Here I am, a male in our society, without a job. Neighbors tell me now and then of jobs available, not quite accepting it. Not quite a househusband, as Eileen has been home much of the last five years. It is difficult when people ask me “What do you do?”; I know they don’t mean “What do you do?”, but rather what job do I have. Joke about it, avoid the question, tell them I’m not employed; I’ve tried them all, none of them feel quite right. Try to answer the question honestly; but can’t quite figure how to do it in one sentence. I do work, I do things that I feel are important to me, to the Earth, to people. I don’t get much income from it, so I can’t really call it a job. People don’t really comprehend that.
It would be a little easier if people would ask where we get our income, as we do have some income. Or maybe even better they could ask where we get the resources needed to live on – that’s a good question for us; but ask the Proctor and Gamble executive where he gets his resources and he looks at you a little funny. So here I am, having to deal with this question, “What do you do?
If I have time for more than a one-liner and I think someone is interested in more than small talk, I’ll try to explain. “Until recently, neither Eileen or I have had a formal job. We’ve cut back a lot on what we use. We rent out a house, have people live with us, do workshops, do an occasional temporary job.”
If they seem a little interested then I really start digging in. “We feel a lot less encumbered with having fewer things. We do struggle over which resources to cut back on – whether to have one car or two; should we buy presents or give our time as gifts; do we really have to eat the scrubby old carrots I grow in the garden.”
If they are still biting, haven’t walked into the other room, I might focus on one area like food, and try to explain. “We are basically vegetarian and use very few processed foods. We did struggle getting to this point; I’m one who wants to do it right away, Eileen is a little slower. We started not eating meat for breakfast, used less meat at other meals. It took about three years till we were basically vegetarian.”
You want to know how we got started? “Having been raised in families that did not have a lot of extras and didn’t feel bad about it, was probably the beginning. The first strong impetus to rationally change came with a workshop by Adam Finnerty, author of No More Plastic Jesus. He talked about how the Third World was having starvation problems, often related to what we in the United States consumed. Meat, bananas, fruits, and vegetables being grown in these countries for us, takes away the best land from the native people when it is bought up by large U.S. corporations to make a profit by selling to us. This is when we started our slow process toward vegetarianism. The fact that eating less meat is healthier, better for the environment, and cheaper, also gave support to our changing.
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