Surviving the Workday

So as part of cognitive restructuring, I carried around a little Moleskine journal and wrote down the thoughts as they came to me so that I could hear my internal monologue. Clearly these were not the only thoughts I had (see below), but these were the ones that I seemed to hear over and over. Here’s a sample that I’ve grouped by theme:

On Time
I don’t have enough time.
I’m falling behind
I must work faster.
Why am I so slow?

On Errors
What if I make a mistake?
Oh, god, there’s a mistake!
I screwed up.
Now I screwed up again.
What would happen if I hadn’t caught that mistake?!
I’d have to have one of those awkward conversations.
Oh my god they’re going to fire me.

On interruptions
Oh, no! More email!
Oh the phone!
Oh the fax! *&%
Am I under siege by electronic devices?

So now I’m going to do what Alice Domar suggests in Self-Nurture: Learning to Care for Yourself As Effectively As You Care for Everyone Elseand choose one theme and describe it in a sentence. In the On Errors theme, I seemed to be afraid that making a mistake would lead to others being disappointed, being fired, and then not being able to pay bills, mortgage, hair cuts, which obviously would be the end of the world as we know it with the exception of cockroaches, who would obviously survive because they can make as many mistakes as they like….

Now, here are four questions to answer about the negative thought pattern.

1. Does this thought contribute to my stress? Yes. A wee bit.

2. Where did I learn this thought? Possibly in ten years as an editor, in which errors are regarded as great signs of human weakness. But, if in doubt, I could blame my parents, who are pretty critical (and, if they read this, I think they can live with that assessment).

3. Is this a logical thought? It’s a bit exaggerated.

4. Is it a true thought? The world will probably not end if I make a mistake.

Now I’m supposed to restructure the thought. So perhaps it’s: Making a mistake is not the end of the world.

I hope we’ve all learned something and I haven’t really exposed myself so that random boys from high school find this and know that all they have to do is poke find errors in my speech at the next reunion to have me collapse in tears.

Marriage equality raises many issues of social justice and discrimination in the workplace, particularly with benefits and how they are allocated to partners. This week I had a letter published in our local weekly newspaper about this. I wrote and rewrote it a number of times before finding strategic advice for advancing freedom to marry.

Dear Editors:

I would like to respond to X’s The Catholic View: Same Sex Unions and the Compromise of American Values

Many of my friends are in committed, long-term relationships with people of the same sex. They face many of the same struggles that I do with my husband: How can we balance work and home life? How can we make our work lives meaningful? and, of course, What’s for dinner?

Yet, my friends are denied the freedom to marry their long-term loving partners. They can be denied hospital visitation rights, health insurance rights, and tax and inheritance benefits. In fact, there are more than 100 legal rights that I have with my husband that are denied to my friends.

I am not interested in forcing the Catholic Church to acknowledge marriage of people of the same sex. But marriage is also a legal contract, one that is licensed by individual states, and in this country, we discriminate against same sex relationships. It is unfair and it is wrong.

Today I’m trying to listen to the voices in my head. And, lest you think I’m one step short of heavy medication and cutting off my own ear, they are the sort of self-talk that everyone has. According to Alice Domar in Self-Nurture:

We all have our own “greatest hits”—specific tracks of negative self-talk that we replay at the slightest provocation, or no provcation at all. And women in America have quite a number of collective hits: “I’m fat,” “I’ll never amount to anything,” “I’m a bad mother” are just a few.

In any case, today I am listening to myself to hear what sorts of messages I give myself all day. And then I’ll begin some cognitive restructuring, which can balance the thoughts by asking myself: Does this thought contribute to my stress? Where did I learn this thought? Is this a logical thought? Is this thought true?

Check out Femminista della casa: Boycott ExxonMobil for some new information on why you might be interested in getting gas somewhere other than Exxon or Mobil, if, say, you value the arts or the Arctic.

Dear Ms. Theologian,

Sincerely,
Part Time Pusher

Dear Part Time Pusher:

First, Ms. Theologian had no idea that she lived in a house with 23-year-olds. Because Ms. Theologian and her staff also have trouble taking out the trash, putting things away, wiping down counters, and god help us, cleaning the bathroom.

Humor aside, Ms. Theologian does want to point out that motivation is not an issue limited to the young ones. She, herself, has extreme difficulties in this area.

