Preparing my departure

I've been working where I work for close to four years now, and spent about three of those years pestering about work, and the last two years really wishing I didn't have to go there anymore. My feelings evolved between boredom, bitterness, anger and indifference. When I got back to work this week after 10 days of sick leave, my first thought as I switched my computer on and sat down was "I should quit".
Pause.
"Oh. I already have. Damn. Two more months. Sigh..."
I've spent a lot of the moments when I felt most bitter about work drafting stingy departure speeches that would have been held on the little going away snack and drink gathering workers leaving often organise. The bitterness has long left me, but my desire to send in a last message to this bunch of senseless workaholics has increased over the past weeks - I guess in an attempt to show 9-to-19 office workers who perpetuate busy work as a way of life that there is another way of leading a life, while they still think I am one of them (one of us, one of us!)

And so, this is my draft message to all my lovely co-workers and my boss - which I will send only on my last week.

I too go along with the long series of fluctuation mails and loudly and joyfully announce my last day in the office.

I have spent exactly four years here, and in those four years I have changed a lot - which is why I couldn't imagine staying here any longer. My urge to gradually bring my life in line with my principles and priorities (non-hierarchical structures, a lifestyle compatible with the environment, social justice, a slower rhythm and personal development) resulted in me not being able to spend 8 hours in an office, wasting up paper and energy, producing politically uncritical reports, and with the prospect of becoming a researcher and flying round to conferences with "important bureaucrats" - all in the name of the environment.

Of course I am grateful that the company financially enabled me to study, and I learned a lot in terms of precision and work planning. I also developed friendships over the years, which probably held me longer here than I wanted it.

And what will I do next? I will pack up my rucksack again and hitch from collective farm to farm, learn a lot about earth and straw bale building techniques, but also travel east (for the first time!) and document with a friend anticapitalist political struggles (this should result in a book with photos and texts). I will probably never again work for a salary, I actually need very little money to finance myself (solidarity and collective self-organisation greatly reduce commercial needs, and the rest can be covered by punctual translations. I've probably done enough money-work for the rest of the year!)

So then, off I go into a life of self-determination without consumerist slavery and busy work as a way of life!
To those who are staying: I hope you really are at the right place for you.

The original is in German, which has all these nice concepts for which finding a translation is difficult. But nevermind. Compared to the soapy emails quitting co-workers usually send around (Thank you for the lovely team work, I hope quitting was a good decision, I am so sad to leave behind such great co-workers...), it might give a pleasant change. Heehee.

berlin-on-sea

The building across from my window was bathed in sunlight, the sky shiny-blue. A gorgeous Sunday to take the bike and wizz up to the fleamarket on Boxi. I was hoping to get
- sunshine
- fresh air
- a tea pot
- a milk foamer
- and perhaps a scarf for my unruly growing hair.
I arrived at boxi a little sweaty and parked the bike. There was music, there were people everywhere, on the square and around, sitting at coffee tables on the side walk having brunch and lazy social coffees, big people, small people, punks and fashion-freaks, young families, gay couples, hispanos, french, anglophones. It was good to see that F'hain (the neighbourhood) hadn't yet lost its main quality - its ability to offer a complete random mix of people. I walked around, looked at a pile of clothes and picked two tops. I hesitated on taking a scarf as well. I wanted to give no more than five euros and calculated internally what was acceptable for me and what the owner of the stand would accept. I went up to him and said I'd take the two tops for 5. He accepted without discussion. I should have at least tried to take the scarf.
Further on, there were 70s lamps and furniture, old vinyls, CDs, books, hats and army head protection, toys, bad artwork, better artwork, and there, shiny and pristine, a milk foamer. K had instructed me to get either a milk foamer or another, bigger coffee pot. The expresso coffee pot we have in the flat is minuscule, posing all sorts of ethical and practical difficulties: Either one has a tiny dose of coffee with a tiny dose of cold milk, in which case coffee addicts like K remain unhappy. Or one has a tiny dose of coffee with a larger dose of milk, to fill a bigger cup - but then the coffee is tepid, and the afore-mentioned people are equally unhappy. OR one uses a whole pan to warm up milk, thus consuming more electricity (as a bigger burner is needed for both pan and expresso maker), and there's more washing up to do. My personal favourite to exit this unbearable crisis was the milk foamer which would go on the same burner as the small expresso maker and give lovely foam to all foam lovers around.
So here I was, standing in front of a stand which provided a larger expresso coffee maker, a milk foamer, and two tea pots to choose from. I picked the foamer and a tea pot and asked how much the stand owner wanted for that. The first guy said 10 per item, the second one said 8 for one and 6 for the other. I remained silent for a second then offered to take both for 10, which the second accepted immediately, although he seemed to regret it as he realised he had said yes.
I wrapped the teapot in one of the tops and packed everything in my large bag. Mission accomplished. I then sent an sms to A, my flatmate from three years ago who now lives in the area, to see whether she'd be up for coffee. She wrote back saying she was putting her little daughter to bed and she'd be happy if I came by a little later. Which I did. Her little daughter is absolutely cute - I'd only seen her sleeping or on photos before - one encounter in the flesh excepted, when she was but a tiny little few-month-old baby who refused to be in my arms without screaming and crying, but loved being in K's arms as he told her loads of absurd stories. I hardly took it personally. In any case, she's lovely now but not yet very talkative. She enjoyed playing with my milk foamer and generally spilling milk all over the table while transvasing milk from one cup into another and then back into the foamer, occasionally wiping the table with paper tishues.

