October Time Progress #3 - Re-evaluation and adjustment

I was not very good at keeping accurate record of my time this week. I also had a conversation with someone very important to me about this general endeavor and they caused me to reflect on the overall structure and its revelations about and its impact on my privilege and mental health.

As a person, I am pre-disposed to extremes. There are many reasons for this and we can discuss them at some point but it does mean that sometimes I need to reflect on why I'm choosing the things I'm choosing. In this case it is because this project helped me to walk back my more extreme reaction to the immigrant concentration camps. It feels like extreme action has to be taken so I set extreme goals in order to honor those feelings I was feeling.

The time goals I made were not sustainable. Perhaps they would have been had my life been structured differently or had I been a healthier person. I thought that I had gotten around this by just having a tradeoff system for compensating failures with monetary contributions. Part of me still thinks this is a good way to proceed. Honestly at this point part of me feels like whatever works is fine. My support person pointed out that I have a very white tendency to rely on punishment and shame and transactions. They were not wrong. And this is perhaps unhealthy for me in addition to being problematic. But this tendency is also very aligned with the manifestations of my autism, anxiety and depression. I need to measure. If I don't measure then I won't know where I am. If I don't know where I am then I may end up in analysis paralysis, or depressive non-action, or some other pitfall.

My mom used to collect buttons when I was a little kid. I eventually inherited her button collection and one of the buttons that comes to mind right now is "Don't tell me to relax. Stress is the glue that holds me together." This is how I was raised. My family struggles with mental health concerns but the struggle is productive and well-supported. We also grew up in poverty. These factors come together in another button my mom had proclaiming that we "Put the fun in dysfunctional." I never felt the need to be normal, in fact that word had negative connotations in my home growing up. We were encouraged to be ourselves and adapted to our circumstances in a wide variety of ways. I feel very fortunate that I could find space for creating systems and making things work for myself, even if it relied on mentally manipulating and goading myself.

Despite my pride in getting where I am and having the tools at my disposal that I built over years of working with limitations and strengths of my experience, capacity, and being, I want to take seriously the ways that I am blind to the way whiteness played into that development. I still don't fully understand it but I want to honor the critique that has been given in this regard.

Interestingly this week I also listened to a very relevant episode of Best of the Left titled #1311 Our Culture and Our Economy are Making Us Depressed which got me reflecting on the ways in which much of our activism relies on the same workaholism and dehumanization of our time and energy to function. This is what I do. I set up systems of success and failure for myself to goad myself into min-maxing my time, attention, energy, and effort to a greater cause. I always set it up in a way to be sufficiently noble. Folks have a hard time critiquing me because it is for a good cause. This may subconsciously be by design. Make no mistake, all of this is very very white. I'm not through it yet and so I'm not able to explain it well. My lack of ability to explain it though just means I'm not likely to engage other white people directly about it unless they are no more confused about this than I am.

I was talking with another friend this week about this, and they brought up the 2005 graduation speech by David Foster Wallace called This is Water. We mostly talked about the initial story of an older fish swimming by some younger fish and saying "How's the water?" and one of the younger fish responding "What is water?" There is so much that we don't really see, much less deeply understand. And for many of us with privilege that is the case.

Anyway, all of these things have come together this week to make me reflect on this project and how to do it the best justice I can and less from a place of ego and less from a place of recreating the oppressive systems that permeate this culture, while also being true to the parts of myself that are true and valid and keeping in mind things I know to be true. It is true that making commitments and following through over time yields more benefit than a haphazard approach for me. It is also true that what gets measured improves. On the flip side it is also true that bean counting takes time and energy that could be better spent.

