What did you learn today?

[clyde]

Name one thing you learned today.

 

I learned that the guy I was in the sauna with is sleeping on his mom's couch with multiple kids that are not school-age yet getting 4am calls from his ex that he broke up with and that he kinda misses her but wants to get sober and knows he can't if he gets back together with her.

[clyde]

Today I learned that a friend and mentor of mine sees self-care well-being body-embodiment type stuff as an act of resilient agency in the context of for-profit medicine and that he wants to learn more about health to be of more use as a radical.

I found it inspiring in the particular ways it was presented today which is hard to explain clearly. I'm thinking of this in the context of Tai Chi and yoga at the community center.

[clyde]

Yesterday I learned that just because someone breaks down and starts weeping when you ask how they are doing and if they want to talk about anything, that doesn't mean that you aren't providing comfort and support. It just means that some self-empathy might be helpful as I'm providing non-language empathy to another.

[MrHoatzin]

I learned that running for the school district board requires an awful lot of electioneering and politics and that filling the paperwork to appear on ballot is prolly not enough to make entrenched incumbents sweat. You also need to knock on 10k doors and raise and spend $10k. That explains why normal people don’t have those kinds of jobs, and the few normal people who do, have teacher union backing and still have to claw their way into those roles against ridiculous pressure from capital. For a few months there i was thinking about running and I’m sure i could’ve done the job, but i don’t have the capacity to put on the campaign in any kind of real way.

[clyde]

3 hours ago, MrHoatzin said:

I learned that running for the school district board requires an awful lot of electioneering and politics and that filling the paperwork to appear on ballot is prolly not enough to make entrenched incumbents sweat. You also need to knock on 10k doors and raise and spend $10k. That explains why normal people don’t have those kinds of jobs, and the few normal people who do, have teacher union backing and still have to claw their way into those roles against ridiculous pressure from capital. For a few months there i was thinking about running and I’m sure i could’ve done the job, but i don’t have the capacity to put on the campaign in any kind of real way.

 

You discovered a significant barrier of entry that changed the cost/benefit equation for running. It sounds like you have a good handle on what your capacity for time and effort is currently. Sounds really disappointing and frustrating to find all that out after deciding that there would be some benefit to being in that position. I'm wondering what your motivation for running is.

[MrHoatzin]

Haha, i wonder that too. In retrospect it was a foolish idea based on something I found myself saying out loud in front of people and i wanted to follow up on. Until I put my finger on the full scope of what i was getting myself into and realized that naah. I figured it would be easier to get there than it was. You’d thinks school board would be the least hard way to get to directly affect the machine that runs all the things. It feels kinda good to feel this foolish every now and again.

[clyde]

When we are interacting with these large and complex systems that have such alienating influence on our lives, there is a need for play.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday than to see if you could win a local elected position.

[MrHoatzin]

I was definitely not ready for 10000 doors and that amount of fundraising. Maybe in four years I’ll feel differently.