Tag Archives: work

Leaning on, not leaning in

Posted on by jqr

The goal for me is not to lean in or out, but to lean on. My marriage means nothing if I can’t lean on my wife and if she can’t lean on me. To do this best, we have to do what the military calls “cross-training,” where I figure out how to do what she does and she figures out how to do what I do, so if either one of us is not there the world will not stop.

After reading this Pacific Standard story, I perceive the crack in the bark of the writer’s tree so: by claiming her liberty to “lean out,” she keeps her spouse from exploring the same opportunities. One of our playground pals feeds her infant exclusively by breast, so her husband has no ability to wake in the night and feed the kid. Of course, it’s no problem for Mom, who asserts her ability (and readiness) to just roll over, let the kid latch on, and then return to sleep. This goes to my point of cross-training, that it’s our obligation as family members to be able to pitch in for each other. Limiting the feeding to one specific person rubs crosswise against that.

I have no idea whether this particular Dad would actually enjoy waking up at night to feed his daughter, but why should he have to give up that opportunity? Dad in this family is the breadwinner, and Mom stays home raising the kids. Specialization is for insects. I don’t say that everyone at any time has to be willing to step into another role, but in my own experience I have learned that different roles are fulfilling at different times in my life. I would hate to be stuck in one particular role.

‘The sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers,’— ‘Anna Karenina’

Posted on by jqr

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In spite of the magnificent harvest, never had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail—all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workspeople which was the foundation of it all.…But he saw clearly now…that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which there was on one side—his side—a continual intense effort to change everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the natural order of things. And in the struggle he saw that with immense expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention on the other side, all that was attained was that the work did not go to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy expended on this work was not simply wasted.…It was for his interests that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing mashines, that he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly and heedlessly, without thinking.

—Anna Karenina, Chapter 24, Part III

The passage goes on in details about the different ways the peasants jack up the workflow at Levin’s farm. I read the whole thing to my boss yesterday evening, as we sat around in the tent grumbling about our ungrateful workers and their inability to follow directions. Our sense of having achieved only half measures during our season at the secret city, and the concomitant frustration, is naturally eased by finding apropos quotes in great world literature.

 

Latest night ever!

Posted on by jqr

Eyes bleary from lack of sleep and mouth acrid from stale coffee, I
check in with my faithful readership. I don’t know how I got myself
roped into working the graveyard shift here at the Emotional Trauma
Center and Whine Ward. It’s been refreshingly quiet and the phone has
not rung since I got here at 10:30 p.m. Jason, tonight’s able
assistant, and the pet mouse sit in the front room, buying motorcycle
helmets online.

 It seems like a long time since I went biking this afternoon in the
warmer weather. I actually stripped down to short-sleeves for the
first time in about three weeks and was rewarded with a good hustling
pace, making 18 mph on my pair of seven-mile loops. Unfortunately for
me, the fickle wind shifted direction between the first loop and the
second. On my first loop, I was cycling in the doctrinally correct
manner, pushing against the wind on the out leg and reaping the
benefit of the tailwind on the return leg. That created a nice reverse
split, where the back half was faster than the front half.

 On my second trip around, I noticed myself daydreaming a little bit
about the book I was reading (Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories)
instead of really pushing hard, and a couple minutes later at the far
western extent of the loop, I checked my time and saw that though I
hadn’t pushed too hard, I had still beaten my corresponding split time
on the first lap. Of course, the return leg was a doozy because I was
pedaling into the wind. Takeaway lesson from that is: if it feels too
easy, it probably is and you should push more.

 On that last doomed leg, however, I discovered something new: an extra
(fourth) gear. Not really a gear, as if I had an automatic
transmission instead of two leggy-pegs, but a metaphorical gear. First
gear is just pushing the pedals along, second gear drops the elbows to
relax the arms and lower the upper body while the legs start to move
the pedals in circles, both pushing down and lifting up (I have found
that not overlubricating the chain is actually a pretty good way to
determine this because I can hear the ruff-ruff of the mostly pushing
stroke, as opposed to the smoother circular stroke sound). Third gear
involves pushing the ischial tuberosities back off the end of the
saddle, which moves the fulcrum of my femurs slightly more distal,
like choking up on a baseball bat, shortening the pedal stroke. This
new fourth gear, which came upon me as unexpectedly as a power-up in a
video game, involves the same position as third gear except for a
slight extra bend forward and just more pedal strokes, more quickly. I
wonder if I’ll be able to get to it again.