But make no mistake, that’s slavery.  The company doesn’t have to pay benefits, and my friend works full-time for half-pay, not including $160/month for train and bus fare.

I have no quarrel against part-time work.  In fact,  I’m looking for permanent part-time work.  Because it pays the bills, and leaves me enough of the week left over to use flexibly – doing more work, opting for higher-paying, less-stable gigs that may lead me to full-time employment.  I win, and the company wins, only if part-time means 8×3 or 25 hour fixed price projects.

The problem are 4×5 or 5×5 jobs.  The time it takes to get ready for work, to commute to work, then commute home can easily add 10 or more hours a week, and that’s not counting wasted time from missed connections and traffic congestion.  Part-time work alone is not enough for most people to survive on, yet having to do everything times five leaves you too tired, too strapped, and without enough contiguous time to do substantive work.  And of course, it’s bad for the environment to be travelling when you could be at home.

Companies don’t do this to be mean, or in a bid to use slave labor.  Most companies hire part-time assistants, organizers, coordinators as a resource for their full-time staff, who also work 5-days a week.   But for the most part, it’s just the reality of life that a company’s employees are higher on the food chain than part-time, temporary staff.  This isn’t a call on companies to mend their ways.  This is directed at you, the part-time worker to negotiate.

First off, cut one day off the week.  Instead of working 4 hours, 5 days  week, try for 4, or even 3 longer days, which approaches the 8 hours/day overtime limit in California.  If the company still needs coverage over 5 days, they can hire an additional part-timer to fill out the rest of the week.  You can even cut your total hours if your company’s budget cannot cope.  But also remember, by not paying benefits, companies are already saving a lot of money hiring you on a part-time basis.  This is for your benefit, but if you work it right, it benefits the company too.  Make a business case out of it, and try for a win-win situation.  This is sustainable living, this is innovative living, this is humane living, and it’s a living.

Just remember, you may be a bottom feeder, but you’re not a slave.  You have just as much right to walk away as a company does to cut you.  If you have skills, you are entitled to make a living and keep that roof over your family’s head while you save up for walls and floor too.

All it takes is:

- You’re registered

- You use the email address you supplied when you registered

- You to: or cc: post@ajaxofalltrades.com

- If you ‘reply to all’  on an email that created a post, your reply shows up as a comment.

Adding autotagger makes it much easier to add content to the site.  I’m doing this for other people, but may open this up for contributors here too.  Coming soon.

And I let off a big, fat, wet raspberry and scream COME ON!! I gave up driving 11 years ago because of my vision, and been living that ever since.  I’ve taken mass transit, been a passenger in other people’s cars, I’ve ridden trains, walked miles, even skateboarded ever since.  Truth be told, I’ve missed it many times, and many times driving a car would’ve come in handy – for a steady job far away in San Mateo or a startup jungle east of HWY 101.

But I’ve been able to walk, bus, light-rail, train, BART and ride rings around San Francisco Bay.  It ain’t easy.  You have to mix transit and transit lines to get to many places, and then you have to figure out how to get back, sometimes late at night.   But there is one huge plus.  By cursory inspection, I am a middle-aged man with a backpack, not terribly exciting to look at.  But I am a lean, low-carbon footprint machine.  Carbon offset-wise, I’m Terribly Sexy.  Brad Pitt can’t hold a candle to my energy mojo baby!

Though I’d love to explain in detail all the ways I’m terribly sexy, we have a planet to save. Do you want to become a sexy planet-saving beast?  Give up your car for a single weekday.  Every week.  For as long as you live or until driving no longer matters.

Now, this may be simple, but it’s not easy.

The first problem is – you’re addicted.  It’s not just a means of transportation, a car has become your Cyber-suit.  Hear your engines throbbing, 0-60 in 5.5 pulse-pounding seconds.  Are you a Soccer mom?  Or are you the terminator ready to drive over anyone in your Hummer?  You have your music, your climate-control, a machine in harmony with your body – you just imagine your destination and you’re there.  Or you can be the rebel swooping through cove-after-cove on Hwy 1, the wind in your hair, even if the wind is coming from your vent.  Riding the bus is a huge step down.  Way down.  You lose your super-powers and you’re sitting with migrant workers – and tech workers who figured out the bus is the better way to go.  The bus is noisy.  It’s uncomfortable.  And the smell!   Waiting at the bus stop in the dark, in the glaring light, in the heat, cold, rain, and hardest of all, getting in line while people are crushing you from all sides.  But see yourself as a Warrior, fighting in the muck for Mother Earth.  That’s real.  And it’s much safer than driving your car.  Even with airbags.

