Transportation plan

As a student, I’ve been fortunate to have a bus pass included in my tuition for $50 a semester.  It’s been handy, to say the least, and I feel like I’ve made very good use of it.  In fact, I suspect that the bus pass is a significant reason of why it’s been possible for me to be car-free for as long as I have.

Sadly, at the end of April I will no longer have a bus pass.  While I could buy one, it would cost far more than it’s probably worth.  I don’t think that my budget will stretch that far, especially that I’ll now also be paying more for my non-student extended health plan.  Honestly, though, I don’t know that a full bus pass would be worth it anyway, given the amount that I actually use the bus.

While I’ve considered bus tickets, I find myself a bit hesitant for two reasons.  First, I’m trying to keep the budget tight.  While a few bus trips a week probably won’t break the bank, $3 per trip can add up over time, and I’d really like to keep the transportation spending as minimal as possible.  Second, I keep talking about getting in better shape an better health.  While I can do this when I get home from work, it makes more sense to me to incorporate it into my day for activities that are already necessary.

And so, as I’m apt to do, I hatched a plan.  The plan (such as it is) is focused largely on walking and biking.  As soon as the weather’s nice enough here (ie: manageable levels of snow and preferably no ice), I’m going to start walking and biking to campus and other places I’m likely to go.  Heck, I’ve already started doing this on nice days.  In truly terrible weather I’ll likely take the bus, but the rest of the time I plan to suit up and people-power myself to campus.  Heck, I even have an underused bike trailer for farmer’s market shopping trips.

This might take a bit more planning as I lead up to the age of no bus pass.  True, I have a bike, and shoes, and various other necessary bits and pieces.  And I could be wrong, but I still feel like there’s a difference between going for a walk or a ride where I get to come home afterwards and do my thing, and one where I wind up teaching or in meetings.  I’ll need extra time to get to campus, and probably extra clothing for when I get there.  I’m going to need to be properly dressed, which should be mostly manageable from my current wardrobe, although I’ve found myself considering the addition of one or two pieces of more waterproof outerwear.

As with so many other things, it will be an interesting challenge.  I think it will be good for the budget.  I think it will be good for my health, and I’m hoping it will help me get rid of this lingering 10 or 15 pounds that I seem to have acquired in the last year of dissertation work, especially after I was told that I had to stop running until we figured out what’s wrong with my hip (for the record, we still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with my hip).

But overall, I also think it could be good for my well being.  In the times that I’ve walked home for campus recently, I’ve gotten some exercise and fresh air, but also some good downtime to think, relax, and unwind.  With any luck, building this into my routine more regularly will help to increase these benefits even further.  Goodness knows, I can use all the help I can get sometimes, and there’s something infinitely satisfying and reassuring about taking a bit of time to regularly maintain that connection with nature and community through moving a bit more slowly and a bit more intentionally through the world.

Labour

“We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable.”

Booker T. Washington

After a long discussion with The Boy over lunch today that covered everything from how different types of labour are valued through to anti-intellectualism, I was glad to stumble across this quote, first because I think it can be an easy thing to forget, especially in this modern society, and second because it’s  a solid reminder of the fact that I need to better incorporate different forms of labour in my own life.

I’m an academic.  I spend a whole lot of time in my head reading, writing, and thinking. I certainly think there’s value here in thinking about the world and asking questions about different elements of culture and society.  There’s also value in teaching about it, and helping students to develop critical thinking skills so that they can better engage with their world.

There’s equal value in other forms of labour too, though.  Over the last few years I’ve found that I’m increasingly dissatisfied with living life mostly in my head, wrapped safely in the spires of the so-called Ivory Tower. And so, I’ve looked for other ways that I can engage in labour, even when they’re relatively small compared to the academic side of my life.  And I’ve found, happily, that ensuring that academic life is coupled with more tangible forms of labour makes for a great deal more balance in my life, and also what feels to be more productivity.

Carrying heavy loads from rice to soil home, planting seedlings, hanging laundry, and digging in the yard or at the community garden are all forms of labour. I find they help to ground me, reminding me of the basis of daily life and to not get too caught up in my head or my work.  I’m also aware that they’re productive in very different ways.  Hauling, planting, and digging are all productive in very concrete ways – I wind up with more materials at home, and more things growing outside.  In academic work, at most I wind up with a conference presentation or a journal article, which are material only because they’re sometimes (and these days, very rarely) printed on paper.  While both can be satisfying in their own ways, there’s certainly something to be said for the value in seeing the real, material, tangible results of labour.

These are by no means the complete basics of everyday life.  To provide completely for myself would require labour that I doubt I can even begin to fathom, and that I imagine would take me away from most if not all of my academic endeavours, which is a trade that I’m not yet willing to make.  I also realise that I am in a privileged position – for now, anyway, I get to work at a job that I enjoy, and only take on other aspects of labour by choice, based on what I want to do and not on what is necessary for my survival.  But these small acts, a movement towards forms of labour other than the immaterial, the digital, and the ephemeral, help to ensure that I don’t get too lost in my head for too long, and bring me back to everyday life in a way that becomes more valuable and necessary all the time, both for practical and more personal reasons.