DEEP-DIVING INTO THE PLEASURES OF WORK

It's a humid morning here, the ground breathing dampness and fertility after last night’s torrential rain. I headed out early today for a quick intensive bike ride up a nearby hill. The route takes me through neighbourhoods lush and green, past morning joggers with their earbuds in, and labouring people whose work day starts at seven: garbage pick-up workers, construction crews, nannies.

Now I'm back, having had my airing. My blood is flowing and brain kicking into gear.

It's about time. I see from the date of my last post that it's been almost two weeks since I wrote here. Then we had just passed the full moon. Now we are waning and will soon be into the next lunar month. It's a big one, for this year the June new moon marks the start of Ramadan, the month of daytime fasting (no food or drink of any kind) and nighttime feasting, prayer, and celebration for observant Muslims. Going without food and drink for the long days here, when sunrise is early and sunset late, is an exercise in mindfulness I imagine, as well as a difficult physical feat in the heat.

How do people get work or any other chores accomplished? I wonder. It's hard enough to settle to a task in normal times, let alone with a grumbling stomach and low blood sugar. To fast well you have to be disciplined, and that means getting up early enough to eat well before dawn so that you are fortified for the long day ahead.

It's interesting to compare the different approaches to fasting in different religious traditions. For Christians fasting has usually meant doing without a particular kind of food: meat, or instead all animal products (no dairy or eggs and no meat). But somehow fish doesn't rank as animal, and so fish is permitted on fasting days. (Hence the classic tradition of European restaurants featuring fish on Friday menus, for Friday was the fasting day for Catholics, still is for some). 

I was in Georgia last spring during Lent, the forty-day fasting period before Easter when all meat and dairy are forbidden to observant Orthodox Christians. The rule has pushed cooks to invent fasting versions of favorite foods, such as khachapuri. On fasting days these flatbreads – normally filled with fresh cheese - are instead stuffed with delicious cooked beans. Home cooks and bakeries were also making cakes and other treats during Lent, using alternative non-dairy ingredients such as margarine and alternative recipes that didn’t call for eggs. That strategy seemed to me to go against the spirit of fasting. I mean, the cook might have had to be mindful, but the greedy eaters still were able to have their luscious cant-tell-it’s-any-different cake even in the middle of Lent.

In Islam, and in Judaism too, fasting means not eating at all between sunrise and sunset, then breaking the fast with a feast in the evening. This sounds much more convivial than obeying rules and trying to work around them for forty days!

I’ve been led astray by these explorations of different approaches to fasting. Sorry!

What I want to explore here is the difficulty of getting down to work, into work, focussed on work, immersed in work… You get my drift.

I find that when I have a clear succinct to-do list, a series of tasks, a set of must-do’s, then it’s not too hard to just work my way through them. But when the first job of the day is to decide what the day’s goals or tasks are, then things can get a little messy. Distractions abound, there’s no clear necessity to get a particular task done, and procrastination takes advantage of every opening.

I’m thinking about all this because of my Persian World book project. (The deadline for delivery of the manuscript is exactly a year from now: end of June 2015.) Since getting back from Kurdistan and then the Beard awards in NYC in early May, I have had six weeks of home time. I had imagined, when I was thinking about the shape of the year, that I’d use these weeks for work on the book. I have done, but only piecemeal, testing recipes, writing the occasional story, and researching history (while also watching history being made in Iraq).

But it was not until this week that I was finally able to make myself deep-dive back into extended long-stamina workdays focussed on the book. Suddenly I am deep inside it, reviewing my notes, writing, and “wearing” it in a full 360-degree way.

What stopped me from doing this earlier? I think that while there are outside obligations to others (in my case teaching a food history course once a week for six weeks, and a few other small bits of writing work) as a partial excuse, there’s something else going on.

It’s too easy to stay on the surface of a project, to skate around on it, rather than committing to being inside it. And that is because it takes serious effort to immerse and commit. And somehow I failed to put that work in, or perhaps I knew that it would be wasted, since I’d be pulled back out and into other necessities, so what was the point?

All of this may seem like pointless meandering to you. You may be very successful at setting tasks and then completing them. But for those of you who struggle to shape your work days effectively, I assume you too have had these experiences I am describing.

Another piece of the explanation, something that I console myself with, is that I am mulling things in my subconscious, putting pieces together, trying to make coherent sense of the massiveness of my project, and that I shouldn’t feel that nothing is being accomplished in these weeks of bits-and-pieces work. Hmm

We’ll see. All I can say now that I am embarked again (the last time was in November-December after I returned from Iran) is that I am loving the project. It feels rich and promising, the food is delicious, the issues and geography and history are fascinating. And above all the human layers with their warmth and distinctive cultural necessities are so engaging. I just want to roll around in all this and luxuriate in it, for a good uninterrupted stretch.