Motivation can be intrinsic (from inside) and extrinsic (from outside). Motivation is a challenging issue for supervisors because it’s hard (impossible?) to instill it within employees who don’t have it. Yet it’s important to note that hard working employees make “lazy” coworkers more productive. (Note that the research actually takes place in a grocery store. How serendipitous.)

So what can you do? Praise for good work is certainly important. Caring about them certainly helps (See 12: The Elements of Great Managing for more). Mentoring. Modeling appropriate behavior also helps. Organizing a task list might help as it sounds like there is an array of disparate tasks.

Ms. Theologian is ambivalent about bossiness. Now, sometimes it is called for. And, in fact, she has noticed that often people are more comfortable when they are told what to do. Let’s see if it works.

Get to work,

Ms. Theologian

P.S. Did it work?

I’m pretty sure the reason I get articles of pink fleece as gifts is that someone (my mother, usually) thinks that I need to nurture myself more. Pink fleece is nurturing to her; it makes me want to shed my skin in violent ways. So in hopes of finding non-pink, non-fleece ways to nurture, I’m reading Self-Nurture: Learning to Care for Yourself as Effectively as You Care for Everyone Else. I do care well for others, but not necessarily for myself. For example, if left by myself, I’ll have trouble locating actual food, though I’m actually a decent cook, and can prepare multi-course meals for others. I’m not sure what that’s all about, exactly. However, the author, Alice D. Domar explains this phenomenon well:

Why do some women have so much trouble with self-nurture? The answer can only be found in each of our personal histories. Nevertheless our families and our culture have (sometimes unwittingly) conditioned women to be self-denying, caretaking, appeasing, and people pleasing. The simple but devastating message we’re brought up to believe is that if we nurture ourselves we are being selfish.

I can actually remember saying something similar to a therapist: that coming to therapy was selfish, a misuse of our family’s sparse resources in terms of money and time. Apparently many people think this way. Domar gives examples of our own resistance to self-nurture. See if these statements sound familiar to you:

“Who am I not to help my sibling when he/she so desperately needs me? It would be narcissistic.”

“How can I go off and do X when my hsuband gets so little quality time with me? It would be so self-obsessed.”

“Who am I to take a vacation when I’m so strapped for cash? How self-indulgent!”

Oh my. I think I’ve thought all of those! So her advice here is very timely:

These judgments usually sound to us like voices of reason, sharp and sensible echoes of common sense and moral correctness (Editorial note: What a great sentence). In truth, they are harsh rebukes of any rising impulse to treat ourselves with tenderness.

So I’m going to do a series of posts on self-nurturing, self-caring, and self-soothing. Please note that she’s not encouraging nurture with material possessions. That kind of emptiness that can’t be filled with money.

There is a time in the life of every writer when she looks at the New York Times and calls it a Damn Rag. My first time was when I fact checked something in The Damn Rag for my own work at Houghton Mifflin and found The Damn Rag literally full of mistatements and conflicting eroneous facts.

Now ten years later, my eyes gaze upon the glory of the prose of Mary-Kate Olsen in The Damn Rag, and I do, in many respects, wonder about the future of civilization.

Read Mary-Kate on her Chanel bag. Turn to the side. Vomit. And, if you dare, read her by-line in the New York Times. Friends, I suggest self-medication afterward.

Via Gawker

Remember how George Costanza had amazing success the time he did the opposite?

Elaine : Ah, George, you know, that woman just looked at you.
George : So what? What am I supposed to do?
Elaine : Go talk to her.
George : Elaine, bald men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents, don’t approach strange women.
Jerry : Well here’s your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them.
George : Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.
Jerry : If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be
right.
George : Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the opposite, and I will do something!

I think that’s my all time favorite episode.

I’m noticing how much of what I do is the same all the time: computer time, email time, writing time, consulting time. It’s all variations of the same sort of linear thinking that moves work forward, but always in the same ways.

And then I tried Nanowrimo in November to get out of the rut of structured writing. And what I wrote was actually pretty good. Because I did the opposite! It was unstructured, loose, sloppy, and somehow that’s exactly what I needed. My free writing time at Desert Nights had similar results. I really liked my poems and writing and it all came from behaving in completely the opposite of my normal behavior. I didn’t self-edit, I didn’t really edit at all, and what came out was more free.