I'm going to continue splitting up my two commitments. Money commitments lend themselves well to efficient measurement. There is a risk of it seeming like bragging but I hope by focusing on a percentage that it will be seen as encouraging, not stifling. There is so much work that needs to be done and supporting the people doing that work is essential. Viewing it as a tithe is useful for me due to my previous religious background. Dedicating a portion back to my community separate from what is legally required by taxes and frequently used in ways that make the world worse. Time commitments on the other hand are difficult to track, easy to fall into negative mental patterns around, and discourages me from embracing my humanity in my projects. So numeric time accountings will cease going forward. I still have projects I want to take on and goals I want to achieve and I want to keep track of some of the work I do in order to encourage others to join me, but it will no longer be measured in hours.

So, what did I work on this week? Well, first I'd say that the mental, emotional, and community work that brought me to this re-evaluation, conclusion and adjustment is aligned with the general mission and perhaps is the most "showing up" thing I've done so far in this endeavor. In addition to that, I took some time to reloan some Kiva funds, worked on my collaborative community project with JAX, some online microvolunteering, and a bunch of podcast editing and production work. I'll be speaking more about the podcast in the next week or so.

October Time Progress #2

October Time Progress #2

To be on track according to a per day accounting, by end of day 10/12 I should have had a time achievement of 29 hours. Let's see how I did:

Podcast Editing/Producing: 9.5 hours

I have my Mac back and am able to start editing the episodes we have recorded. I am also looking at what is needed for the deployment and launch pipelines and organizing the various prep documents for the group.

Blog Posts: 0.5 hour

Last week's Progress report.

Micro-Volunteering: 0.75 hours

Free Rice vocabulary practice during the week and The Hunger Site except for the Autism one. I'm autistic and don't approve of where the money is going.

Project for Awesome Research: 0.25 hours

More on this upcoming but I will be taking part in the Project for Awesome and encouraging others to join me. I will be creating a video for RAICES and encouraging others to watch and vote and maybe grab some excellent Project for Awesome merch.

Monetary Tithe Goal time spent: 0.25 hours

Time spent administrating the monetary tithe goals counts towards the time tithe. Kiva always takes me more time to administrate and I started early this month because they were running a promo that if you fund a loan this week in certain categories they will give you a credit to fund another loan so I did an initial rollover early. I wrote a blog post about Kiva if you want to know more about Kiva.

Conclusion:

So it looks like I completed 11.25 hours for a total of 16.75 hours this month. I wanted to be at 29 hours at this point in the month which puts me at 58%. 58% is still above the September rate of achievement vs goal which was about 32%. Check in next week for the next update.

October Time Progress #1

I did not get any feedback regarding my post about failing my time commitment last month. I think for at least this month my plan will be to provide weekly progress reports on my time journey so that we can see whether or not I'm on track over a shorter time span. This also will give more time for reflection and for others to weigh in with their thoughts about how to achieve this goal and compensate for lack of achievement.

To be on track according to a per day accounting, by end of day 10/5 I should have had a time achievement of 12 hours. Let's see how I did:

Podcast Editing/Producing: 6 hours

I have my Mac back and am able to start editing the episodes we have recorded. I am also looking at what is needed for the deployment and launch pipelines and organizing the various prep documents for the group.

Blog Posts: 1 hour

Get accountability posts for September compiled, written and edited.

ICE Rights Alexa Skill: 0.5 hours

Started researching the common advice given to undocumented immigrants in the United States regarding their rights and start thinking about the VUI for the skill.

Micro-Volunteering: 0.25 hours

Free Rice vocabulary practice while not feeling well.

Patreon Upkeep: 0.25 hours

Made a reasonable banner and figured out how to get it off my phone and onto the site.

Monetary Tithe Goal time spent: 0.25 hours

Inspired by a teacher friend whose campaign was successful I selected a Donor's Choose campaign to contribute to. This one helped with reducing infrastructure based friction to the flow of activities in a special education classroom. Time spent administrating the monetary tithe goals counts towards the time tithe.

Conclusion:

So it looks like I completed 8 hours which is a 66% rate thus far. It is still possible to achieve but this is also a challenging goal. At the moment, I take solace in the fact that 66% is above the September rate of achievement vs goal which was about 32%. Check in next week for the next update.

