8000 lbs

I helped sort and box 8000 lbs of carrots yesterday. It felt great. Oh, and about 400 lbs of oranges too as bonus. You can call that as an answer to President-elect Obama's call to action, for more community service, or you can also call that Jane-needs-something-unplugged-to-do-on-Tuesday, in any case I went to volunteer at the SF Food Bank for 2 hours (their regular evening shift). The basic work at a food bank involves manually packing lots of food items, and this time it was transferring 8000lbs of carrots from industrial sized one-ton containers, to smaller, easier-to-manage wine boxes so community pantries and soup kitchens can actually use them.


Where did these carrots come from? Well, there is nothing wrong with these carrots, it's just that most of them are either too-giantic for market, or deformed, or in their own way not conforming to the traditional look of a normal-sized carrot. Their less-marketable shape make them a very cheap buy for the Food Bank, which is great since the produce is otherwise entirely identical to the ones you'd pay good money for at your regular grocery store. With about 15 people, we quickly packed the entire load in about 1.5hrs of actual work. There is something very theraputic about repetitive work like this, that involves touching things, for someone who works with the computer all day. It is kind of like playing tetris-with-carrots, combined with some level of exercise, combined with a good dose of good karma. I really enjoyed it, I'll go back next Tuesday for sure.

Now that I'm not paddling (I might resume some level of weekend paddling later, we'll see) since it's off-season, I have been resting and now I'm also trying to figure out some sort of new routine for the darker months. For a while, work was really busy, so that kind of by default filled my extra time. Now it seems like it'll be more regular hours, so I am ramping down my sloth, and ramping up my usefulness as a person outside of work. Food bank is a good regular spot on Tuesday; I'm supposed to at least play some badminton with Lydia sometime soon, that might take up another day. Hopefully I'll find another yoga studio that I like going to as well, that might be another day.

I am not very good with a sense of waiting. It doesn't matter if there is a very legitimate reason why I have to put up with the wait, after a while, it's all just waiting around, no matter why. I am a rather patient person now I think, but waiting, is different. I don't mind waiting if there is a set time when the waiting is over... like, I'm actually pretty good in waiting for flights, etc, unless there is a delay-without-any-ETA, then I start to go batshit. This type of waiting is like, a sense of suspension of living, that your routines or your schedule can't continue, until the variable clicks into place and the gears start going. I don't mind if the gears of life grind slow, I just start to mind it when it is on pause, pending something that might arrive in the next hour, or two, or three.

I'm trying to reduce that; but, I feel like the waiting has been piling on. I dont' have a really good strategy of how to deal with that, especially when getting frustrated really isn't going to solve anything, or, rather, would just make things worse. I like running my life feeling ready, and I'm pretty decisive, so it's a good combination for me. I don't generally feel like I waste any time. These days I kind of feel like I'm at a perpetual bus stop... sometimes caught between the decision to attempt to enjoy the time while waiting or just to go fuck it and walk.

Packing carrots is a good antidote to that feeling. A pile of carrots, a box. There is no waiting involved to 8000 lbs of nutritious pride.