calls or so I need to make.
It's hot and sticky. I didn't get anywhere near enough sleep-- I went to visit Eva and Ryan after the unexpectedly long interview last night, and had missed my skytrain home by the time I got my bike to Drew's door. It was *really* good to see people, even if angst seems to be the word of the day. I will nap at the beach today with Mike and Eva and my internet stalker, do feel free to join us.
Man, I wish I had my drum to take down. I need to get a travel djembe, but first I need to make my rent for next month. Lesigh.
I missed my bike. Tomorrow maybe I'll head out on it. I was gonna bike to Wreck, but the watermelon makes that unwieldy.
The album of the day is still Barenaked Ladies' Gordon.
I've been thinking a lot about hurting people in relationships. It's been a super-recurring theme for me, both in my life and also in the last couple of weeks especially. Way back at the beginning of all this, I didn't believe it was ever okay to do anything to cause someone you loved pain. As the years march on I realise that is an impossible goal, and the line sort of fuzzes out: deliberate unwanted pain is not cool, totally unintentional pain there's not much you can do about, but what about things you do from ignorance, stupidity, or necessity? How much of that sort of thing is okay? How much is causing someone pain an okay side-effect? Anyhow, I know this keeps coming up for me because I can't really work through it-- I still haven't really accepted that it happens at all.
This tends to make me a really crappy girlfriend because I'm so shocked and appalled by my hurting someone that I totally suck at comforting and/or fixing things, I just get distracted. That, at least, I'm getting a handle on.
I made a kickass sourdough bread pudding. Thanks, Tim, for the bread. I should go eat breakfast, maybe nap before the beach, and get off this introspective trip. I haven't had enough sleep to make it very effective.
It's in North Van, but I think I'll learn a lot from her. This is better than just working outdoors. This is doing something close to what I wanna be doing right now.
I start either Friday or next week, so today is a Wreck Beach day for sure.
I'm slowly peeling people off the need-to-talk-to list. It feels good. I think I'm down to six calls or so I need to make.
It's hot and sticky. I didn't get anywhere near enough sleep-- I went to visit Eva and Ryan after the unexpectedly long interview last night, and had missed my skytrain home by the time I got my bike to Drew's door. It was *really* good to see people, even if angst seems to be the word of the day. I will nap at the beach today with Mike and Eva and my internet stalker, do feel free to join us.
Man, I wish I had my drum to take down. I need to get a travel djembe, but first I need to make my rent for next month. Lesigh.
I missed my bike. Tomorrow maybe I'll head out on it. I was gonna bike to Wreck, but the watermelon makes that unwieldy.
The album of the day is still Barenaked Ladies' Gordon.
I've been thinking a lot about hurting people in relationships. It's been a super-recurring theme for me, both in my life and also in the last couple of weeks especially. Way back at the beginning of all this, I didn't believe it was ever okay to do anything to cause someone you loved pain. As the years march on I realise that is an impossible goal, and the line sort of fuzzes out: deliberate unwanted pain is not cool, totally unintentional pain there's not much you can do about, but what about things you do from ignorance, stupidity, or necessity? How much of that sort of thing is okay? How much is causing someone pain an okay side-effect? Anyhow, I know this keeps coming up for me because I can't really work through it-- I still haven't really accepted that it happens at all.
This tends to make me a really crappy girlfriend because I'm so shocked and appalled by my hurting someone that I totally suck at comforting and/or fixing things, I just get distracted. That, at least, I'm getting a handle on.
I made a kickass sourdough bread pudding. Thanks, Tim, for the bread. I should go eat breakfast, maybe nap before the beach, and get off this introspective trip. I haven't had enough sleep to make it very effective.
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Re: ignorance, stupidity, or necessity
Date: 2007-07-17 05:03 am (UTC)Unwillful ignorance is what forgiveness is for, for oneself and for others when they do it. It can't last, either, because we're perceptive creatures and we'll notice that something's wrong at some point. If we then choose to bury our heads when we notice, then we're doing harm; but if we choose to tackle the painful process of figuring out what's wrong and what to do about it, we are taking the first step to improving.
I suppose what sort of solutions one contemplates for fixing things matters, too. My rule of thumb is that the more a solution would create a harmonious atmosphere, the more of a good choice that solution is. I'm sure there are other rules of thumb, but I suspect they all amount to about the same conclusions about good and bad solutions.
When there's a perfect 1:1 choice between your and someone else's happiness, it sucks. However, making yourself unhappy merely for the sake of another rarely actually means it's a 1:1 correspondence: you get resentful, increasingly broken, and more harmful to bystanders and loved ones. By contrast, the unhappiness that one could cause to them is something that, in the end, they can choose to take or not. If they've chosen to pin their happiness on your sacrifice, then maybe they've made a bad choice about how to get to happiness? Changing their mind about what constitutes their happiness may be the only way for them to get it. Of course, the same reasoning applies to oneself...
Doing something for future happiness is risky, yeah. We can make some pretty broad predictions about what sort of circumstances are likely to increase or decrease the net happiness, though. Choosing the path of greatest overall happiness is like kayaking down a river: you don't choose where to go, only where in the stream to shift to next so that it can carry you forward. Making small and large choices well adds up, making the difference between gliding through the rapids or getting snarled on rocks.