Ironically, I was just talking about this yesterday with Larry Hogue up a canyon in the southern Santa Rosa Mountains, about the not liking what I’ve become. I’ve mentioned this before here, but it’s flared up again. I have been an environmental activist for more than twenty years, and in the last two or three years my tendency to speak what I see as the truth would seem to have pretty much ended that career as anything but an opportunity for volunteering. I’m not sure I could imagine a substantial way in which I could have altered the things I’ve written that some enviros have taken amiss, with the notable and obvious exception of making a very few of them less personal. There’s nothing here I’m ashamed of having written. Still, when the head of an organization I’ve dreamed for two decades of working for is compelled to post pseudonymous scathing comments on my blog, it brings up the whole notion of actions and their consequences.
When you search on my name, the years in which I worked to promote groups’ work doesn’t really show up. The times I had differences with an employer but didn’t make much of them, the times I fought in meetings to mold a group’s public take and then cooperatively played with the team after the meetings were over — that doesn’t show up. The public criticism of groups is what shows up. That stuff is poison if you’re looking for a job, most of the time. Especially if you’re in your fifties and looking for a job.
Today I spent time staving off a credit card company’s attempts to vacuum the little bit out of my bank account. I think it worked, for now. I’ve had to agree to a monthly payment that’s more than I’m comfortable with, one that leaves me no room for paying for veterinary appointments or new tires or any of the usual unforeseen things. Actually, I have a foreseen veterinary appointment coming up: Thistle’s due for the routine calcium expulsion the vet told me would keep him from having the emergency kind. It’ll have to wait. Meanwhile, I try to find work doing design and publicity for some of the enviro groups that actually like outspoken people, or at least to whom the outspokenness doesn’t make a difference, with a computer that is old enough that the manufacturer no longer supports it, hardware or soft. Did you know Google Maps has basically stopped working on a G5 processor?
Funny thing. I have no trouble weeping in public pixels over a dead dog, or detailing the details of a divorce, or talking about formerly private family scandalia, but it’s really uncomfortable to talk about the money woes other than in the usual jovial “too much month left at the end of the money” fashion. It hits all the failure fears, pushes all the parental buttons about being a fuckup. Besides, a person doing freelance work isn’t supposed to talk this way. I’m supposed to act as though I’m rolling in cash from eager clients, because that’s how you persuade people that you do good work. And I do, in fact have people who want me to work for them, which is gratifying. Without one client paying me for ten hours a week every week, for instance, I’d be in even worse shape. Another really wonderful group is handing me pieces of freelance design work, which is extremely gratifying. And I have a lot of other people who tell me things like “I really want to do some fundraising to hire you,” and I know at least some of them are completely sincere when they say so, and that’s a nice ego boost.
And, it must be said and doing so too often is impossible, readers here have been unbelievably generous. This isn’t a coy segue into pledge break: it’s one of the bright spots in my life that demands recognition. (Though, you know. If you’re inclined, PayPal button is to the right.) Paypal finally just this morning let me know the names of the last three of you who tossed some change my way in February, and you’ll be getting email this afternoon. It’d be really hard to exaggerate how grateful I am to readers who chipped in: you kept my bank balance positive during the month of February and early March, and with the ability to float a few dollars here and there from A’s equally precarious bank balance, we made it through.
Another piece of luck: If I’d deposited the check I got for finishing Western Lands Project’s website two days earlier than I did, it would have been among the dollars vacuumed up by the credit card company’s levy. Since I waited, the rent check should clear. That’s got to rank up there with the birth certificate story in the lucky breaks department. And now as long as I can scrounge up 230-odd extra dollars every 20th of the month for the next five years, they’ll keep their hands off the bank account for the nonce. It makes me laugh to think of how easy that would have seemed five years ago.
Annette takes pains to remind me that we will manage, we’ll figure things out and stretch dollars and find opportunities and chart a path out of this situation, and she’s right. Still, part of finding any path is taking the lay of the land you’re in, and when I do that the obvious strikes: what I mainly do is work for free instead of for pay. That allows me to work only on the things that matter to me, it’s true. But as it turns out I’ve also been slowly eating my own seed corn. And the more I see myself as “speaking truth to power” with regard to environmental issues, the more opportunities for volunteering I will have, and fewer for paychecks. It’s entirely possible that a radical career change is in order. I understand writing professionally can be fabulously lucrative. Certainly with the number of requests I have to write for free, there must be some… oh. Right.
