i have hope.
i get excited thinking how this is only one third of my life, already enough for a book of stories. i get excited thinking about travels and projects. excited thinking about finding love, starting a family, living life all over again. getting old, growing wise, teaching from experience, falling more in love, living life all over again. i have hope. i am excited.
i get excited when i listen to music, the voice in my head narrating the scenery. i live in a movie-esque reality, caught up in the climax and fall, the eb and the flow. i am indecisive. i drink coffee. i drink tea. i sit on the couch watching tv. i work in the reed college library for twelve hours. i go to dance parties and dance, too scared to talk to anyone. i get crushes on the stranger studying next to me in the red and black cafe. i sleep cold in my truck with coat and sweaters for blankets. i go broke shooting a documentary. i miss my kittens in chicago.
PORTLAND, OR. after talking with donna, i realize that workers i’ve talked to in collectives show a satisfaction with their job that workers in non-collectives do not. i’ve talked to employees who like their job at a franchise coffee shop because it brings them in contact with so many people in just a single day, having conversations with strangers or because they simply like their co-workers or the local neighborhood. but from these employees come the same complaints: hassles from managers, working more hours than they requested, bad company policies, top-down management. from workers in collectives, a different attitude about their workplace comes out: self-driven to improve the organization and workplace, working more hours and sacrificing pay if the organization needs the money, taking responsibility for the organization’s methods and practices, being their own boss. the worker in a collective acts as if they own the organization because, in fact, they do. the employee of the non-collective acts as if they are just a gear in a machine because, well, they are.