If I manage to do that kind of sustained immersion in the project, I will probably be writing here less often in the next two months. My first plane ticket in over three months will be a flight to the west coast in August for the wonderful Grain Gathering (formerly Kneading Conference West) north of Seattle on August 22 to 24. And after that…well I will need to try to re-immerse for a bit, before heading out for more travel research.

SPRING CLEANING AT PERSIAN NEW YEAR

Here it is at last, the day we reach the spring equinox. Unlike time zones, this is one marker that the whole world transits at the same moment in some kind of “let’s all hold hands and…” way. Here in Toronto that moment will be just before one o’clock this afternoon.

We notice it’s spring, in Europe and North America, and we rejoice at the return of the light and the promise of fine weather. But we don’t have a big festival. I’m sure the Celts had druidic festivals, and other northern peoples must have too. After all, the timing of Christian Easter is reminder of our need for new life and the greening that spring brings.

In other parts of the world this is the start of the new year, a time for celebration. The festival Nou-Roz, also known in the west as Persian New Year, is a reminder of the deep inheritance that Zoroastrianism left in the Persian World, the region centred on present-day Iran but that includes neighbouring countries and peoples too. The religion arose around the same time as Buddhism, over 2500 years ago (an interesting sychronicity). It was the first monotheistic religion that we know of, pre-dating Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The sun and the natural world’s rhythms are embedded in the religion’s view of the battle between light and dark, good and evil. Thus the return of the sun, marking the end of cold winter, and the return of the light, is cause for celebration.

The peoples who are still marked by Zoroastrian practices and beliefs, even if most of them are now Christian or Muslim, are those from the region that extends from Iran and Azerbaijan into Iraqi Kurdistan, east to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and to Shia communities in Pakistan and India. (There are still Zoroastrians in Iran and area, and of course the Parsi community, that left Persia and settled in India long ago, follows the teachings of Zoroaster.) No-Roz festivities last abut two weeks. There is feasting, there are green herbs and vegetables and sprouted lentils and wheat as a symbol of new growth (and green is a privileged colour in Zoroastrian rites), picnics on the grass, and more.

This new year talk as I work on my Persian World book gets me examining some basics, a kind of mental spring cleaning you might say: What am I doing each day? How am I doing it? Could I do better? The answer to the last question is always “yes”. But that leads to the next question: “how?”.

I’ve come to think that one of the best things about this life of freelance work – the fact that I have a flexible schedule – is also one of the most onerous. It means that I have to take responsibility for deciding which jobs get done first, which tasks in the day, the week, the year, are most urgent or important. If there’s a mess-up, it’s my fault. And sometimes I spend too much effort hesitating about what to do next.

I am inclined to just move forward into the array of to-do’s, moving from one to the next (post another blogpiece here, return that call or reply to those emails, do more background reading for my book project, sort through photos to send some out, write that magazine article, test those recipes, tidy the office, do taxes…you get the idea).

But now we read that decision-making takes up more energy than most of us realise. Even decision-making about small things. Long ago I had a friend who decided to avoid decision-making about what to wear: all his socks were one colour, his shirts were white, and his pants were jeans. It took the pressure off and simplified his day. It turns out to have been a smart move, taking away one layer of decision-making, however superficial.

I’ve always enjoyed the feeling that I’m improvising things: the shape of my day, what I will wear, the shape of a trip… I don’t like to feel heavily planned. But that also means that I’ve been in flight from the predictable, the known-ahead, the set list of fixed tasks or obligations. It’ s a rather reactive way to live: rather than taking charge and deciding ahead what I will do in a day, I react to events, to feelings and impulses in myself, and bumble my way along. It can work very well sometimes, and is just fine most days. But with new research about the mental drain that decision-making causes, even the most superficial decision-making, I think it’s time I smartened up.

Wouldn’t it be better to have a list and just work through it? I do think so. And slowly I am learning to make a list the night before, as guidance for the next day or several days. (The evening is a good time, because it gives some distance; there’s no pressure to get started right away, just a relatively calm contemplation of the coming day or week). I find if I do that I waste less time (and mental energy, even more importantly) thinking about what to do next or worrying about what else I should get done on a given morning.

This may all be completely obvious to everyone else, but it’s taken me a long time to realise it. Some of us are slow!

CEO’s or high-level politicians usually have a long tightly scheduled list of activities and obligations each day. They don’t waste time figuring out what comes next; someone else, perhaps in consultation with them, and well ahead, has already done the work.

If I treat myself as a CEO, and each evening give myself the benefit of setting out the shape of the next day’s tasks and projects, then surely I too can have more energy for real and important decision-making, and for creative work too. It doesn’t have to be scheduled, let alone tightly scheduled, but an ordered list, with some idea of where the start-point is, is in the end very restful.