Then I realized that I’m always trying to counter what I do with an opposite effect. For example, fill out a technical chart is balanced by shopping for cosmetics on drugstore.com.

I’m wondering how else to apply this principal. Perhaps rather than yoga class, I should take hip hop. It’s an entirely religious shift to turn everything on its head. That’s actually what Jesus was doing most of the time.

Prayer to Give Aid
May I become at all times,
both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.

- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

from beliefnet’s Prayer of the Day: Work
image of Big Sur from PDphoto.org

Perhaps.

But, first, it’s “Canada goose.” Not Canadian Goose. And certainly not just Canadians. That refers to people.

I found a great interview in which David Feld, director of GeesePeace, answers questions from readers and questions from editors on Grist about geese, people, and management of both. An excerpt:

What long and winding road led you to your current position?

Actually, it was a very direct road. My community had a problem with Canada geese. Some people wanted to kill the geese, others did not. As a community leader, I chose to find a humane solution and committed to helping other communities do the same. I said, “We went to the moon — we can figure out how to solve a goose problem humanely and without controversy.” That is how GeesePeace began; now it is an organization with international reach and effectiveness.

Read all the Q & A here. Notice how Feld found a need in the community that could be addressed with his skill set in keeping with finding a calling by identifying where the world’s greatest need intersects with your own greatest talent.

Well, I am home now, but I will give a short summary of Day 4, the last day of Desert Nights, Rising Stars. Liesl and I had a bit of a late start, groggy from the night before visiting with Carrie Kilgore and Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz. But we did find our way from the hotel to the first 8:15 a.m. session of Claudia Rankine’s poetry class: How shall we tell each other: the new documentary poetics. Rankine’s thesis is that all language must be available to the poet—the notion that there certain language that is available to poetry (while other language is off limits) is bunk. This means that you must “contaminate” the poem with as much daily material as you can. We also talked about Henry Louis Gates‘ thesis that texts “talk” to each other. For example:

Black Boy
Native Son
Invisible Man
Beloved

The most venerable texts in African-American literature are all responses to and informed by one another. Notice the connection Boy-Son-Man-Beloved and Black-Native-Invisible-Beloved as progressions. So our poetry is actually in conversation with what we have read and reflects and mirrors events. We read aloud from Mark Nowak’s Shut Up, Shut Down, and Juliana Spahr’s work–both of which deal directly with the world around them.

Then after the workshop, I wanted a cup of coffee, but because it was Saturday, everything on campus was closed, so I walked off campus to a weird corporate cafe, and had a cup with a chocolate scone, which was about a day’s worth of Calories. Sated, I waddled back to the conference, and into a lecture. Now, I thought I was in Lee Gutkind’s lecture On Creative Nonfiction, but apparently I was in Michael Stackpole’s Genre Fiction: Fast Track Writing Development. No matter, really, Stackpole was hilarious.

Then, there was a reading by Elizabeth Searle and Tania Katan, who many be my two favorite new writers in the universe. Searle is writing an opera based on Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerigan, and read aloud from it (really really funny) and Katan wrote a memoir, My One Night Stand with Cancer about breast cancer at 21 and again ten years later.

Then we went into workshop with Mac, and then emerged two hours later. I went to a panel with Mac and Mary Sojourner, Tom Wayman, and Paul Morris on teaching writing, which sort of reawakened all those weird ambivalent feelings I have about MFA programs, teaching, and academia in general. Most disturbingly, Mac pointed out that academia is a corporate environment. I suppose I knew that, but it’s still disturbing.

And then I drove back to Southern California.

I’m taking a break from posting about the Desert Nights, Rising Stars writing conference to post about Gretchen’s work with Junk Mail Gems. I found Gretchen’s work at Treehugger a few weeks ago, and ordered a wallet (see photo) as well as some paper made of junk mail. Both are fabulous. The wallet is an excellent size for the essentials and the paper is thick and luxuriously takes ink.

You’ve transitioned Junk Mail Gems from a hobby to a business. How long did this process take? What were the primary struggles along the way?

