If you live near a Whole Foods

[LWolf]

5. That's an interesting list.

First, of course, I had to see what fit for me:

There's a Whole Foods 20 miles to the south. No relative of mine is currently serving in the military, but my first husband, the father of my children, did. I'm paid by the day for a pre-determined number of days in a contractual year. While that contract says I have to be in the building for 8 specified hours each work day, the contract also calls for me to complete more duties than can be addressed in that 8 hours, so there is an assumption of hours outside the contractual "day." As a matter of fact, my union rep recently collected a chart of all the extra hours worked, and it turns out that the average is 12 hours a week beyond that contracted 40. No one I've ever WANTED to know uses meth, but my grandson's mother did for several years after his birth, and it contributed to being able to remove him from her custody and severely restrict her access to him. I married and divorced twice, and chose not to swing for a third strike. I was the first person in my family on either side to attend college; my oldest and best friend in the world did not, and neither did some of my other close friends. My colleagues did, and generally completed more college than I; friends I've made in the workplace attended and completed college. I don't have a criminal record.

I don't think I'm part of the problem. I come from generations of working poor people. Without offering up the gritty details, I know what it's like to be poor.

It seems like this article was addressing those who have made comfortable livings in the business world. I don't know anything about that; my people have always worked for others, and while I attended and completed college, I'm a teacher. A public school teacher. While I understand that conversations in the United States are based on a foundation of capitalism, I find that discouraging; limiting.

The most interesting and powerful part of this article, for me, came toward the end:

“If you’re the kind of person who tends to succeed in what you start, changing what you start could be the most extraordinary thing you do."

I agree with this. I know it's true in my profession. I also know that top-down political/corporate control of the system that I work in has mostly depressed my, and my colleagues', ability to do so. We are forced into mouthing corporate platitudes about data, about "targets," about tests and scores; our profession is forced into a business model that is totally inappropriate for our purposes. "Changing what we start" is dictated from the top, from powers that be that don't necessarily want us to be successful. Any positive, healthy, constructive changes that we want to "start" must be done from the underground, camouflaged from those powers that be.