Get over that hurdle, and you still need to do some math.

Remember that in Sustainable Living, one action may not cancel out another.  So if a typical commute costs you 1 gallon of gas, your alternate means of transportation must not cost a gallon too, or even a fraction of that gallon.  Your spouse driving you to and from work will not work.  Carpooling with a buddy who drives a Hummer (the original) won’t work either.  If your Buddy drives a Prius, that might work.  Riding the bus and/or train will work, but not if your spouse drives you to and from the bus stop or train station.

Riding mass-transit will tax your organizational skills like no Mgmt lecture ever could.  You have to get to the bus or train stop, catch connecting buses and trains, and hoof it to your office, rain, sleet, snow or global warming.  You have to overcome obstacles, dangers from crime and idiot drivers.  Buses are late.  Caltrains shut down occasionally when somebody gets killed by a train.  You need a smart-phone with internet connection.  You need to improvise, sometimes you’ll just be late getting home.  Sometimes you’ll get stuck and need a ride.  But after the first awkward round-trips, it gets easier, and you may even enjoy not having to drive.

That’s one way, but there is an even better way, and the real point of this blog.  Want to guess what it is?

That’s right.  The best way to save a gallon of gas a week is to stay home.  More and more people are telecommuting to work.  But if that is not an option, then this is where you become an activist.  Work 4×10 hours/week rather than 5×8.  Or if you cave, 4×11 hours/week.  The Utah State Gov’t is trying the 4 day work-week now in an effort to save money and energy.  And more will follow.

One of the side-effects, and benefit of the fight against Global Warming is the 4-day work-week.  This will have a profound change on America, and the world when they follow suit.  Because you get that extra day off, every week has a 3-day weekend.  But the bigger picture is that you can still work the 5th day, but doing your own projects, your own work, your own passions.  If you want to go to the movies, or shopping, take mass transit or better, walk.

You quit smoking for awhile, then you cave to the craving.  You eat less for awhile, then feed your hunger.  You’ll take care of your procrastination soon.  Promise.

People succeed, but the habit never really goes away.  It’s a lifelong commitment, and requires eternal vigilance.  And people keep vigil by becoming more aware in their existence.  With awareness comes a sense of richness that wins over your appetite.

So it is with Sustainable Living, except it’s not one habit, but a horde of habits.  An army, a legion.  How in the name of Heaven and Earth can such a life be possible?

It has to start within you.  It has to be such a core value that taking the actions, making the decisions, and living in awareness becomes habit rather than effort.   You can’t do this by choice, it has to be involuntary.  It has to happen to you.

Nice words.  I could make a living as a life coach with language like this.  But if you read it again, you feel a sense of hopelessness and you ask, spitting the words out, Now what do I do?

That’s easy.  Take up gardening.  You, your spouse, and the kids.

Got a patch of ground?  Till it.  Got a community garden?  Join it.  Google organic farming and do it right.

Then grow something.  Something to eat.  Something you’d like to eat.  Something you’d really like to eat.  For me it was asparagus and peppers.

Take care of your garden every day.  Do everything deliberately, take your time.  Enjoy the sun, the wind, the smell of dirt.  When it’s ready for harvest, eat.  Cook it up fancy, or cook it up simple.  Or just eat the fruit (or vegetable) of your labor.

Your Mother Earth feeds you.  You planted a seed in the ground, you worked the soil and took care of your garden, and Mother Earth fed you.

There is no value more core than the food you eat.  There is no better way to feel, not intellectualize, that the Earth sustains you.  And that by killing the earth, you’re shutting off your food supply.

And for Children, who are still naturally curious, they witness the wonder of a plant unfolding from a seed.  The symmetries and color and design.  They will grow up with a respect for the planet we aim to save.

It’s the bond between you and the Earth that makes it possible to take on Sustainable Living.  It is impossible to do it out of obligation to Mother Earth, but impossible to live any other way if it is when you love the Earth as you love your mother.