sleaze and anti-sleaze (or, soul building to cure a flood of sleaze)

A podcast will come out in a few days to talk about this.  

I am still trying to sort out my words.  (Tuesday is not a good day for word sorting, I have so many meetings)

For the last ten days or so I feel like I have far more sleaze to deal with than most of the time.  Bankers robbing me; tech support providing anti-support; other businesses taking my money and giving me lies instead of what i paid for; ongoing efforts of sleaze-sters to steal from me with words; required web sites having bugs, then more bugs, then bugs compounded by bugs, to the point it stops working; "For help, call us 7am to 6pm mountain time" and at 7:30 "you called us outside our normal working hours" ....

As i am going into a zoom meeting, zoom gives me a checkbox "click here to not see this message again" which I have clicked on about 300 times.   And zoom has become so buggy it is nearly unusable.



(gotta run for now - more later)

As I was feeling around for ways to talk about this, I remembered the stuff about spoons.

In the podcast, rather than talking about the stuff where a bank "lost" $3000 of mine, and is now refusing to talk to me....   or rather than talking about a business that offered $100 worth of service, took my money, and has now gone silent ....   or rather than lists and lists of stuff about taxes and "bad actors" trying to screw me ....   I picked a very simple thing.  Sleazy, but not critical.  


Every 8 weeks I donate blood.  I used to donate blood in missoula, but their computer made an error ...  something that humans used to be able to correct, but now the people at the red cross have been thoroughly trained to not give a shit.  Despite having a bunch of paid employees that are just sitting around.  Talk to the new york office - a person that is paid to care and doesn't care.  After six hours of effort on my part, I am still not allowed to donate blood in missoula.  And the red cross just doesn't fucking care.  I wrote about this a looooong time ago here:

https://permies.com/t/50961/Swords-Iron-Missoula-Blood-Pie

So I started donating blood west of here.  Once every eight weeks I would bond with audiobooks.  Sometimes I would do an extra event there - a potluck or speaking gig.  Sometimes it is on my way to seattle or portland.  

And then the day arrived that i could donate blood again.  Good.  The last week has four times more sleaze than usual.  A bit of a drive with audiobooks sounds like just the ticket.  All I need to do is go to their web site and make an appointment.  


... ....   of course, the web site is broken and i cannot make an appointment.  I try the next day - still broken.  The next day - still broken.  It would be nice if there was a way to send an email and it could be mended without taking a lot of my time.  But because the world is jam packed with sleazy spammers, most companies no longer allow emails to be sent.  

(In other words, the world has kinda gotten to the point of finding ways to be okay with all the sleaze)

The ONLY way I might be able to resolve this would be to call and try to talk to a human.  They offer a phone number and the hours start at 7am mountain time.  I call at 7:30 and the recording says it is outside of their office hours.  So then I think I will call the place I am going to and talk to a human.  Surely they can say "we will get it all sorted out - come on in."  The only phone number i can find is the same 877 number that is having trouble deciding what their office hours are.

So I dropped the donating blood thing.  I am having a super sleazy run, and this is just more sleaze on top of an existing bucket of sleaze.


(time for my next meeting ...)

What is the opposite of sleaze?

Decency?  Integrity?  Wholesome?  Silly fun?



Ten years ago I wrote about spoon theory.  In that is the idea that you would lose spoons with yucky things and gain spoons with lovely things.  

I want to bring the idea of spoons into this stuff about sleaze and anti-sleaze.  Spoons is good because you can guage how big or small something is by the number of spoons.  Little things take (or give) one or two spoons.  Big things take (or give) dozens of spoons.  And there is the idea of things which give you spoons.  So it isn't all negative.  

Plus, the idea of spoons is about the feels of one person.  I want to talk about "the cure" for sleaze.  Or maybe "a cure" or a list of things that will cure ...    I want to heal a person suffering from the sleaze dropped on them.   The spoon stuff is about the suffering of one person, and includes a metric for how to resolve that suffering.  