Since I had some experience setting up another online business already, I was able to work through many similar challenges before starting Junk Mail Gems, which made it easier. Some of the challenges for me in starting up that first business that carried over to Junk Mail Gems were logistical things, like figuring out how to make my website shop-able, how to be recognized with the state as a business who is selling taxable items, and all the rules & paperwork that comes with that. But, I am still amazed by how easy it can be for one person to start a business online, with so little money invested! Once I decided to really make Junk Mail Gems product available on the web, with my previous experience, it was only a matter of a few weeks before I had a functioning online shop. However, something new to me with this particular business was the potential for wholesale and a place in the retail world. After getting several inquiries, I learned what sort of margins are expected by retailers, and their concerns with my site possibly offering product at a lower price than their physical locations. So, I recently had to take a second look at my pricing and adjust some items to be able to respond to these opportunities, to be fair to any future retail partners, and still offer my products at a reasonable price online.

What experience did you bring from former jobs that has helped with Junk Mail Gems?

I have definitely brought a wealth of experience from former jobs into Junk Mail Gems. Having majored in graphic design for two years, and ultimately earning my bachelor’s in product design, my hybrid of 2-D and 3-D design experience has been instrumental in creating my products, as well as my branding, website, packaging, collateral, etc. I’ve worked in both graphic and product design for everyone from small firms to huge corporations, which has given me experience with the business side. Of course, I can’t leave out my creative parents, who instilled in me a desire to make things out of found items at a young age! Being an artist as well, I started my face painting business help pay for college over 10 years ago. I still do this as well today, and have drawn from a lot of knowledge about starting an online business from Paintertainment. I learned that once you get a good foundation to start from, it’s just a matter of paying attention and adapting to your market and business’ needs to make your business flourish.

One of the struggles of people who are self-employed is being able to connect to others regularly. What do you do in your work life to introduce community?

While I am definitely an entrepreneur at heart (both of my parents had their own small businesses when I was growing up), for the past 3 1/2 years I’ve also been working as a retail display designer for consumer electronics retailer Best Buy. My favorite part of this job is the people that I work with every day. However, my own businesses have been growing so much lately, I expect to be fully self-employed very soon! I also have a rapidly growing freelance industrial design business, which enables me to work with an evolving pool of interesting clients and fellow designers. In addition, my face painting business allows me to interact with an entirely different clientele…lots and lots of little kids! For just over a year, I have also been serving as president of the Minnesota chapter of IDSA, a professional organization for industrial designers. This has given me ample opportunity to lead, learn, network and socialize with other designers from all over the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas on a regular basis. So, as you can see, my days are extremely full!

I’m sitting in front of a green parrot in a cage in the hotel lobby while our room is cleaned. This hotel is like a Las Vegas hotel from another era. A dirtier era. A strange era where nothing in maintained, except the bar and the parrot.

This morning I went to a Poetry: The Last Taboo: Writing about Daily Work, in which we wrote about work (and talked about why people don’t write more about it). This was led by Tom Wayman. Here’s part of what I wrote about work as a temporary “contract” editor at a publishing company while I was in divinity school:

When Matt left (or was fired or “let go”)
I tried to take his chair,
which had lumbar support and was even keeled,
but Helen got there first.

She was permanent,
not only in employment status,
but in mood.
Permanently smug.
And she took that chair even though I already claimed it.
She took it as though she was entitled to it.
Because she was permanent.

Yes, my friends. It’s my first poem. And it’s been shared with you because there’s a reason I don’t write poetry.

Later, I wrote about my lunch hour:

They ate together at one circular table, a mass of editorial intrigue and organic gardening advice. I lasted at their table for one week before I felt compelled to throw myself out the window so as not to suffer another description—mid-soup—of the challenges of tomato worms. Worry not, because the windows were huge, locked, and inpenetrable. Later, at another job, when a coworker left, I found an Allen wrench in his desk drawer that opened the window. I kept it in my pocket, mainly because I wanted to know that there’s a way out.

Yes, I know. What that reveals of my psyche is…um…a bit disturbing.

Then I went to Diana Gabaldon’s workshop: Why Bother Reading Bad Books? which was fascinating in that she named names! No one ever names names! But I tend to read everything, so I enjoy having that validated.

Then I went to Fiction: Don’t Make Me Laugh! Writing with Humor with Kevin McIlvoy, which was fascinating in terms of how to make tragedy comedy. And we talked about showing our butts, which is usually funny.

My chapter of my novel was workshopped very gently, and I have some great ideas for working with the rest of the novel.

Tonight, Liesl and I are having dinner with Gwen and Carrie from Zoetrope.