The other thing to schedule, of course, is enforced breaks from noodling around online. I’ve written about this before. And I am doing increasingly well at retreating from temptation, giving myself chunks of work time without online distraction. Margaret Atwood posted on Twitter the other day that she was retreating to her “burrow” I think was the word, to get work done. Clever woman! It is so important to have an image, if not an actual space, that conveys that sense of retreat from the distracting wonderful world. And that’s the word I like for the sense of withdrawal: “retreat”.

Once I’ve posted this, I’ll retreat to my work oasis…

TRAVEL REFLECTIONS AFTER AN AIRPORT SLEEPOVER

I slept “rough” last night…no, not out in a field somewhere, but on a row of seats in Bangkok’s Suvanabhumi Airport. My flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok had engine trouble and so we were all put on a later plane that didn’t get into Bangkok until nearly 1 a.m. There was no point in going into town or even in trying to find a hotel near the airport, I reckoned.

And so I joined the motley crew of schedule-refugees who scatter themselves every night on benches around the airport to try to get some rest as they wait for late late planes or early ones, or just for an airline counter to open so they can rearrange a missed flight.

I am starting this post just before 8 in themorning on Sunday, as I sit in the plane that’s supposed to get me to Chiang Mai in just over an hour. I can’t wait.  

In the meantime I want to write down a little about the airport at night. The lights are bright and the air AC-cool, but I covered my face with a layer of dark silk scarf, wrapped the rest of me in my shawl, put my head on my camera bag, tucked my other hand-carry behind my knees, and felt quite comfortably camped. After hours of sitting on the long flight to HongKong, and more sitting in HongKong as the plane issues delayed us, my feet and ankles were swollen. Lying flat was heavenly, even if the seats were bumpy and there were people all around. And I was not worried by passers-by: The rest of the airport felt at a remove because my bench of seats was behind a post, away from the fray. The announcements of flights, very few after 1:30 a.m., were in soft woman’s-Thai. It is musical, doesn’t grate, and makes an agreeable background to thoughts and dreams…

The bench-seats’ sleep was like an extension of the sleeps I’d had on my flights, with periods of day-dreaming that slipped imperceptibly into oblivion and then back out. There were a number of men trying to sleep on other benches of seats near me. Some of them snored or snuffled occasionally, but the sounds were somehow muted in the background noise of fans and ventilation and whatever else it takes to keep an airport functioning.

As I emerged sometime after 4.30 in the morning from my longest deepest bench-sleep, about 45 minutes, the soundscape began changing. (It made me think that it would be interesting to do a 24 hour recording of the airport sounds, as it would of the sounds in other 24-hour environments such as hospitals.) There was a growing murmur and then chatter of voices, mostly women’s voices, accompanied by a light clack-clack-clack of heels as the first of the morning airline workers hurried along to their posts, all soft-voiced and full of morning energy. They must have to leave home at 4 am at the latest to reach the far-from-town airport for their early shift. And then came men and women cleaners pushing rolling carts and replacing lightbulbs and starting to mop and sweep. clean.

From there the day really began, as others like me who had spent the night, stretched, yawned, made their way to the washrooms to get cleaned up, and began purposefully walking to their gates.

The transfer staff guy at the THAI domestic desk was spectacularly clear, composed, and efficient. I met up there with another straggler/refugee from the HongKong flight delays who was also going to Chiang Mai, a pleasant young English guy who was on holiday from teaching English in Korea. And so we proceeded together to formally enter Thailand (having spent the night in the international departures area), then find our gate and put in more waiting time until our flight.

As I reflected on the streams of people in the airports, coming and going, each person with a life story and hopes and fears and ambitions, I felt disoriented, almost drunk at the scale of humanity, and its complexity. We normally deal with the scale problem by generalising and by turning individuals into a kind of amorphous object  in our heads (the words crowd or multitude are very anonymous after all), a creature rather than a huge number of fellow-humans. But in that time of being caught out of the normal expected flow of the trip and spending hours in a kind of no-man’s-land, I had time to take stock.

My conclusions about my normal assumptions were not pretty. I was obliged to acknowledge to myself that my humanity and empathy and general noticing and caring reflexes all get put on the back burner when I am in airports and negotiating the crowds and the queues. It’s as if the soullessness of these large anonymous “functional” modern spaces turns each me into an automaton, renders me somewhat soulless.

Maybe this doesn’t happen to you. But I assume, from the looks on people’s faces and the way they move, that it happens to many others.

My version of it is that, apart from the moments when I am held up in an orderly queue such as the airport security line, or the passport control line (some of those moments are great opportunities for noticing the variety of people – I think especially of the lines in Istanbul Airport), I am always navigating my way through space, threading my way through the crowd, without seeing the people at all. They all become obstacles in my path. I am thinking only of myself and where I want to get to.

