Life is a Bowl of Fruit!

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Dan

It has now been a 15 months on the road for us.  A year and three months since we sold our house, put the mattress in the back of the truck and headed out to the California desert for a break from our previous life.  Like a bowl of fruit, we are finding that planning our new life isn’t always as straight forward as we would like.  However, it is easier to take abrupt turns from your plans if something plants a cherry pit in you path.

I left you with us in Kansas looking to make up a potential loss of income from a planned three month hiatus from working before heading back to Wyoming for the summer.  \

First, a call from my sister in Wisconsin saying she desperately needed her bathroom remodeled and a few other projects around her house finished.  So, I gave two weeks at Amazon, hooked up the RV and pulled it, my wife and one cranky cat down to Albuquerque and boarded a plane to Wisconsin where I spent a month finishing a bunch of home handyman projects for my sister.

Second, a call came from Wyoming saying that the park we had worked at had sold over the winter.  We really didn’t want the drama of working for new owners and since our promise was to the previous owner, we decided to decline the offer of employment and search elsewhere.

Third, a call came in from Albuquerque saying they needed summer work campers.  This gave us the opportunity to be with our friends all summer, stay in Albuquerque where the RV was at the time – saving the money it would cost to move the RV – and have gainful employment for at least 6 months.

Even cherry pits have their purposes.  Some grow into new bushes.

I’ve never had this kind of freedom in my life.  It certainly is a lot less stressful than my previous life.

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Freedom

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Dan

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Three inalienable rights given to us in the Declaration of Independence.

This phrase, at least in American parlance, seems to have originated with Richard Cumberland – philosopher, who wrote in 1672 that the act(s) of promoting well-being in others was essential to the pursuit of our own happiness.

John Locke, in 1689 has placed a twist in the thinking with this statement:   ”Civil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things…”  His statement seems to indicate that the possession of things can bring happiness.

George Mason in the 1676 Virginia Declaration of Rights equates the pursuit of happiness with the right to acquire property:  ”That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

And, a month later in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence we find:  ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

How things have changed so quickly from the idea that happiness can extend from acts of kindness to others to the idea that happiness comes form the possession of things.  Can it be inferred from these statements that our country was founded in part with the idea that we, the citizens, have only to possess many things in order to be happy?

Popular culture often follows the form and function of our society.  The Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happiness” epitomizes this idea.  While it has some poignant  glimpses into homelessness, single parents, and poverty, the underlying message of the movie is simply that happiness comes from working hard, making lots of money and buying stuff.  If you have enough money and enough stuff you will be happy.

Corporations got the message.  We are encouraged to buy stuff every minute of every day. Commercials are everywhere.  Online we are targeted by advertising.  Product placements on TV and in the movies is rampant.  If we don’t have a credit card or three we are looked at with suspicion by our acquaintances.  If we cannot afford it we are encouraged to buy it on credit.  We are given home loan products that we cannot afford.  We are encouraged to buy things that we wouldn’t buy if we were on a cash basis.  We are told time and again that we will be happier with all this stuff.  Are we?

Look around you.  What do you see?  Do you see your stuff?

Are you happy?

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We haven’t left yet.

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Dan

Kansas seems to be clinging to us.  It’s pressing down , keeping us in place and not allowing us to leave.  After two nights of 19 degrees and 45mph winds, I can’t say I’m all that enamored of the state, but then we complained about the wind blowing in New Mexico and Wyoming too.

Ruth and I have decided to stay on here for a month or two yet.  I’ve got a new job and Ruth is working on her artwork.  What am I doing?  Well, I’m working for Amazon.com.  Corporations have their idiosyncrasies and Amazon.com is no different.  When I started here last October,  I was a contract employee with Amazon.com, meaning I was a regular ‘blue’ badge employee paid by Amazon.com but without the benefits.  Because I was part of the Work Camper program, they paid my space rental.    Now I am a temporary worker at Staff Management working at Amazon.com.  I am a ‘white’ badge employee working in the same department, same shift for the same money, but I don’t get my space rental paid anymore, nor do I get those amazing Amazon.com benefits.

Losing the month’s wages this summer and not getting the overtime we were expecting here, meant that we needed to stay a bit longer to make up the losses.  My department is going to be particularly busy for the next 5 weeks, so I don’t expect I will have any employment problems.

We are still planning on coming to New Mexico and spending some time in Southern California before we head for Wyoming in April.

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Amazon.com

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Dan

It’s 2.5 months later and our stint as holiday elves at Amazon.com is done.  All of the Christmas packages are now gone and it’s too late to order and get it by Christmas.

