Who needs professional pogies when you can cobble together something from old couch leather and a clapped out rain jacket?
Bar- mitts are fantastic for rides below freezing. Just one light pair of gloves and away we go.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
I can do it all by myself
Who needs professional pogies when you can cobble together something from old couch leather and a clapped out rain jacket?
Bar- mitts are fantastic for rides below freezing. Just one light pair of gloves and away we go.
Monday, January 22, 2018
Kaisha-in
When asked what their job is, many Japanese would say, "Kaisha-in" as in "Company Person" or "Office Worker." The term really doesn't translate well into English, but in Japanese it tended to mean someone who was more or less dedicated to his or her job at the company. Like many aspects of Japanese culture, there is a sense of going all in with no other options. Being a dilettante is for rich kids and the frivolous.
I never used to think of myself as someone who would go 'all in' for my job. I thought that the people who stayed late and showed up early had something a bit wrong with them. And while that might be true of the many people I saw in Japanese offices late after dark and early in the morning, or on weekends with their co-workers, I kind of get it. After 8 years here at the City of Philadelphia, I realize that I identify to a perhaps unhealthy degree with my work. Each weekend is a slow and painful process of letting go of the million tasks to do, and then a bit of dread as I realize on Sunday night that it's coming back at me in the morning. It's not the type of dread to make me call in my 90+ sick days, but it is there all the same.
Responsibility has played a big part in that. I feel as though I've got a personal responsibility to the people who I work with, and increasingly, who work for me. I also feel a personal connection to the Indego bike share program which I have seen from its basic inception to now. I'm intermittently terrified that I'll fuck it up and bring the whole thing down. All to easy to do; things don't tend to run themselves.
I think that the next bit of my life is going to have to be dedicated to balancing things a bit better. That will probably start with figuring out that I can't do everything I want to do with a single lifetime. Dilettantism has its limits.
I never used to think of myself as someone who would go 'all in' for my job. I thought that the people who stayed late and showed up early had something a bit wrong with them. And while that might be true of the many people I saw in Japanese offices late after dark and early in the morning, or on weekends with their co-workers, I kind of get it. After 8 years here at the City of Philadelphia, I realize that I identify to a perhaps unhealthy degree with my work. Each weekend is a slow and painful process of letting go of the million tasks to do, and then a bit of dread as I realize on Sunday night that it's coming back at me in the morning. It's not the type of dread to make me call in my 90+ sick days, but it is there all the same.
Responsibility has played a big part in that. I feel as though I've got a personal responsibility to the people who I work with, and increasingly, who work for me. I also feel a personal connection to the Indego bike share program which I have seen from its basic inception to now. I'm intermittently terrified that I'll fuck it up and bring the whole thing down. All to easy to do; things don't tend to run themselves.
I think that the next bit of my life is going to have to be dedicated to balancing things a bit better. That will probably start with figuring out that I can't do everything I want to do with a single lifetime. Dilettantism has its limits.
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