learning (Page 4)

In my last post, I described my feelings as I face more “free” time than I’ve had in over a decade.
Today, I’ll share with you what I’ve learned from this new-found freedom:

  • My business has a task list that—now that I have time to look at it closely—seems unending. Personal tasks still have to wait.
  • Advanced food prep will still help keep me sane.
  • Managing time well is now the most important part of my day.
  • Posting to this blog may be a part of my regular routine, even if it’s only interesting to me. :-)
  • How, how, how did I ever get everything done before? There’s still no time to get everything done! (Answer: I didn’t get it all done. I was making myself sick trying, though.)

I still have “too much to do,” but I now have the luxury of taking a bit of time to figure out how I’ll get it (mostly) all done.
I’m still basking in gratitude.

This “no groceries challenge” lasted just a month, and not even that (twice I bought fresh fruits and vegetables). Last night I went to the grocery store and bought, within reason, what I wanted. IMG_2724Like the challenges before, my perspective about what I “need” has adjusted to a more sustainable level. And, as it was before, I was full of gratitude when I had the option of going for the fresh produce. Not everyone gets to do this.
When I write about the no groceries challenges, or being “newly poor,” I write mostly for people who have backgrounds like mine. I hope to share with people who have always meant well; who embraced what I’ve always considered the liberal philosophies of helping those who need help the most. Even as I approach financial stability, I want to call on those many months where I lived with less than I’d ever known before.
I understand better why people who need the most help feel condescended to or patronized by well-meaning people. I also understand better why it seems poor people support policies that are “against their own interests.” I want to help people like me to do what they have intended to all along. There is a change in perspective that needs to happen. Instead of “helping them,” we need to “help each other.” I’ll write about it more in my newspaper column, but I’ll likely continue sharing thoughts here that are less fully formed and more personal.
(And, I expect to resist the temptation to go to the grocery store for “just a few things,” whenever the mood strikes.)

Last May, I wasn’t sure I had enough money to pay my bills. I needed to make some relatively radical changes to get things back on track. I gave myself a “no groceries challenge”. I told myself I would go as long as I could without going to the grocery store. I learned a great deal from the experience. Foremost among the lessons was that allowing myself the illusion that my “deprivation” was in some ways a choice made a big difference in my emotional comfort.
In August, I entered into a second “no groceries challenge.” I wasn’t in a financial crisis this time. I simply missed the way I addressed food and grocery shopping back when I had been in the first “challenge” and in the month or so after. During the challenge and soon after, I valued food more, I didn’t succumb to as much impulse buying, and I wasted a lot less food. Plus, it saved me money.
The second challenge, however, was different. I didn’t take it as seriously. I made exceptions almost right away. There was a different level of commitment and I think it was less valuable in many respects.
This month, my tax refund arrived. I’ve received payments from clients old and new. My alimony/child support came in. My bank accounts make it look like I’m on stable financial footing (relative to where I’ve been).
Someone online (can’t find the link) pointed out that a typical way to use personal hygiene items like razors or toothpaste is to use them liberally at the start (change out the razor when it seems like it might possibly, but not definitely, need it) and then with trepidation as the items are almost depleted (I’ll use this last razor until it has zero sharpness left before I buy new ones!). I think I have a similar relationship with money. When I have a “lot,” I’m more likely to spend it liberally—even when I know intellectually the “lot” of money is quite temporary come bill-pay time. When I have very little, my decisions about spending money are more in line with what I actually have.
This relationship with money makes sense, of course. If you have it, it’s more okay to spend it than if you don’t have it. But, as I build a foundation in my path toward financial stability I want to practice acting as if I still have almost nothing. As I said, in many respects I do still have very little. My improved situation will only get stronger if I try to live as if I have almost nothing.
As a part of this, I’m beginning a new “no groceries challenge.” I need to buy cat food, but other than that, I believe I’m ready to see how long I can go without going to the grocery store. I’ll use my pantry’s bulk goods that have been in their jars for so long; I’ll freeze the mangos if they start going too ripe before we have a chance to eat them; I’ll use leftovers with more zeal. I’ll also likely post about it here in an effort to keep myself on track. As it was with the first challenge, I feel energized and empowered. It feels like I’m already putting money in the bank.

My "regular" shopping complete, I went to Whole Foods for fancy things like prepared snacks for school and bulk organic grains.
My “regular” shopping complete, I went to Whole Foods for fancy things like prepared snacks for school lunch bags and bulk organic grains.
(If you’d like to read about my earlier “no groceries” challenges, you can click on the “no groceries” category, or click here.)

