Why We Love Our Stuff

Recently I watched a TED talk by Graham Hill on down-sizing. He suggested that we in the developed world have too much stuff, and that the effort of collecting and managing all that stuff makes us unhappy. His view is that if we were to simplify our lives by getting rid of most of our material goods and keeping only a few really excellent items, this would free up time to engage in doing things we like to do. As well, we could move into much smaller living spaces, thus reducing our environmental footprint.

This is a seductive argument. How much time do you spend looking for some specific item out in the shed, or in the basement storage room, or maybe it's in the workshop? This happened to me last weekend. We were going to go for a mountain hike, and I was looking for my mid-weight hiking boots. I couldn't find them in any of the places that we keep footwear. Apparently, they were never unpacked after our last move. Rather than tackling the wall of boxes in the storage room, I just wore my old run down light-weight hikers. What good is it to have stuff that we can't find and therefore don't use? And then there is all the time we spend cleaning and looking after the great big houses we have in order to hold all of our stuff.

But, the fact is, we love our stuff. I am going to talk about three reasons that we love our stuff. We feel pleasure when we obtain new things. Second, our sense of identity is entangled in the way we represent ourselves to the world via our materiality. A third reason that we love our stuff is because of the memories signified by each object that we surround ourselves with. Each of these points demands a chapter rather than a mere paragraph or two, but I will try to keep my examples brief.

The Pleasure of Getting

It might be better to give than to receive, but in our materialistic culture, we do enjoy "getting" very much. For many people, shopping is a favourite pastime, and one of the ways that they spend much of their leisure time. There is an internal surge of pleasure upon purchasing a new item. Perhaps we picture ourselves using that brand new pair of powder skis on the ski hill and feel the anticipated pleasure of skiing. The object that we purchase is pregnant with possibility; we picture how it will enable us to engage in new activities, projects, or social interactions.

Or we imagine wearing the new maroon polka dot pajamas and curling up on the couch in front of the fire. The purchase of the pajamas stands for comfort and self care. When we purchase something, we are acting upon the internal message, I am worth it; I matter. In this, we might be pawns of the marketeers in our capitalistic culture, but the source of the belief does not make it any less potent. Receiving a gift conveys a similar message. You matter. I care about you. The object that one purchases or receives as a gift represents caring, and the notion that one is valued as a person.

Material Identity

Our stuff also comes to represent our identity. The kind of car that we drive, house that we live in, clothing that we wear, or coffee maker that we own tells the world who we are. If I drive a four wheel drive pickup truck, I am saying to the world that I am a certain kind of person, and that is a different kind of person than someone who would drive a BMW, let's say, or a Smart Car.

Clothing is a particularly important signifier of identity in our culture. Part of being culturally competent is to be able to read the nuances of dress and what it represents, and also to be able to select one's own style of dress to appropriately indicate role, class, gender, and personality. At one of the places I have worked, the men in leadership roles wear sports jackets, dress shirts, slacks, and ties, and in some cases suits. Except on Fridays. On Fridays, to a man, they appear at work in blue jeans and polo shirts. In order to participate in this particular work culture, these men have to purchase items of clothing that will give the message that: I am one of the guys. I fit into this team. At the same time, there has to be a small individual twist that says: I'm Fred, not Jack. They would not want to look like copy cats or clones. That would send the wrong message about competence and identity.

This matter of materiality as a representation of personal identity has come to pervade every aspect of mainstream North American life. We spend a great deal of time managing our representation of self to the world via the things we own and use. Moreover, we change our representations of self as our life circumstances change.

For example, when I think of the houses that I have lived in and owned throughout my life, each one has sent a different message about identity. I'll list them here, sequentially: 1. Renovated little brick heritage house in the shabby urban core (funky, young urban professional); 2. Three bedroom wooden split level in a suburb way on the outskirts of a large city (young family starting out, grad student); 3. Two story five bedroom home in a middle class suburb of a smallish northern city (growing family, middle class, northerner); 4. Log house with stained glass windows on half an acre with dog (artist, writer, intellectual, northerner); 5. Sprawling 60's split level in established middle class neighbourhood of a mid-sized city (late middle-aged, executive/professional). As my work role, family status, and geographical location have changed and along with them my preoccupations and activities, my type of home has changed as well for functional reasons. However, the type of house I live in also presents a message about who I am. 

Things Hold Memories

A third reason why we care so much about our stuff is that the objects that we have become vehicles for our memories. When I look at the row of ornaments, vases, and pottery objects lined up on the mantelpiece in my living room, I can remember how each of those objects came to me. For example, from left to right: a vase handmade in my hometown that was a gift from my brothers when I was awarded tenure; a yellow and blue pottery container made by my daughter, the artist, when she was a teenager; a hand blown pink glass vase that was a gift from a brother and his ex when they lived in an artist's community; a robin's egg blue small pottery vase from the town where my former in-laws live, and so forth.