If the average person gains 50 spoons a day, but is losing 40 spoons a day to sleaze, they might not care.  Health issues might take 40.  Struggles with day to day stuff that is not sleaze might take 40.  Once you hit zero, the day becomes mighty dark - and now spoon math is critical, and sleaze is less acceptable.



I want to hyper-focus this thread, for now, on sleaze and what might be "anti-sleaze".  What are things that a person can do, for themselves, to add spoons.  Later, I want to expand this a little to talk about choice we make for ourselves that removes spoons, and then how we can do remarkably similar choices, but add spoons.

Start simple:

Plant 20 kale seeds        gain 1 spoon

Observe that many of them are now an inch tall     gain 2 spoons

See they are now six inches tall     gain 2 spoons

Harvest and eat a bit (maybe a little too early)   gain 3 spoons

Harvest and eat a fair bit       gain 3 spoons

Harvest a bunch to feed to yourself and a couple of friends    gain 12 spoons

Harvest a lot, dry them with some oil, salt and flaves, store them in a huge jar for later, damn they are good     gain 18 spoons

Harvest and eat a fair bit in deep winter     gain 6 spoons

As part of an Operations Management course I was teaching, I attempted to go into business ethics using a functional approach.  Such as if I screw over the best suppliers and screw over my best customers, how long can I expect to remain in business?   Silly me. I thought the concept was obvious.   About 50% of the class thought I was speaking a foreign language.  Their concern was only for the short term. Once they had padded their resume they would be with a new  employer.  Now, for the real scary part.  These were healthcare management students, and most of them were already working in the field.

Carve a first wooden spoon where it isn't really a spoon, and has too much of your blood on it:  gain 1 spoon


Carve a second wooden spoon where it is an authentically useful spoon, and has no blood on it:  gain 4 spoons

Every time you use that spoon    gain 1 spoon

Anti-sleaze spoon-generators:
- listen to music
- share a meal
- plant something
- harvest something
- help someone with some trouble or chore
- play a game
- get a little exercise
- engage in satisfying art or craft

(x-posted with stuff above)

Eating stewed jerusalem artichokes & maple syrup! (It finally thawed enough to dig them up)

If I remember correctly, during the podcast, I made up a homesteader named Betty.  

When Betty bought her homestead, outright, about two months ago, she arrived with a list of the things she wanted to accomplish the first year.  After two months, she hasn't even finished with the stuff she wanted to have done on the first day.  Betty is putting in 16 hours a day chipping away at her list.

Betty is pretty exhausted.  Betty has gotten a lot done.  A lot has gone wrong and a lot has gone right.  She keeps telling herself it will get a lot easier when the infrastructure is done.  

Sacrifice.

"I will work harder!"

Obligation is poison - and she set these obligations on herself.

She is going to end up not growing enough food for the year.  Animals keep getting past her temporary fence.  She needs to buy more gear, but she is very worried about finances.  After all, when buying the property, the plan was to have homestead incomes to pay for stuff, but instead she is burning through money way too fast.



In the gardening gardeners program, people do stuff at a pace for an art project.  Most tasks are transformed into art projects.  There is no cost for gear.  There is no money burn.  Food is infinite and free.  And organic or better.  And there are other people.  Any list of stuff to do is a pretty short list.  Zero obligations.  Comfortable pace.


My thought was that Betty should join a gardening gardeners program instead of buying her own property.  Samantha (who recorded with me) said that Betty should start her own gardening gardeners program.

Betty is out of spoons. Burned out. Betty is regretting her homestead decision.  

Many homesteaders bail after a six months, a year, two years ...  maybe six years.  Betty is gonna bail after a year and go back to a city job, apartment living, and eating at restaurants.


I think that the gardening gardeners program is a foundation for homesteading that can last a lifetime.  Higher success.  Less burnout.  Add spoons every day.  

paul wheaton wrote:What is the opposite of sleaze?

I would say a Personal Code of Honour. This is undoubtedly inconvenient and unfashionable. Few are encouraged toward that path today. More's the pity.

It's hard to stand by such a Code unless you have access to resilient resources. Some have argued for a modest house and big garden. They have a point.