Hey, been a long time.
SO my mother gave me this computer about a year ago. I'm such a spoiled guy, the youngest of two, and a blessed financially family, that I have been clued into a trick, that I can lament to my mom anytime that I don't have a functioning computer, and she will oblige sending one of her old ones, or in this case, a refurbished one from the factory.
A band I listen to called Krill has a line; "if you were having a good time, while everyone else was suffering, then you're the oppressor, you're the oppressor". Well that's what I think of when I get treated so nicely from my family/mom. That's also why I seek out hard work and try to challenge and improve myself. I try to be a good person, and it takes constant effort, and I'm not always so good.
I hung out with a friend Dan here yesterday. I met him through a social media app centered around homesteading- I mentioned I do landscaping in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and he messaged me that his place needed some work. Wildly long story, but I did work for him at the rate of $30/hr through a Native landscaping company I was working for at the time; and I'd damaged the Landscaper's truck, and this homesteader guy, Dan was a welder who could solve my goof-up, and I solved his yard problem.
Anyways, that was a year back, and yesterday, my birthday, he called me again and said "it's that time of year!" I thought he meant my birthday, but he actually meant, time to do more yard work for him.
Allow me to describe my birthday; but first, something I probably should have lead with. I'm a father as of three months to Heather and I's beautiful Daughter, Edith!
Since my last writing, I was on my way to grad school at UDEL, The University of Delaware, in Wilmington, Delaware, and I did go and teach classes, and participate in weekly critiques of my co-students' works, and I did work for their maintenance department doing as the joke of MFA's goes, literally 'Moving Furniture Around'. And I did take pedagogy class, and I did teach one semester of core painting to undergraduate students, and I did get in a bunch of trouble for not sticking to the School's prescribed curriculum, instead having my students paint on too-small of surfaces, or in the 'wrong' color palettes, and I did not do a great job at applying for fellowships or grants, or appealing to the staff at the college, but rather I did the strategy of holing up in my studio and producing as much work as I could, and tried to push my painting's imagery and themes, and admittedly I did assign to my peers in our art theory class excerpts from Ted Kaczynski's 40 page manifesto, (but in my defense, or whatever, the dean of the college had us read from Weather Underground's Bill Ayers' graphic novel about reforms in teaching ie. deskilling and listening to the students in a bid to decentralize education into feelings). But I heavily digress, point is, they could smell something on me, and I did get invited to leave the school in my final review before the board of faculty.
They accused me of not wanting to be there, which an hour and a half's drive to and fro each day, no income permitted outside of the stipend granted by the school itself ($1100 pre tax per two weeks excluding holidays etc, which calculated to about $11/hr for the required work stipulated), having a car die out in me, buying a motorcycle to continue to attend, riding through whatever weather was in the cards; rain, hail, snow.
I was doing well at the college, I thought, a true hero's tale of perseverance and my peers saw progress and began to 'get' my art, and laud compliments during what should've been critiques.
Anyways, technically I was put on academic probation, and asked to paint a new body of work over the summer to resubmit to the school for re-admittance, but I was already stretched very financially thin and, overall Fuck them, and, also, they were probably right to do what they did, and may they enjoy their insulated ass community.
Admittedly, my attention was split. During school to help with finances, I worked for my friend's native landscaping company almost full time for a while, and when I'd first started school in the fall of 2022, I worked maybe three days a week helping a guy from Craigslist build decks and additions.
So, after getting the boot from school, I scrambled around to find a job in residential construction, because I thought it would be practical to learn about home flipping and improvements, as I imagine I'll derive some income from that as I continue the rat race towards a small empire of family, land, self-reliance etc. Heather and I made the conscious choice to try for a kid, and I thought if we can land one in March, that would be cool, because I thought we'd land an Aries baby, or one whose perspective originates in the springtime, plus the pregnancy would go through the winter, and it seemed like a sensible time frame. I got a job at All Phase Construction LLC. in Lancaster when Heather was about five months pregnant, and stayed with that company for until two weeks ago. Until my resignation, I assisted an electrician and did a wide variety of home remodeling tasks. I took the role of the f.n.g.- the 'fuckin new guy', with a twist of self awareness, and excellence. All my life, I'm used to being the scapegoat, so the shit roles downhillism of being the new guy is something I excel at. Also, like any good hire, I was already proficient at most of the tasks I needed to do on the job, and eager to polish up and learn new skills. Well, it was all good until a new new guy joined the crew, and he was a 45 year old former marine, and he was terrible to work with. A know-it-all and a bully. His work was fine, but his need to put others down, (specifically me), was untenable, and to make it worse, he was stupid, so good rhetoric wouldn't land on him. He would often corner me out of work because in his estimation, he could do it better. He would demean me while nudging me aside to take my task away, always simple tasks which he would often overcomplicate. Over the course of maybe five or six weeks, my work dried up, absorbed by an over leveraged meathead, so..what was I doing there? My whole goal in working trades is to learn new skills.
Meanwhile I was clocking in after work to a cabinetry wood shop of a neighborhood friend, who is from Finland and has a lifetime's worth of expertise in the Northern European furniture making craft. I was building a mudroom bench in his shop as a commission from a customer I'd met on a worksite. The Finnish man's name was Petteri and his wife's was Michelle. They bit the bullet opening this wood shop only a year prior, and by chance Heather and I had met them at some Halloween dance night at a bar maybe 8 months before she was pregnant. Well, one night Heather and I were volunteering for our neighborhood's garden alliance, offering free rain barrels to neighbors, and we knocked on Petteri's wood shop doors and what a great surprise to see him! I told him that I had some furniture to build, and offered him the contract in full, but he said, "why don't you just build it here?", so over the course of a few months, I did and he helped greatly, and educated me on several tools and concepts. So as this All Phase Construction job was going sour, I asked Petteri, "Hey, how could I do this kind of work full time?"
He said, "well, there's a lot of turnover in wood shops, but also few shops really do this type of custom building, but there is one shop, my friends; Cedars Woodworking. So, long story short I work there now. I interview very well. I probably have a 70% yes rate in my interviews, when I'm not batting way outside of my lane; (like for example three years ago when I got a wild hair and interviewed for several managerial office positions in construction management, and of CAD based departments, having no experience meanwhile other applicants had proper gone to undergrad in those fields.
Well, I realized a quarter the way through that this should really be about six posts. let me try to sort those out for now before I conclude; to give me a leg up on the next time.
1. Going to University of Delaware
2. The motorcycle and the Subaru and the Truck
3. My studio experiences at the University of Delaware, politics, my thoughts and actions, my income summer break, etc.
4. Mayapple Native Landscaping
5. All Phase Construction LLC.
6. Side work, side quests
7. The decision to make a baby
7.5. Heather's sister dies
8. Pregnancy and delivery, and Edith
9. the end of painting.
10. Cedars and the future.
Thanks for reading! baby is crying and I have to go.