The objects that we surround ourselves with resonate with memories of the things that we have done in life and the people who have been important to us. Sometimes those objects represent significant accomplishments, turning points, or watershed moments in our lives, such as the births of our children, earning a degree, a divorce, or a new job. But even the most mundane objects may be saturated with memories.

I keep a small basket of rags in the laundry room. I have cut up old pieces of discarded clothing and towels to make the rags. When I pick up each scrap of fabric, I remember where it came from. This was that awful baggy old grey T-shirt of Rob's that I sneaked out of his drawer and made into rags so he wouldn't persist in wearing it. This rag came from my Monet T-shirt that I bought at an art gallery exhibition in Montreal in 1998. This next rag in the pile was cut from the worn-out sweat pants that I bought when I was pregnant with my second child. This scrap of towel was cut from a set of towels given to me by my beloved Aunt Mabel who died thirty years ago. Touching the fabric gives each memory an immediacy. The Monet T-shirt takes me back to memories of the conference I attended in Montreal, the people who were there with me, my parents who looked after my children while I was away from home, the events occurring in my social circle, and a sense of the texture of my life during that period of time.

Because the objects in our lives hold memories, it is hard to throw them away, no matter how shabby they have become, or how little we now make use of them. Would the stories disappear if we threw the objects away and edited the pile of stuff down to a more manageable level? Perhaps not. But the act of viewing and using many of those objects provides connectivity to the past and helps to create a sense of continuity in our life story.

Our stuff offers life possibilities as we acquire it, signifies that we are of value as individuals, represents aspects of our identity, and holds our memories. That is why we love our stuff.

Milfontes

I have started a new painting. It is a seascape, which is a very conventional subject. However, for me it is a new challenge. I have never attempted a seascape before. I am working from a couple of photos I took when travelling along the west coast of Portugal two summers ago. This was a particularly beautiful spot, and I have fond memories of it.

This is how the canvas looked after I had drawn in the design and begun blocking in the main shapes and colours.

I was working with very thin oil paints to block it in, and choosing colours that were quite transparent.

The photo above shows how it looked after the next painting session. At this point, I had blocked in most of the sections of the painting, leaving only a few sections of canvas showing through. As you can see, I was still working with very thin paint, and although I attempted to capture the main colour blocks, the values are all wrong. As well, my drawing errors are apparent at this stage. I like the way that I have worked the palette of colours across the whole painting, though. It gives me something interesting to work with as I continue. I also like the transparency of the colours, almost like a watercolour painting.

In my next and most recent painting session, I worked on correcting some of the drawing errors, and I started putting in the darker values, especially in the slopes below the houses and the cliffs. At this point, I am not happy with the painting as shown below. It is at the ugly stage. The colours have turned muddy, losing the transparency that I had in the beginning, and my marks are too tentative. Of course, part of the problem is that my attention has been focused on one section, while leaving the pale wash of the ocean and the foreground untouched. 

Another challenge with this painting is that the darkest values are mostly in the cliffs and the hills which are quite far away. Even the more distant part of the ocean is deeper in value than the near section of waves breaking on the beach. This is counter to the usual rule that things look softer, lighter in value, and less distinct when they are farther away. 

Even though I am struggling a bit with this painting right now, I am enjoying it. Every painting, at some point becomes a struggle, but usually if I keep going, I work through it and end up with something that might be different than what I envisioned but that more or less works. 

What I really feel like doing is grabbing my painting knife and slapping paint on. You probably can't tell from the photo, but the bluish and dark green grasses in the mid ground on the left were done with a palette knife. 

Leadership: The Ugly Side

There are lots of articles and books out there on leadership. Inspiring, humorous, or pragmatic and instructive; they come in many forms. Field Wicker-Miurin gave a TED talk a few years ago of the inspirational sort - people from around the world who, through extraordinary dedication and passion, have made a significant difference in their community. She called it Learning from leadership's Missing Manual.

It seems that after a number of years in leadership positions, a person is compelled to write his or her own tome to contribute to the leadership literature. However, I have noticed that there is a book missing from the shelves. My missing manual is not Wicker-Miurin's heart warming perspective, but rather one that would dive into the ugly side of leadership. This book would explore leaders' lived daily experience and the parts too embarrassing or sad to acknowledge to one's colleagues or to eager initiates. I have listed below some (roughly sequential) chapter titles that such a book directed to beginning leaders might include. The alternative chapter titles written in brackets after each chapter heading from Leadership: The Ugly Side are the related euphemistic topics more typically found in leadership literature.