I imagine that is true of many people.

And why? Why not take it easy, slow down and stroll? Why do I rush? It’s a reflex from way back, I suppose. It’s about ambition and getting there, wherever “there” is, before the line gets too long, or in case I miss something or get left out of an opportunity. But someone has to be last. And why shouldn’t I be content to take my turn at the back of the line? Why this impulse to speed things up?

Maybe it’s only North Americans and Europeans who behave like this? I wonder. But not really. Perhaps it’s a matter of temperament?

All I know is that after my enforcedly slow overnight “connection” in Bangkok, I have come to realise that my travel habits and patterns need need a thoughtful makeover. I’ll let you know how it goes, after my next long trip, which will be the flight sequence back to Toronto in late February.

Meantime I am breathing in the cool dry-season air of Chiang Mai, seeing friends, eating rice, and wearing sandals as I walk down the street. It’s a fun change after the minus 35 windchill days of early January in Toronto.

FIRST SNOW & SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT CONFIDENCE & WORK

First snow-sticking-on=the=ground=and-slushy-roads day in downtown Toronto. The provident already have their boots out and the rest have wet looking feet. I am still looking for the snow shovel; it must be in the garage.

I love fresh snow in the city, for even with grey skies and the weight of that ugly word “slush”, the snowed surfaces brighten the day, giving us spare wintry lightness. I can love it because I’m not trying to drive in traffic made worse by the slush or to navigate the slippery sidewalks with a cane or walker or while pushing a child in a stroller.

Snow now is a reminder of time. Yikes! Every year December seems to collapse, lose days, until suddenly it’s the weekend before Christmas. Part of it is that we all raise our expectations at this time of year. We make more of an effort to see people and socialise, we may be doing those extra shopping errands for presents, or packing for a Christmas holiday departure. Whatever the extra “it” is, the month accelerates past.

In the last five or six years I’ve been away in November and the first half of December, so I’ve missed these early weeks and landed as the holidays were about to start. Now that work travels are taking me elsewhere my travel away pattern has shifted. I like that. The change helps me see with fresh eyes, and appreciate the details I might have ignored when I was last around at this time of year.

In this past five weeks since I got home from Iran I've been able to really dig into my Persian World project. I've come to realise, as I've been digesting my Iran and Georgia trips, doing recipe work, engaging with photos, stories, and historical research, that I love being home working and reflecting. And with short days and chilly weather, being indoors is feeling good, and productive. It’s a privilege to be able to settle in, to NOT have to think about airplanes and packing, etc. for awhile.

Is this age, I caught myself wondering yesterday, this pleasure I am taking in being home and working steadily?

Perhaps. But I think it’s also a change in working style. And that in turn comes from increased confidence. Rather than rushing from thing to thing, afraid I’ll be late or miss out on something, I am now more prepared to work steadily and to not worry about the possibility of not getting this or that done in a day. I guess I am being more methodical and generally more deliberate. Part of the explanation for the change is that after doing the Burma book sola, rather than with a partner, I know that I can trust myself to carry a big project through on my own. And I enjoy the whole process more, for I am in control of what is done or not done. It’s all up to me.

I used to think that carrying one large project, a thesis say (which was how I first imagined what a large project would be, when I was in my teens and early twenties), would be impossible for me, too sustained and onerous a burden. Then once I started making books in a partnership, I discovered that like almost every other task, the work of researching writing, etc. gets broken down into pieces and gradually as the pieces get worked on, the whole takes shape. Once the first book, Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas, was finished, and the manuscript sent in, starting on another book seemed like an obvious and wonderfully desirable thing.

But in those early years there were the kids to factor in, and the organising of travel and other work, and the complications of partnership. It all seems like a whirling blur as I look back.

In comparison, this process of deciding what work I will do on a particular day is very easy and uncomplicated. I can recipe test, or write up work already tested, or take on the writing of a story, or read some history, or edit photos… All of those possibilities are inviting. That’s the thing. And none of them scares me, though they do all require me to have energy and to take them on with creative imagination, rather than passively.

I think that’s the essential difference between a chore and work that you love. A chore is something that just needs to be done, and can be done with a dull mind and heavy or exhausted spirit, whereas work that I like and that I look forward to requires good energy and engagement. If I’m sleepy or otherwise exhausted I won’t get any good work done. And in such a state I’m better off doing some chore like cleaning or tidying my office or looking for that shovel.

I can imagine you wondering, 'and what about writing this blogpost?' For me writing, all writing, including these explorations of ideas on the virtual page, requires a fresh head and good energy. And of course I also need to have an idea in my head that I want to explore. I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to write this. And now here it is, miraculously.

Once I’ve posted this, and done some other book-writing work, I’ll hit a low ebb, energy-wise. And then it will be time to get that sidewalk shovelled!