Cleaning the car - the work exchange

Well, the first meeting of the work exchange community (total real members: two) happened today. It was a success. Diane understands the idea of 'I help you, you help me.' She helped to vacuum and shampoo the car, and afterwards, we talked about some work that I could help her with at her house. We are not formally counting the hours or the calories of energy expended in performing the labor. The bookkeeping is very casual right now.

The car floors aren't perfect, and we didn't get rid of all the contamination, but I feel better for having done a little bit of work on it. It's impossible to get rid of it when it's in the carpets. (To catch up on the story, the brief version: 2007, I handled medicinal herbs and seeds in my apartment; they contaminated some of my belongings with their essential oils; I started having reactions when I touched these oils and absorbed them through the skin; it's been an ongoing disaster over the past two years, as I found out that the oils remain active instead of biodegrading and becoming inactive. So I've been cleaning it up, but it doesn't come out of carpets. And several of the cleaning chemicals I used, like Borax, were so toxic that it made the situation much worse. Short version.)

I had someone else who I was TRYING to get into the 'I help you, you help me' concept, but he was operating in a slightly different paradigm, of 'I give you lots of gifts, and you give me sex' paradigm, which isn't what I'm trying to do at this time. I kept trying to pay him back in non-sexual ways and he kept refusing. As of right now, I still have in my possession the 'bunch of gifts,' and I am still deciding whether I will start giving things back to him, or pay him cash, and it hasn't been settled yet. He gave them to me during the winter, when I was on my deathbed and desperately needed help, and I don't necessarily want to give it all back, because a lot of it is useful, but I don't have a cash value estimate on it. (some computer equipment, an air filter, miscellaneous computer stuff.)

So, this is what would be called a mission-and-values conflict according to Diana Leafe Christian, or structural conflict, where people aren't trying to accomplish the same goals in a community. I'm a little annoyed about that today. I see it as community building and finding ways to make lasting improvements in our lives; he sees it as 'paying for a prostitute.' As a libertarian/anarchist, I don't have anything against prostitution (victimless crime), but there's a time and place for it, and I'm not working as a prostitute at this particular moment in my life. (In reality, he probably would describe it as 'traditional dating,' which is the same thing as paying for a prostitute. The guy buys stuff for the girl and she's expected to give sex in return. Usually they're horrified at the suggestion that it has any resemblance to prostitution.)

I can't imagine how anybody would NOT have a huge, complicated, impossibly long to-do list of unfinished projects and plans and chores and work that needs to be done and daily routines and wishes and dreams... I ask people what work they need to have done, I try to explain the idea, and the response I sometimes get is 'Duhhhhhhh....' The world is infinitely complicated. There are infinity tasks that need to be done. When one task is achieved, there are infinity more tasks beneath it. It is physically impossible NOT to have work that needs to be done. So again, I'm annoyed. (By the way, much of my annoyance is intensified because I'm reacting to the contamination in the carpets we were cleaning. I will probably be in a rotten mood for several hours.)

But, the car shampooing job went well. We had to figure out how to use the shampooer. The instructions aren't very detailed. When it starts up, the scrub brush starts pouring out foam, and you can't stop it. So you have to start scrubbing, ready or not, because the time starts counting down, and you only have a few minutes. On the first round, we were trying to figure out how to switch it to the vacuum, where you suction up the shampoo. The instructions do not say how to switch to the vacuum. I thought it would happen automatically after a certain number of minutes, but instead, the shampooer eventually just shut off. We did another round of it, and it turns out that you push the button next to the 'vacuum only' selection to get the vacuum. But I thought that that button only controlled it in the very beginning when you were putting quarters in. It doesn't, it still controls it while it's running.

So we got better at it, and I stood on one side of the car, and she stood on the other, and she handed the scrubber over to me when she was done, and we had to hurry the whole time to make sure we didn't run out of minutes, and the foam just kept pouring out, so you had to pass it really quickly over the gearshift and parking brake so they wouldn't get covered in foam. It was awkward, and fun, and we were laughing.

It was sunny outside, and we talked, and I vented my feelings about chemical sensitivity. She was sympathetic because she knew two different people who were chemical sensitive. I am not 'chemical sensitive' in the traditional way where you have a life-threatening asthma attack every time somebody with perfume walks into the room - nowhere near that. I just react to very specific things, including the low levels of herbal drugs and cleaning chemicals and mold in my house. My 'area of specialization' is the phenomenon of transdermally absorbed drugs and chemicals, and also, the problem of clothing and surface contamination. Those ideas are important and not very well known. For instance, stimulant drugs can contaminate clothing, go through the skin, remain in the laundry even after several washes, and cause weeks and weeks of persistent insomnia. I know this from firsthand experience, and this is important information. But I haven't found it mentioned in other websites, although it's hard to know what search terms to use to look for that.

I have a notepad, and I am writing down dates and times of things that I have planned and need to do. This is unfamiliar to me. It's very disorganized and informal - when I started writing it down, I got harassed by voices pushing me to be all perfectionistic about it, and set up some uber-technical system showing everybody's names and all the things we would be doing. But I know all about that from the past - it will waste time, if you try to make a complicated, perfectionistic system, when all you need is an informal scrawl. I am now thinking of the enneagram, that the Seven shouldn't disintegrate towards type One (perfectionistic) and should, instead, integrate towards Five (I read a little quote showing the spirit of the Five: 'Life is short - don't expect too much.' That isn't meant in a bitter, cynical way, but rather, it just means, don't overload yourself with infinity impossible things to do because you have to focus on doing whatever you are already involved in.)

Anyway, when I'm here at home, and I have to think about what time it is, and feel an obligation to do something for somebody at a particular hour, on some particular day, it's strange to feel that while I'm at home. That's a 'workplace feeling,' not a 'home feeling.' Right now, it's all just emailing or calling various people, meeting people, and getting to know them, and it's mostly in the future instead of actually happening right now.

I am learning as I go about what the rules will be, and how to express them. Being very annoyed about the 'I give you gifts, you give me sex' model of 'traditional dating,' I will have to set strong rules and boundaries saying, 'THAT IS *NOT* WHAT I'M DOING!' I am telling people from the beginning that it is Exchange Work For Work, and not Exchange Gifts For Sex. (Yes, the 'I'm annoyed' feeling just goes on and on. Very bad day for a variety of reasons, other than the successful job done on the car, which I am pleased about.)