• Go Find Yourself an Office (Establishing Yourself: The First Test)
• Jumping onto the Merry-Go-Round (Demonstrating Commitment to the Organization)
• Deer in the Headlights (The Honeymoon Phase)
• Getting Dumped On (Learning the Scope of Your Portfolio and Saying No)
• Saviour or Satan? (Staying True to Your Leadership Style)
• Lost in the Acronyms (Preparing Well and Doing your Research)
• Minefield of Organizational History (Learning the Institutional Culture)
• Sycophants and Concealed Knives (Managing Difficult People)
• No Time to Pee (Doing More with Less)
• Golf, Hockey, and Cars: The Old Boys' Network from the Outside (Women in Leadership)
• Betrayals and Dirty Work (Change Management)
• Cutting Deals (Relationship Building)
• Despair and Self-loathing (Coping with Burnout)
• Shackled to a Merry-Go-Round on Hyperdrive (Time Management)
• Disappearance of Life Outside of Work (Striving for a Work Life Balance)
• Health Consequences (Building Fitness into your Schedule)
• In a State of Numbness (Achieving Equilibrium)
• Non-Failure (Success!)
• Dumping it on the New Guy/Gal (Delegation and Mentorship)
• The School of Hard Knocks (Writing a Book on Leadership)

Looking at the ugly side of the experience of leadership, sometimes it is hard to remember what it is all for. Maybe I should watch Wicker-Miurin's talk again, or go and read another one of those inspirational leadership books. Or maybe I should start writing my contribution to the literature: Leadership: The Ugly Side.

Cuts to Post-Secondary Education in Alberta

Here is a link to another article on the dismantling of post-secondary education. This piece appeared in the September 2013 issue of the CAUT Bulletin, a publication of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. It provides a good snapshot of some of the consequences of the massive funding cuts in Alberta - elimination of programs of studies, enrolment cuts, layoffs, and loss of academic autonomy. What the article does not fully capture, however, is the human anguish as members of the academic community are forced to participate in decision-making around the destruction of the province's excellent post-secondary system, and watch as colleagues lose their jobs or flee to positions elsewhere. It is hard to stand by as opportunities and access for students shrink. Click on the link below to read the article.

CAUT/ACPPU

Blaming Universities

Kate Lawson recently has published a thoughtful piece in The Huffington Post on how the tendency to blame universities for North American labour market woes is misplaced. As you know, dear reader, I previously have written here on the topic of how current governmental policies may promote dismantling the post-secondary education system in Canada. Universities and colleges are under threat in a way that is unprecedented in my lifetime. Dr. Lawson takes a longer view, the near millennium since the birth of universities, and argues that over time, universities have adapted in ways that have greatly benefited humankind. The dominant voices trumpeting misinformation about "the skills gap" and demanding that universities be cut down to size to become training sites for industry, present the history, purpose, and value of universities in a distorted way, she suggests.

Severe funding cuts and top-down policies have disrupted  the current functioning of universities, leading to layoffs, closure of programs, and fewer seats and services for students. University administration, faculty, and staff struggle to cope by making hard decisions and working very long hours. Perhaps there is little time to stand back and present alternative perspectives. Or, perhaps members of university communities fear that they might attract the negative attention of policy makers and further funding cuts. In this climate of fear, it is good to read the reasoned, well-written analysis of Kate Lawson.

As Joni Mitchell wrote, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

Time is a Trickster

Several days ago, during a few minutes of mindless day dreaming, a plot for a new novel popped into my head. I indulged myself, and thought about it for awhile. The genre is speculative fiction. The time is not too far in the future, and some troubles that we face today have played out in a rather bizarre way to create some whopping big problems for North America. (You realize that I am speaking in broad generalities here. I am not quite ready to share any plot details yet.)

This novel would precede another novel, working title Underground, which I have made a bit of a start on -- the first 25 pages. The trouble is, I thought up the idea for  Underground nearly 25 years ago, when my second child was a newborn. I scratched down a few notes and scenes at the time, then came back to it began writing it one year for NaNoWriMo when I was trying to avoid finishing my second novel, Memories of a White Girl.

I have written a complete first draft of Memories. I have given it to first readers. I have spent countless hours thinking about and writing notes for the revision of Memories. But I have scarcely begun the actual revision. I think the story has lots of potential. But it needs lots of revision before it is ready to go out anywhere.