For more than 40 years, my parents have had a large organic garden in the mountains of Maine. I grew up with that garden. For me, normal summers included picking anything I wanted at any time and eating it on the spot. I probably played more than I actually helped with the garden, or as a teenager I probably complained more than I helped, but working in the garden was just something my family did.
When I imposed the “no groceries” challenge on myself before, it was May. Our garden had not yet started for the season. Not going to the grocery store is easier now because it’s also harvest time for the plants I put into my plots in my parents’ garden.
As I was picking the old beans (to be shelled and cooked like lima beans), the green tomatoes (fried with corn meal, pickled, ripen some in newspaper), and the basil (puree and freeze), I was connected to how lucky I am that these are easy tasks for me. I knew that we would be going back to the garden in October and that the kale would be fine (it will last forever, the magical vegetable that it is) and the cabbage will be, too. I know what to do with the vegetables, too. I know how to cook them in ways to allow for freezing for later use, for example.
So many people have never even picked a vegetable off of a plant, let alone planted the seeds that grow into plants to pick from. My parents have nurtured this garden space for decades. They’ve planted a cover crop on 1/4 or 1/2 of it, rotated the area where they plant, identified organic methods of pest control, and learned so much from their experiences. I’ve picked up a bit of what they know and it’s enough to grow a lot of food (with their continued help). I’m deeply grateful and very aware of how unusually lucky I am.
Today’s harvest:
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It was the hidden brain I was writing about. The way our minds work, using unconscious biases to make it through our day-to-day lives. We have gut feelings we rely on that don’t express themselves with language or logic.
Here’s an article (Psych-Out Sexism: The innocent, unconscious bias that discourages girls from math and science) written by the author of The Hidden Brain giving a practical example of our our cognitive functions affect us in significant ways.
Why was it I chose such racist and specific examples to start my column? I did it to attract attention, of course. I also did it to demonstrate how ugly those fleeting thoughts—typically manifesting more as feelings than discernable thoughts—can be. And, finally, I did it because I wanted to address the case where a child was killed because (in my opinion, regardless of what the courts determined) the shooter was scared of a Black guy. I wanted to show that it wasn’t only the overtly dangerous acts that block us from eradicating racism.
As the days pass, and I mourn the loss brought on by my words, I have considered again and again what I said. My most recent conclusion is that it was easier for me to use racist statements as an example of those unconscious thoughts that influence our behavior than it would have been to use other kinds of examples. Setting aside my interest in addressing the Martin/Zimmerman case, if the piece had been about the sexualization of children, there are certainly horrific nearly-thought thoughts I could share. That, however, would put me at risk of being misunderstood on a level that could threaten my role as a parent.
Racist or pedophile-like thoughts are the easiest examples for me to use because they are the thoughts I have the most experience dismissing as wrong. They are no longer the things that freak me out with a nervous-nellie oh-god-I’m-awful-for-some-reason-I-don’t-know-why feeling. They are stupid, ignorant, bizarre thoughts that rarely ever come to words. When they do, I’m startled. I reject them and move on.
Let’s say I was writing about the hidden brain—how our unconscious biases affect our social interactions—related to transgendered people, or people with physical disabilities, or people in hospice care facilities, or generationally poor white people in West Virginia. In all of those cases, if I were to dig into my mind and come up with words to describe those gut feeling reactions they would be such unfamiliar and newly awful thoughts, I would have a great deal of difficulty expressing them. It would be especially difficult because I have little practical daily living experience with transgendered, differently abled, dying, or rural poor people. I haven’t become mindfully aware of those ugly feeling-thoughts, yet.
That isn’t to say the racist phrases were simple to write, or that I’d ever like to write them again. But, again, I’ve been learning about our cognitive functions (“supporting the Republican platform means you support rapists,” is one of my blog posts about these issues) for a few years. Facing my gross and, frankly, boring white-guilt thoughts made it much easier to free myself from their bondage. And, the same holds true for the unconscious thoughts about the sexualization of children. I’ve got a 10 year old daughter, so I’ve been un-thinking the most shocking quick-thoughts (freaky disturbing feelings) for a long time. Retraining my mind was most successful once I realized what was going on.
As I’ve said a couple times now, I stand by my column. It is not about my own obsession with my own experience. That would be a detraction from… police harassment and brutality/criminal employment practices/redlining based on perceived racial identity/systemic racism in the criminal justice system, or, of course, the list goes on.
We don’t all have those particular disgusting thoughts I shared at the opening of my column. We do, however, all have thoughts that inform our daily lives that would make us quite uncomfortable if we were to examine them closely. I’m committed to championing the idea that we should examine our unconscious biases closely in order to free ourselves from them.