What’s undeniable, and unjokeoffable, is that my working for free has kept me from finishing the book as early as I’d like, has kept me from pitching stories to one of the outlets that still pays, has kept me from filling out that app at the Starbucks a block away. That’s going to have to change. No one coerced me into setting up this situation; I’m going to have to make some changes where no one can see them — except the part where I start saying no.
I comfort myself that I do have a bright, shiny Reputation Whitewash key hanging from my belt, as yet unused. About four-five years ago I deleted this site from the Internet Archive, and so anything I delete from this site, once the Google cache expires, is a lot harder to find. There are a few things people have reposted in full, but they tend not to be the kinds of things that will cause me trouble. This becomes even more magically true if I don’t scratch up the money to renew faultline.org in the next two weeks. All the incriminating stuff goes away. Ideally, I’d like to keep the inspiring, well-argued, “hire this writer” kind of stuff. I hate to let any of it go, honestly, but I really no longer have the privilege of not caring where, when, and to whom I speak my mind.
Maybe I was fooling myself that I ever had that privilege.
A lot of the writing in question has gotten stale, crusted over with anger at destruction of the desert, and I can’t honestly say that anger originates entirely within the desert and my relationship to it. My increasing frustration and financial fear has to play some role, as does my feeling the gradual loss of the environmentalist community I once counted on, the biker bar with live music five nights a week until 2 am that aims its speakers at our bedroom window, and the usual raft of other complaints.
Still, I can’t imagine not reacting to some things. I can’t imagine not donating my time to things I care about. All I know is, something’s gotta give. It’s emergency time.
Really, I’m lucky. I walk out into the desert three blocks from our place and this stuff all goes away for a while. In northeastern Anza Borrego yesterday with Larry, though these thoughts were present enough for us to chat about them, they all seemed so far away as to be someone else’s problems. If there was someone hiring people to become agaves out there in the not-quite-slot canyons, I’d apply for that job in a heartbeat. It’s pretty much what I do best: sitting in the desert, slowly growing wider, looking out over it all being as spiky as I can.
burnin’ bridges on truth-tellin’ is probably worth it in the long run chris - whether it be a matter of calling out fraudulent Gang Green or a wayward ex ... thanks for this post - i can relate.
if you need a place to put your faultline.org site - i’m sure we’ve got space on our dedicated box without the bother of the collectors calling you at 3am ... just shoot me an email ... write on ~
Chris,
It was such a joy to read this blog today. I’m not speaking of the frustration, anger, and pain you are going through trying to survive in this economic crud that has been on us for quite awhile. I hear that, and I’ve been going through similar problems and challenges.
No, the joy came from reading your blog and knowing your work. Getting to know you and your work has been inspiring. You do to authentically support the delicate desert.
I have experienced so many silver linings from losing my job. Yes, I do not have any money….but now I have time. And thanks to the extra time in my life, I’ve had the opportunity to work with you and get to know you a bit. Sending good thoughts your way - Charlie
i can only help with the biker bar problem. i have two very good friends who are special effects pyro-technicians and demolition experts.
it’s no consolation but i do want to say that your skill as a writer has cannot be questioned.
i have given so much of my time and money to american indian causes and have on many occasions been heard muttering “there ain’t no money in indians.”
the book that i have been writing “at” for the past year continues to elude me. my problem is: i don’t know my audience. I have at this point allowed the protagonist to die in order to switch the third person past tense.
we all miss you at two roads —
Glen, if your protagonist is Coyote, then dying presents only a temporary plot device.
Charlie, you’re a sweetheart.
Brian, thanks! but the server space is paid for for a little while: I just need to renew the domain name.
Chris, this probably isn’t the best venue for this but I didn’t know how to get in contact with you otherwise. I posted a short blurb recommending _Walking With Zeke_ and I used the cover image which links to your online store. If it’s a problem that I used the image, just let me know. I know you had a recent issue with this on the “watts up with that?” blog but assumed this would be a different circumstance. Just let me know.
James, I believe it is customary for a review of a book to include an image of the book cover.
Even if it wasn’t, seeing as you aren’t using the likeness of my dog to promote an ideology that may well end up with the highest body count of any in history, I’d say we’re good.
And thanks for the kind review.