Ironically, or perhaps typically, given my writing tendencies that I have just described to you, I started writing Memories in a week-long writing workshop ten years ago in order to avoid working on my then current novel, working title Friends. The first draft of that one was about three quarters finished, but I  became stuck trying to pull the the themes together into a dramatic and satisfying conclusion. I still love the characters and structure of Friends but haven't even finished the first draft, never mind the revisions.

So to summarize, over the last 25 years, I have reached different stages on four draft novels:
1989: plot for Underground and a few notes
2001-03: wrote most of first draft for Friends
2003: wrote 4 linked short stories, which I later reworked into novel chapters for Memories
2004-07: thought about Memories a lot but didn't write much
2007: added 50,000 words to Memories during NaNoWriMo
2008: plodded along adding small bits from time to time, then wrote another 30,000 words during NaNoWriMo. Finally finished the first draft, I forget when.
2010: returned to Underground idea and wrote a bit
2011: did a little revision and sent Memories to readers; wrote notes for more revisions
2013: idea for yet another novel

There's always time, right? The novel drafts will still be waiting for me when I finally have time for them, right?

Well maybe not. A dear colleague has developed a degenerative disease similar to Lou Gerig's disease, and his good mind is increasingly locked within his body as he loses the motor control to speak and type. A brother of a friend is struggling with an aggressive form of Parkinson's disease, recently diagnosed. Another colleague, who was a mentor to me and whom I deeply admired as a leader is having serious health problems of some undetermined cause, just when he should be enjoying his first years of retirement.

Sometimes there isn't all the time in the world. Time is a trickster who changes the rules.

Ripping up the Rockies

Throughout most of August, I was on vacation. Much of that time, we were camping in places where there was no connectivity to the Internet. Yes, places like that do still exist. When we did stay in cities and towns, we were so busy visiting dear friends and family that we had little time to go online. So, Dr Sock has been unplugged for a month, and hasn't posted here.

During our travels, we spent time in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, both on the eastern slopes and on the western side. The continental divide runs along the peaks of the Rockies near their eastern edge, close to where the mountains end and the prairies begin. The divide serves as the provincial boundary between British Columbia (BC) in the west, and Alberta in the east. We had never travelled through some of these areas before, especially on the eastern slopes, and were keen to explore new territory.

The Rockies on the BC side consist of extensive ranges of massive peaks, and wild rivers. The vegetation is lush and the mountains are heavily treed. Moisture moving inland from the Pacific Ocean tends to fall as rain or snow on the western slopes. There is little human habitation. By contrast, the eastern slopes are mostly in a rain shadow, and tend to be much drier. Also, the mountains, high and dramatic, suddenly fall away to prairie land, with few foothills, especially along the southern portions. As the Rocky Mountains are are a national treasure, there are many parks along the divide on both the BC side and the Alberta side, such as Banff National Park, Jasper National Park, Kootenay National Park, and Waterton Lakes National Park. There also provincial parks and and specially designed recreation areas and management areas.

Outside of the parklands, we found that there were very big differences in recreational land use on the eastern slopes as compared to the western side. In Alberta, it seems that there is little regulation of crown land. People like to go camping in the creek and river valleys of the eastern slopes. This camping consists of setting up large fifth wheel trailers, often in groups of five or ten families, wherever they can pull the trailers in close to a stream. They bring with them their All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs), and race around up and down hills, through creek beds, through swamps, and in the ditches alongside the roads. They tear up the ground with the ATVs, including fragile alpine vegetation, and destroy fish habitat. They race along hiking trails and cycling trails, ripping up the ground and destroying the trails. Then they come back to their camps and build huge bonfires. All of this seems to be lubricated with a great deal of alcohol.

We were shocked at the sheer number of these trailer enclaves and the ecological damage people inflicted with their ATVs. The roaring of the noisy ATVs was nonstop. Although the eastern slopes of the Rockies are beautiful, we did not find the area to be a pleasant place to be. There was nowhere accessible by road or trail that was not infested with ATVs. I was sad to see that this is the way that people are spending their time in the wilderness -- not with respect and awe, but destructively. These humans and their irresponsible actions seem almost like a cancerous growth spreading north and south along the eastern slopes. I was grateful for the parks, where ATV use is not allowed and the wilderness is being preserved.

While there is increasing use of ATVs in BC as well, it is minimal compared to what we witnessed on the Alberta side of the border. Same country, same Rocky Mountains, but different attitudes and provincial policies. Be careful BC, and take a long hard look at what is happening in Alberta before opening up more wilderness areas to ATVers. We are responsible for preserving our wilderness heritage for future generations, and to do so, we must avoid the mindless and wanton destruction of the type now taking place in Alberta.