A's mother came by to pick up the little girl, and A and I took our bikes to the Volkspark, where we walked around for a long while, sat in the sun, talked a lot [about intercultural dialogue, and more generally afro-european communication difficulties, expectations, visions of society, her future and mine, her flying to Sudan this summer to get married etc.], observed people playing beachvolley and frisbee, and enjoyed berlin's special mood when the sun is out. A city where everyone is outside, smiling and enjoying times of leisure. She said she was particularly pleased to have a conversation that wasn't centred on children for once.
I was then instructed that we'd switched to summer time and that it was much later than originally thought - and pedalled along the streets still filled with leisurly sociable coffee drinkers, back home where an anxious K was eager to taste the results provided by the milk foamer. I also immediately put my new teapot to good use and felt my quality of life had reached a whole new dimension now that I can carry the equivalent of three cups into my room. The joys of modern life.

buying freedom

A month or so ago, I got a punctual job from a large German governmental agency via someone I don't really know but am sort of connected to via a network of environmentally-focused ex and present political science students. It was two days of work and got me the same money I get in two weeks at my usual job. That's when I definitely decided that buying my four months of freedom this summer would not be too much of a problem after all.
Indeed, the customers were happy, and last week I received an email from another person who works at this agency, offering me another translation job. I always find giving my prices difficult - I tend to think I'm a lot cheaper than a translation office, but when I calculate my line rate for a whole document, I end up staring at four digit numbers on the calculator which I simply don't feel comfortable asking for or even receiving. So I reduced my rate a little and will get the equivalent of my usual monthly salary for a week's work. My four months of freedom are already mostly covered for now.
In a way, if I could feel certain that I would get a constant flow of work, I wouldn't mind being freelance again. But the benefits of my present contract are obvious - paid vacation, stable hours, stable pay. If I were freelance, I would never be sure of when the next job comes and would run the usual risk of freelance existence, namely either no work or overwork. There's rarely any in-between.
And it's not like these translations are more in keeping with my principles. Bob knows they are not. It's as bad as what I presently do - under the blanket of working for Good (environment, helping out poor country), uncritical mainstream economy-over-people concepts are propagated with a smile and, for most of those who work in such institutions I suspect, with a happy conscience.

Closet outing

At long last I made the jump. Not only did I write that email to my HR manager to demand four months of freedom in Summer - I also came out of the closet and told the Policy-Oriented, Unconsciously Neoliberal, Technocratic-Elitogarchy Loving, We're-Working-For-The-Environment (let's order sushi and leave more lights on and print some more documents we'll never read) People at work about the way I planned to use this freedom. I hesitated at first but decided there was no point hiding anyway. I did try to reframe my topic in a way that appeared less radical anarchist, I suppose. Coward that I am.
I wrote something like:

Dear [insert name of bitchy-doll personel manager],

I'll start writing my final thesis in October. My topic will probably be the transformative potential of implemented political "Utopias" (although I will only finalise my project design in April). In order to write this, I would like to collect material and data, especially field observations and interviews in and around various solidary, environmentally-friendly (alternative) societies, probably in Germany and France.

etc etc.

This email went to HR Manager and the two researchers I work for, who are Nice People but not quite the Utopia type. It will eventually be given to my boss who has the final word. (Obviously he can't refuse, because otherwise I quit.)
Let's just look at this first attempt to indirectly tell my boss that I basically despise the work he's been so kind and generous to create for me. It's mild, it's soft, and it has words like "implemented" and "environmentally-friendly". Yes, it does have Utopia, but then in inverted comas! Inverted comas! and "alternative" in brackets! I didn't even mention communes. It's a timid first attempt. I can predict that Boss will call me in for a Personal Development Interview soon, something he's been wanting to do for a while already, to prode me around and figure out once and for all whether he can hope to have me start there as a researcher eventually.