We knew that the job was going to be easy and difficult.  The tasks that you have to complete are repetitive but easy to complete.  What’s difficult are the hours.  We worked night shift so we had to adjust to still being up at 5am (my old time to start my day).   Then the adjustment to 10 hour work days with occasional 11 hour days and one 12 hour day with overtime on day five and sometimes day six.  There was no overtime the first four weeks and the three day weekends were really welcome.

The next part to overcome is the physical part.  You have to walk – a lot.  This fulfillment center is 1 million square feet and there are no moving walkways here.  You walk everywhere you need to go from one end of the building to the other and back again.  Many of the storage areas (mods) are two and three stories tall, so there are stairs.  The bins where the items are stored range from being on the floor to being just over your head (for a 6 footer).  Some nights you do 300 squats to get to the floor level bins and 300 trips up the step stool for the upper bins.  You are constantly moving items from one place to another.  It’s a good workout.   I have lost enough of my waist to tighten my belt two notches.  I haven’t weighed in yet (no room for a bathroom scale in our RV) but I may be very close to that magic 200 pound mark now.

The processes are divided into two basic parts, Incoming and Outgoing.  Obviously you have processes that get the stuff people buy into the plant and processes to get them out.  The basic jobs we had a chance at were processing the items that come off the trucks, stowing those items in bins, picking those items out of bins for orders, packing the items in boxes and processing the items for shipping and dock work on both ends.  We did none of that.  We were assigned to the Quality Assurance department.  We were part of the team that makes sure what’s supposed to be in the each bin is actually where it’s supposed to be.

For 10 hours a night we basically counted items in bins and entered the data into a hand held scanner.  I can do this now in my sleep.  In fact, I woke up several times doing exactly that – counting items in my sleep.  Sometimes we just count the number of items in the bin and enter that number in the scanner.  The scanner then tells us if the number is right or wrong – No really, I can count to 1!  That really has to be right!  Sometimes we have to scan the bar code on every item in the bin – 5,236 gift cards!  Is it break time yet?

It’s a small department and everyone knows each other well.  At first it seems that everyone likes each other too, but time takes it’s toll and as OT racks up and tempers get shorter, those veneers shatter and the barely hidden cliques and rivalries come out.  Ruth and I just smile our way through them – never taking sides.  I’d like to think we left with everyone liking us, but I’ll accept mere tolerance.

I like the job.  I like Amazon.com.  I contemplated staying on, but we are going to Albuquerque to work at the KOA there and be with our friends for a few months.  We have our job in Devils Tower, Wyoming waiting for us in April and we well be back to Amazon.com to be Christmas Elves again in 2012.

 

 

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Between job assignments: More downsizing.

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Dan

October is move month for us.  We have finished our job assignment in Wyoming and we have 2.5 weeks until we need to be in Kansas for our next assignment as Holiday Elves for Amazon.com.

Having lived without the items in our storage locker for six months, we have decided to shed enough of those items to fit in a smaller storage locker, saving us $90 a month, giving us some working capital, and getting rid of items that we have been dragging around for years.

While we were in Wyoming, Ruth and I would play the “Name something in the storage locker game”.  Most of the time, it would take us a few minutes to come up with the first item out of our memory and we would look at each other and wonder why we were hanging on to this stuff.  Remember, this is the total of  what we decided to keep from our house when we sold it 8 months ago.  This is what we determined was so important to us that we couldn’t give it up.

The garage sale resulted in a trade of goods for cash and a reduction of the room our stuff needed for storage from 200 square feet to 25 square feet.  I guess we really didn’t need all of that stuff anyway.  Besides, our ‘treehouse’ isn’t all that big.

We are also trying to downsize our vehicles.  This saves the insurance, maintenance and stops the depreciation on them and gives us more cash each week to put in our savings account, rather than use that same money to maintain items we really don’t need anymore.

I shed a small tear for my ’74 BMW motorcycle.  I really loved that bike, but it was also the one that requires the most maintenance and without a shop and a more robust budget, it just wasn’t possible anymore.  It did go to a good home where it will be cared for and ridden, which is what they were always meant for.

1974 BMW R90/6

We are still trying to sell the Honda Accord.  I’m not sure why it’s not going, but so far, all we can get is offers well below blue book price.  Bottom feeders, I guess.  We can keep it for another few months for that price.

We have been told from birth in this country, that our worth is a sum of our possessions (and our job).  We work hard to make money so we can buy things to impress people we really don’t like all that much and who really don’t care anyway.    It takes a lot of deprogramming to stop that destructive spiral.

Are you ready to start?

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