September 2019 Accounting Report: Time

I've decided that it would be best to break up my monthly accounting report into two sections. This way if folks have triggers regarding either money or time they can easily skip the ones they have issue with while still accessing the one they want.

Time:

The other axis of my "Showing Up" Pledge is time investment of 10%. This can take a wide range of forms but it cannot be simply time spent making myself a better person. That is important but standard work. There was a time where taking time to become informed would count and it is possible that for some of you following along on this journey that it is the best way to spend your time. If you join me in this pledge you can make your own rules about what counts and what does not count. Another type of work that I am not counting is standard social media slacktivism. If I'm only reacting, it doesn't count. Exceptions will be made for situations where I do research for a response that I believe will mentor and move someone forward on their path in this fight. It is somewhat arbitrary but I know when I feel like I'm doing work and I know when I feel like the work I'm doing has a good chance of seeing a return on its investment.

September has 30 days in it, which is a total of 720 hours to use for everything that must fit into the month. 10% of my time is 72 hours.

Blog Posts: 5.25 hours

I've been working on a few different blog posts to get this community up and rolling with a sense of what we are even doing here. It has been slower going than I had hoped but I was able to publish a few blog posts in addition to some drafts that are waiting in the wings for later:

• Labor Day Resolutions and Project Kickoff
• Showing Up with Kiva
• Statement-Wear
• The September Accounting Reports

Podcast: 13.25 hours

I'm working with a very special team to produce a podcast. We are working on getting a little bit of a backlog of episodes. I am getting my computer up to the task and learning how to edit audio. I'm also learning about all the other pieces of producing a podcast. There is a lot to learn and I'm not ready to announce the podcast or even the copy to describe what it is yet but hopefully I will have those pieces in place before the end of next month. 

Micro-Volunteering & Micro-Citizenship: 4.5 hours

Flu Shot: 0.5 hours

I know that I should have gotten flu shots before this point. I'm a bit ashamed to say that this is the first year I've actually followed through. When I was younger I didn't really understand the impact that the flu can have on vulnerable folks. As I got older I became one of the vulnerable folks as I have psoriatic arthritis and my medication lowers my immune system. Mostly after that point I was too lazy or busy or exhausted or something... always too "something" to look into whether I could have the flu shot on my medication. This year I decided it was important as part of showing up to do this small citizenship step. Flu shots can protect folks who can't get flu shots and folks who could be in significant danger if they catch the flu. With the Trump Administration and ICE's decision to not vaccinate the folks detained in camps, we could end up seeing just how bad a lack of herd immunity can be. I hope that they reverse this decision but in the meantime, we should all get our flu shots if we can, every little bit of herd immunity helps.

Conversations that Count: 3 hours

Time Required for the Monetary Donation Work: 1 hours

Failures / Consequences / Next Steps: -49 hours

10% of time especially is a challenge. I want to acknowledge that I failed to reach my goal this month and find a path forward that honors the commitment I made while also not sabotaging my work next month. One option would be to compensate my time misses with monetary contributions. I have a measurement of what my time is currently worth to this society and I could attempt to trade that amount to cover the loss of time. This is too steep for me as for this month it would mean $1838.88 over my normal monetary obligation. If I instead were to pay a $15/hr minimum wage it would be $1080 for 72 hours which is high enough that I can't just easily trade but low enough that if I put in sincere effort to meet my time goals I will not hurt myself too badly financially to make up the difference.

I am also someone who tends to be rather hard on myself and beat myself up over failures. It is possible that just honestly owning my performance and moving forward would be a better model for others.

If you have any other recommendations for how I can honor this obligation even in my failure, I would appreciate your thoughts. I will give myself one week past the end of the month to determine and make whole the obligations of the month. Time can only be used during the month, though, as my time obligations are high enough that paying it late in the next month will only cause me to start off the next month behind.

Please comment on any thoughts you have for how I should handle this deficit. I will take all recommendations under advisement and make a determination by October 7th.