This morning I had a very early start at 8:15 a.m. with the multi-genre class, “Writing Naked, Writing from Exile, Writing in Blood,” with Mary Sojourner. I could tell you what happened, but it’s one of those workshops that obeys the rules of therapy (all knowledge must stay in the room). I will say that we wrote both in blood and in exile, but skipped the naked part, which is just as well. I wrote this (in blood):

I am full of this—this blood, this connection to my ancestors, thwarted as we’ve whitened ourselves, grown pale from tbe inside out so that we don’t even know, we can’t even remember, our millennia on the Mediterranean, our love of salt—olives, feta, and sea—we’ve become so white that our blood runs like Elmer’s and we shop at Old Navy.

Clearly that was a free associative write. Ahem. Jim Sallis’s fiction class, “On Not Knowing: Improvisation” was of great help to those of use who know very little and are comfortable with it.

And Richard Siken’s poetry class, “Little Engines: Moving Forward without Narrative” was absorbing, though I walked in late due to a coffee-donut break with Liesl.

In Kevin McIlvoy’s workshop, we got to know one another as people and as writers. I shared my growing realization that I write mostly satirical fiction. I’m not sure what it means to realize this, but it explains why I like The Colbert Report so much….

Much later Liesl and I heard from Richard Siken in a reading and then Aaron Shurin.

No matter how early I start driving across the desert, it still takes all day and I end up quite sweaty and sort of desert-blind.

I’m here at ASU for Desert Nights, though I haven’t really done more than walk around campus for an hour (campus is huge) and eat some Indian food with my new best friend, Liesl Jobson.

Tomorrow, there are classes and workshops all day. I still need to register as I didn’t manage to find the appropriate place, The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, by 5 p.m. As I said, the campus is huge. I mean, it’s huge. It’s the biggest campus I’ve ever seen.

I may take a class with Mary Sojourner tomorrow. And then there’s a class on writing for children with Michael Bourret of Jane Dystel, which looks interesting.

And I just read this great interview with a Radical Doula who reconciles her pro-life stance with her birth activism at a workshop. That’s complete unrelated to Desert Nights, but very related to spirituality in the workplace.

I’m going to the Desert Nights conference in Tempe, Arizona, for a few days. If you’d like to stalk me, keep in mind I usually travel with this enormous German shepherd, she rarely wears a leash, and she is supremely protective of me. Look how she is smacking her lips. Mmm…flesh.

I write a fair amount of fiction, in addition to nonfiction writing that actually pays money. That was a joke, but a poor one. In any case, as a treat to myself, once a year, at least, I try to go to a writing conference where I can study craft issues. Last year it was Tin House in July, the two years before Squaw in August, and before that Algonkian.

I’m in a small group workshop with Kevin McIlvoy and four other fiction writers. It’s the smallest workshop group I’ve been in and Kevin (also known as Mac) comes highly recommended by Katrina and Cliff from Breadloaf last year.

Oh, MPAA, must you break your own rules?

We know how you illegally pirated Kirby Dick’s film This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Possibly because you didn’t like how he exposed your fascist practices. And by fascist, I mean “a strict adherence to authoritarian views in imposing censorship.”

And now you use freeware without the explicit attribution that it requires. Thus demonstrating that you have no respect for creators and artists and their rights to their own material.

I’m searching for a phrase to describe your organization….”schmucky” comes to mind.*

Via Boing Boing

*I wish to thank my parents, who gave me such a great vocabulary.

After reading about workplace altars, I realized that I had inadvertently created a workplace altar to the Chicago Manual of Style and debt (see pile of bills in front of CMoS below). I do have some plants and a model of my teeth as well as Post-its scattered around, so it’s not entirely about style and debt, just mostly. I’m actually so disturbed about my altar that I cannot fix it. I’m simply in awe of how revealing this is about me.

Now I did frame the altar with office equipment(printer, fax), as well as three (count them) images of my dog. Setting the dog aside for a moment, the Daily Om describes the importance of an altar:

At its most essential, an altar is simply a raised structure that serves as a resting place for meaningful objects. It focuses the eye and provides a place for contemplation and, if so desired, ritual. All of these elements can be quite simple.

