Rich people's problems

Crisis at work

A week alone

A view is just a view

Material fatigue

High-risk carpentry

In Israel there is indeed war, missiles, shelters, Zoom calls, and kids on my mind. But I was asked to continue focusing on myself because it provides 3 minutes of escapism each week. So I apologize in advance to anyone for whom my self-involvement in my small troubles doesn’t sit well (in fact, they can simply not read this, so whatever).

Yoela's work is in a rolling, multidisciplinary crisis. It started in the previous weeks, due to various crises with partners, investors, and some employees, and reached a peak last weekend when they discovered that more or less all the trees they planted last year had died. So on Monday, Yoela flew for an emergency visit to the site in Costa Rica and spent the last week counting dead trees against living ones, contracting a tick-borne illness, visiting greenhouses to grow saplings, holding marathon meetings, rethinking the entire planting process, and searching for tahini (coming back today with 3 kilos). We were left without her and survived to tell the tale. These flights were known in advance and a central part of the arrangement to relocate to Colombia (in short, I signed a prior agreement and have no right to complain...), but it’s not an easy matter, and I must take the opportunity to tip my hat to all the women I know, who sometimes stay behind when the boss demands or when work requires it, to handle all the daily grind with the kids alone when the partner flies, poor thing, abroad for a grueling week of work - with the unbearable connections and marathon meetings. Coming back tired and jet-lagged... blah blah blah. Let me see you manage the entire household alone for a week and then we’ll talk... or as I told Michael this week - sorry, I can’t do this and this and this alone, I’m not Superman, and he answered: but Mom can.

Beyond all the complexities of managing daily life alone (for example, having to get Ofri out of bed at 6:30 for the car because he starts an hour and a half after Mati and Michael, but can't be left alone at home. Driving with him half an hour both ways, getting him organized and then going out again back and forth, or dragging everyone around for three hours due to Ofri's dentist appointment), beyond the complexity, the feeling of loneliness in a foreign country and a foreign language is amplified to the max every time Yoela flies.

I pass through crazy landscapes every day and most of the time forget to marvel at them. The mountains, the trees, the mist, the sun rays, the cows, the squirrels, and the birds are simply laid out there as a standard daily backdrop, and every now and then I awaken to them and say wow! What is this? Usually, such landscapes come during a trip when your focus is on them and you share them with someone else. When I travel with the kids (who are completely indifferent to this landscape), the view is just a view, losing meaning. I remembered the movie/book

In to the wild

about a boy who escapes from life and society and goes on a journey alone across America in the wild. At the end of the movie, just before he dies of hunger, poisoning, and exposure in a snowy forest in Alaska, he writes in his journal something like - all this beauty is meaningless when you have no one to share it with. (Okay, I checked in the chat, the exact quote is: Happiness is real only when shared). I write this not because I am depressed or sad; I think for the first time in my life, I am experiencing longing in such an intense way. Longing for a place, for people, for work, for the familiar. It's also hard and painful, but also an emotional experience that I don't know so well and 'enjoy' experiencing. I'm trying to dissect and understand this experience, how much of it is real and how much of it is thoughts about the future. It’s clear that it’s both.

Material fatigue is starting to show in the kids as well. Almost every day this week there has been some rebellion to suppress - Mati, despite finally receiving the computer he’s been nagging about for months, with a trillion mega RAM and a zillion pixel resolution, announced that in the summer he’s returning to Israel and staying with Grandma, Ofri stated he is no longer going to kindergarten. Meanwhile, Michael exhibits maximum resilience. I asked him about it, he thought and said something like: I miss it too, but this is what we have right now and it won’t help if I just complain about it all day.

So I started the week with all my might. I decided that alongside laundry, cooking, cleaning, driving, and homework, it was time to realize my grandiose leisure plans. I started writing Ofri’s storybook, still no piano, but I began my carpentry course and even prepared a meal that received a score of 10 out of 10 from all the kids - hummus, fries, salad, black beans with cumin instead of fava beans, pita and falafel, the whole shebang... Michael declared it the best meal he has ever eaten not at a restaurant! As the week went on, my strength dwindled... you don’t have to shower every day in this weather, and bread with an egg is a legitimate dinner. A few more days and the kids will come to school in torn clothes...

Carpentry course - not for the faint of heart

I arrived at the wood workshop. Full of power tools of all kinds. All the things I’ve seen in hundreds of woodworking videos over the years, but there’s really no need for them at school. In general, I am quite afraid of these machines. I have a tendency not to follow the rules and have often been injured because of it. With these tools, the injuries can be quite severe. Moreover, while working, I observed the people around me and did not get the impression that there was much emphasis on safety.

A short tour of the workshop, a brief explanation of the course, we get to work and already in the first lesson I fulfilled a dream. For several years I have wanted to work on a wood lathe, one of the less frightening and dangerous tools, and one of the coolest. I know because I’ve seen plenty of videos on YouTube, but I’ve never seen a machine like this in reality. And here we are on the first lesson of the course, working on the lathe. I made a wooden mallet within two hours, I came out delighted. I arranged with the instructor that I would come twice a week. By the way, the instructor doesn't speak a word of English, but we manage.

I arrived again yesterday, a bit late. The workshop was full and the instructor was busy with an elderly man. When he became free, he apologized: starting today a senior with neurological issues will join me, so I’ll have less time for you. The rest of the people in the workshop are experienced and know what they are doing, so my time will be split between you. Okay, I said, no problem, I’m patient. I stood by and watched. I saw him teaching the elderly man how to use a machine called a jointer. After a few minutes, he left him alone on the machine and walked away, occasionally glancing back to check if he was okay. From the videos I watched, this is one of the dangerous tools. I got very anxious, and I kept imagining him slipping his hand in, but he seemed to handle it well.

Well, I think I’ve built enough suspense; it’s time for a trigger warning or whatever it’s called. A few minutes later, one of the apparently experienced people (the one standing behind me in the photo above) apparently worked incorrectly on this machine and lost 3 fingers. I had my back to the event; he didn’t even scream, so I didn’t realize something had happened at all. When I turned around from my table, I saw everyone had stopped working, with terrified looks. Blood everywhere, and the elderly man with neurological issues had his hands over his ears. A horrible situation. Shocking, frightening, and surreal. All the way back, I imagined my hand in the machine.

I’m starting to imagine what will happen in the planned blacksmithing course... maybe I should switch to origami.

See you next week