6/30
It is a couple days before I board a train for the two day ride back to Missouri from Seattle. The most usual thought on my mind is what do I want to eat before I go home. The answer is usually sushi and ice cream. Things I like but whatever I could eat at home is pale in comparison. Sure Kody’s ice cream is tasty and made with love, but it doesn’t compare to ice cream in the city from the build your own ice cream type places in Seattle, and as for sushi, maybe there is one place an hour away from DR. I also know that I will be on my own for eating when I get home. Sunfower Co-op has been disbanded and no one is really eating in the Parsnip group anymore. The change in season usually brings about changes in eating arrangments too, but it is a little bit sad that there is no co-op for me to go home to eat with in the common house this time, unless I join a different co-op in another kitchen. I always have to face the fact that whenever I go home again, things will be very different from when I left, even if it has only been a couple months.
While I was out today I saw a bumble bee drinking spilled soada from the side walk and I saw a pest control truck with a praying mantis on the side, which really aren’t pests at all. These are things that remind me why I love DR, even though while I am away I still have the waffling thoughts and feelings about my life and how it relates to living at DR. It is like the syndrome I described earlier, when I am not at home I wonder what I am doing with my life and feel I maybe should be doing something else, but when I am at home I want to live at DR all the time forever. At least I know myself and I know this is how it is, but which side will pan out in the long run is hard to say.
I got a broken toe on my adventures out when a table fell on my foot and I’ll be getting a vaccine tomorrow, so I’m coming home with a sore arm and a hurt toe. I also decided not to get a house built this year and I am attempting to find more stable employment for the winter or the next season and perhaps only work on a ship during busy holiday weeks if at all. On a cruise ship my friends, co-workers, supervisors, and working environment changes every few weeks to few months, and I’m not saving any money with my transient lifestyle making only 5k per year. It’s not a great situation if I want to build a 10k house. I want to be saving money and I wasn’t able to do that last year. I’m actually not sure what the coming year is going to bring for my life, a new job or attempt to stay at DR and build a more stable foundation for my life there before my money runs out.
I’ve been looking into camp jobs that hire for fall to spring to teach nature classes to field tripping school groups. These jobs, like a cruise ship, maybe only pay 2-3 hundred a week, but they take care of your room and board and food and probably internet and fun, etc even if you work your butt off. It makes me wish DR was like that. I want to work my butt off for the village for 40 to 80 hours per week as long as I have my bills taken care of for me and I make $800 to $1000 per month teaching people about the environment and doing whatever it takes to run and grow the village. When I can get a job like that at a camp anywhere in the country it starts to make DR look like a very nice, but expensive vacation for half the year because what is a vacation but a place you spend money to get to and while you’re there you do whatever you like whether it is work your butt off or relax and enjoy and you pay a few thousand dollars to stay there. I might make some money but chances are that it won’t be more than a few hundred per month, unless I take lots of little jobs I might not necessarily like but I do it because I need the money, not the kind of jobs I want to have. One needs to make money in this world, but I want to do it because I am doing something I love to do.
For now the 6 month “vacation” to DR and the money making elsewhere is something that I do because I love what I am doing, and that will have to be the way it is for now.
The Ecolyte 