Yes, all of my elements are simple: the electric bill, the propane bill, the tax bill, some stamps….and 800 rules about how to write. Gee, I wonder why I sometimes feel burdened by debt. I’m practically praying to it.Spirited work describes a number of examples of altars in the workplace:

Because of business practice and labor laws, workplace altars need to be discreet. The underground workplace of Patsy Attwood, a station agent for the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System, is an example. You could walk by and never notice how subtly she has altered her space to integrate faith and work. Attwood’s glass-walled booth is enlivened by plants and flowers. Whenever she enters her space, she blesses it. On her phone console, a prayer she wrote helps her live her values moment to moment. People who travel for work also have altars. Inside his locker, a firefighter posts meaningful words and pictures. A meter maid keeps devotional materials in her truck. So does a carpenter, who also blesses his tools and each task.

I don’t have to be so discreet as I work at home, but I’m thinking that the bills may need to find a new home. I’ve been poking around Flikr for some ideas. This is a fabulous altar for a home office, but my own office isn’t big enough for this (nor do I actually own this much). This altar is similarly wonderful for a home workspace. And this one is lovely and includes business cards.

Does anyone have an altar at work? I’m searching for photos of altars that contain symbols of concepts that are held dear as well as objects that are important. But I also want photos of altars that are in more public workspaces.

The Barna Group always has interesting research on religion, spirituality, and culture. Its intended purpose is for use by evangelical Christian churches, so it always seems to have an interesting slant. (Do you like how I phrased that? “An interesting slant.” You’d think I hadn’t written portions of statistics texts to know the technical term for that.)

Periodically I look around the neighborhood, and then see a documentary like Jesus Camp, and become quite concerned that the country has been taken over by evangelical Christians who hate women, gays, lesbians (they may have no idea about bisexual and transgendered peoples), and spend their time trying to re-introduce prayer in public schools.

In the Barna Update, research suggests that many Christian leaders who considered well-known, such as Rick Warren, are actually not well known in the greater population. Billy Graham, of course, is the exception. Don’t you see? This means that the country may not have been entirely taken over by evangelical Christians. At least not ones that read books by Rick Warren.

I know a couple of folks who have chosen to live in their cars when their jobs didn’t provide enough to pay the rent and bills.

My husband did this for upwards of six months when he first moved to Santa Fe. He slept in the back of his little Mazda up in the national forest, came to town every morning to work out at the gym, shower, and then spend the day at work. In the evenings, he went to the library. Eventually, his employer took pity on him, and rented him a room for $400 a month.

My friend, Ann, a reporter, spent years of renting in another expensive town. She didn’t want roommates, but she could barely afford to live along. Then she decided to buy and live in a VW van. She could have lived with her parents. She could have stayed with friends. But she chose the van. Now she lives in a home that she managed to buy with the money she saved not paying rent.

Today in the LA Times, I read about Andy, who lives in his truck. He’s a student at Cal State Fullerton and he had a lot of credit card debt, so he has been rent-free for nineteen months. His blog, Andy’s Truck Adventure, describes his life living in the truck by choice.

I hear about this “by choice” and I wonder how much of this is really a choice. I mean, yes, you might be able to move in with your parents or sleep on a friend’s couch or take out a high interest loan on a credit card to pay for first and last on an apartment. But none of those is a particularly good choice. I think the fact that I know folks who have lived in their cars says far more about non-living wages, which are standard in this country, than it does about choice.

We’ve talked about altruism before. It’s a moral code that demands that we help others. Contrary to what this Dore engraving suggests, altruism was not one of the ten commandments. It actually has a biological basis.

Many organizations are run mainly by altruism. The County Park system in Los Angeles has very few paid employees, and is staffed mostly by volunteers. Our local government in unincorporated Los Angeles county is also all volunteer. And don’t forget about organizations that expect more-than-full-time work, so that anything over 40 hours is actually a donation of time. Perhaps that’s why an article in Time Magazine, Getting rich from those who work for free, spurred such a visceral reaction in me. People getting rich off my free labor!

Well, not exactly. The article lists as examples Wikipedia, Digg, Flikr, and YouTube. These aren’t exactly county parks or local government. And I’m not convinced that those are examples of altruism, exactly. Some of the content seems pretty self-aggrandizing in the least, and narcissistic, actually, in the worst case. But it’s an interesting trend to keep your eye on.

Via Steve Caldwell at Liberal Faith Development