Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"According to ILO statistics (from 2001), Americans are the most productive workers in the world -- a fact that is often touted by the 'boot-straps' folk on the right as proof of our system's superiority. But we're not the most productive workers per hour; we merely work more hours than any other industrialized country, and our hours increase almost every year. It's the kind of productivity that is built primarily on the backs of the middle class and the poor. Squeezing every last drop of productivity out of working people to maximize growth is the essence of the Wal-Mart model. It's good for the economy, but not for the people who live within it." -- Joshua Holland, 2005-04-25 (the essay makes several interesting points, and I'm interested in hearing others' reactions to it.)

And a related quote that I ran into after copying the above passage into my QotD queue: "[...] The unwritten executive policy handed down to lower levels of management is to squeeze every moment out of your team's lives. If an individual stands tall for his family and refuses to put in the ridiculous hours the company expects, he is removed from the organization. Our industry only need look back to labor areas where unions resulted from these practices and heed the warning. [...]" -- Wayne Berthiaume, in a letter to the editors of InfoWorld, vol. 27, #20 (2005-05-16), p. 10.

I'm feeling better today than yesterday, despite only having gotten about four hours of sleep -- I felt alert and almost perky for a little while this morning, but have since run out of steam and am wondering whether a nap will be enough to render me functional again by evening. At the moment I'm just supremely exhausted, the various aches and pains having retreated to merely annoying levels -- a vast improvement, as I said, over yesterday. I'm also feeling much more coordinated.

Basically, I've been in "flare" for about a month, and I'm really more than ready for this flare to be over. Other folks with fibromyalgia have commented on having a rough time of it lately as well, and some healthy people have noticed other friends of theirs with chronic pain suffering more recently as well. A long time ago I was asked whether my condition reacted to the weather, and I wasn't sure ... So for a while I kept a log, writing down every day how I'd felt that day, intending to compare it to weather data and look for trends eventually. Except that I never got around to gathering the weather records, and I fell out of the habit of logging daily (now it's when I think of it, which means the bad days get written down more than the good days).

Even ifwhen I copy the old notes from paper to a computer and snarf historical weather data from the web someplace, I'll need the help of someone with better statistics-fu than I've got to help me spot any but the most obvious of trends.

Anyhow, what today feels like is that I'm exhausted from dealing with so much pain all of yesterday. Like Sunday was recovering from the effort of Saturday (performance at the festival) and today is trying to recover from the effort of surviving yesterday. So the second question for tonight is, "If I feel well enough to go to rehearsal, should I, or will that constitute pushing myself when I should rest?" (The first question, of course, is whether I'll feel awake enough to drive by then in the first place.) I want to go. I've been missing far too many rehearsals lately already. I also want to be well enough to attend (and enjoy) some fraction of Balticon this weekend, and possibly perform this weekend as well. And to take care of some deadline-impending tasks on my to-do list.

At the same time, theferrett's post today makes me want to take a nap this afternoon so that I can spend the evening composing, arranging, and transcribing music, then the night writing essays, and finally shopping for recording equipment on eBay around dawn so I can lay down tracks of what's in my head next week, and to hell with everything that distracts me from those. But I know a bunch of people and a few corporations who'll feel a bit put out by that plan. I seek a middle path, a quest made more difficult by chronic illness (but I keep thinking there must be an answer that works for me).

Shouldn't the sign really say,

NO PARKING
11:30 AM - 3:30 PM
TUESDAY and FRIDAY
Every Third Week
May thru September
If It Isn't Raining
STREET CLEANING

instead of what it does say (the first three lines and the last line)?

Oh, silly me, of course not. They couldn't write as many $42 tickets if they only ticketed on days they were actually going to clean the streets!

(No, I didn't get a ticket today. I'm just annoyed at having to move the car during naptime.)