September 2019 Accounting Report: Money

I've decided that it would be best to break up my monthly accounting report into two sections. This way if folks have triggers regarding either money or time they can easily skip the ones they have issue with while still accessing the one they want.

Money:

One axis of my "Showing Up" pledge has to do with money. I will be contributing 10% of my income to solving problems in my communities, local, state, national and global. This month all my income came from my job. I am paid a gross of $25.54 per hour as a test specialist at Amazon. Since I worked or got PTO for 167.5 hours during days in September that gives me a gross income of $4277.95 which gives me a contribution goal of $427.80 this month. Here is how those contributions shook out.

Kiva Top-Off: $16.86

You can learn more about showing up with Kiva by reading the blog post I wrote about it this month. This month I did my Top Off early so I imagine that my October Kiva loans will be more numerous.

This month's Kiva loans counting repayments and my top off amount:

Endis Roxana from El Salvador for a freezer to help with her fish selling business.
Juan from Honduras for a solar powered freezer for preserving his milk for sale.
The Margaritas De Chuatzam Group from Guatemala made up of a variety of entrepreneurs including tailors, nixtamal millers, spare part sellers, and folks raising animals and running small stores.

Hopelink: $6.87

A young girl was volunteering with her family outside of the grocery store when I went shopping. She asked me if I would like to help the homeless. I asked her to tell me more. She very matter-of-factly explained exactly what to do. I took her shopping list and bought a few items on it to support my local food-insecure folk and to honor the time and dedication the family put into raising resources for the community. Some of the items were also on Sale!

Couscous: $3.19
Canned Tuna: $1.89
Oatmeal: $1.79
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Total: $6.87

It wasn't much but it was something I could do to make things a little bit better while doing the shopping I was already doing. Imagine if everyone who had the means to do so donated $7 worth of shelf-stable goods to their local foodbank, soup kitchen, or homeless shelter, what a difference that could make in many communities.

Patreon: $67

I acquired some new folks to patronize so my monthly bill for support went up to $67. This also means that my own first goal for My Patreon has also gone up to $67 as the first goal I have with this endeavor is to be able to cover the support of all the creative folk that I've found doing work in this fight and marginalized folks doing work of authentically showing up on the platform. If you've read a couple of my posts and this endeavor I'm on is something you want to contribute to, consider becoming a patron. It will be very encouraging to see people supporting this even in tiny ways.

Political Contributions: $50

I have not yet decided who I want to fully support in the Democratic Primary but I think that it is important for me to support the folks who I think are most likely to be able to confront Trump in the General, most able to rebuild our global community and most likely to address the needs of our communities at the local, state, national and global levels and lay a solid foundation for continued improvement at all these levels. To that end I am contribute to several campaigns of democratic candidates for president. This year campaign contributions and polling is how candidates get a podium at the debates. By contributing I am sending a message that these are the folks I want to hear more from as we winnow towards an eventual nominee. I encourage you to donate towards your preferred candidate(s). I will probably do a blog post about the folks I'm leaning towards later on but for now, imperfect engagement is still showing up.

Statement-Wear: $33.24

I made a blog post about Statement-Wear earlier this month and what counts towards my goal and what does not. This month I picked up a #NoTechForICE travel mug. It is bright and easy to see from across the room and I feel it is important to be visible on this issue while working at Amazon, though not on any of the technology used by ICE.

RAICES: $253.83

Until as a country we stop ripping families apart at the border. Until as a country we reunite all families that have been torn apart. Until as a country toddlers do not need to represent themselves in immigration court. Until as a country we stop the atrocities that are concentration camps. Until we find our soul when it comes to caring for the strangers in our land, I will round out my monetary commitment with a donation to RAICES.

RAICES is a non profit organization that provides legal assistance and so much more to immigrants in the United States. It helps reunite families and helps children who have no one else. If you have money to help and care about this problem and don't know what else to do, consider donating to RAICES.