the cherry blossoms are not yet in bloom
japanese gardens, mushroom pierogis, and broad city season 1
I took yesterday off to go to the beach, but we didn’t end up going after all. Restless energy made me pace the house, picking up rooms and throwing clothes into the wash, needing an excuse to do something so I could feel that the PTO hours weren’t wasted. I’m greedy about how my vacation days are spent. If there are only two-and-a-half weeks in a year I can choose to take off from work, I feel like I should be using those days in some kind of extra fun or extra constructive way. I’m not allowed to sit on the couch or sleep in because I cashed in this day with intentionality. When the intention doesn’t come to fruition, I feel lost and regretful, like I may as well have just worked.
The average allowance of paid time off for an American worker in my field and at my level of experience is 14 days. I receive a few more than that, though it’s combined with sick time, which means that if I get sick my vacation time begins to diminish. The US does not mandate that companies give their employees PTO at all or that they separate sick time from vacation time. My boyfriend receives no PTO because he works in the restaurant industry. Most states don’t require restaurants to provide sick time, though mine does. In the UK, regardless of field, workers are entitled to 28 days of vacation, in Germany you can expect to receive 20 days, while Japanese workers have a scaling allotment that goes up to 20 over time. We get nothing. As with health insurance, whether you receive paid time off is up to your employer. All previously mentioned countries have public healthcare, by the way. Funny how that works.
I, however, am lucky. Where I work, my PTO will continue to scale until it becomes unlimited at year five. My health insurance is good in that it works at most clinics and doesn’t cost me much out of pocket. I am very lucky! And still I struggle with taking my PTO, with planning ahead of time how I should use those days as opposed to taking days because I feel I’ve earned it or because I’ve been burnt out. I don’t treat myself with a PTO day when I finish a project. I don’t take PTO because I find myself in the position of no longer being able to finish a coherent thought or because the tension in my shoulders is giving me migraines. I just work.
Much of this, I believe, can be blamed on my own internalization of White American Protestant1 work ethic; a concept I intellectually despise but which I cannot stop bending the knee to in practice. I am twenty-six years old, which in some circles as a woman makes me an ancient shambling crone, and the pressure is on to Get Somewhere by Doing Something. Unfortunately, the bags under my eyes I’ve earned from years of work-related night terrors2 and an excess of blue light don’t feel like a meaningful prize. They’re a reminder of the time I could’ve spent sitting in a park somewhere having a lovely time. The eighty-some hours of PTO I haven’t used since being hired are there waiting for me. They’re staring at me like Bingo Bronson, demanding that I take them outside to play. What do you mean you don’t know Bingo Bronson? From the wisdom teeth episode of Broad City?? Oh my god.
Anyway, I didn’t really use my PTO day for anything productive or even all that fun and I think I kind of liked it. I didn’t work when I could have worked and I did nothing instead of something. That’s good! It’s, like, very European of me. I did one of my college internships in France and they were confused when I wanted to be there for longer than three hours. They wanted me to go watch a movie or get wasted. The older I get, the more I understand. You’re supposed to want to live your life. That’s the whole point. Strangely, I think I knew this before most other people because I fucked off severely3 in high school but reversed very hard in college to make up for it and got super into being ambitious. Not that I’m not still ambitious, but I think fucking off is important. The average adult can’t fuck off anymore and I’m going to be leading the fucking off charge into a much lazier future.
Instead of going to the beach, then, my boyfriend and I went to a Russian market for pierogis and kvas (which I LOVED!!!) then watched Mad Men for four and a half hours. And it rocked! I would do it again! I actually love driving around for a couple hours with no particular goal… one of life’s joys. Sometimes you get pierogis and sometimes you don’t. Doesn’t matter. Put on some jazz or Blood Orange or something and it’s a perfect afternoon.
As for today, I think I put this anti-Protestant ethos into action. We went to the Japanese Garden, which always makes me consider the world around me more acutely. You can see the entire city from this high-up vantage point, hidden between ginormous firs and angular cherry trees until you get to the very edge of the park. I love this spot. Portland means a lot to me and I constantly wish I had more time to explore it. The thing is, I do have the time. I just haven’t been spending it that way.
This is an old photo I found on the Garden’s website4, but it feels right for what I’m trying to say: Portland lives in a constant state of faded splendor5. Many people here complain that it isn’t what it once was, including myself, and that its best days are behind it. When I stand above it like this, it feels like maybe that was somehow always true, that our being here and industrializing it inherently bastardized an already beautiful and perfect place. Dozens of tribes knew this before my family ever came here. It says something, I think, that I feel closest to this place when I walk through Washington Park or watch the sun set from my rural childhood bedroom window; the land is what makes this place what it is. I liked living in Goose Hollow, the neighborhood closest to this park, but I often felt haunted by the scenery. Not like it was upset that I was there; rather that it wanted to remind me that it was more important, that a tree could fall on my apartment at any time and take me out. I think this is the trade-off of living in this city: You’re sacrificing your importance to something greater than yourself, something that may be well past its prime but that you’re willing to fight for anyway. The land is what makes it a labor of love as opposed to a Sisyphean folly.
I’ve been spending so much time in my own head that I have a tendency to forget where I physically am. I work myself so hard that I don’t take the time away to sit with the world around me, to visit areas of my city that are out of the way but worth the energy. Despite what I just said about the near-god-like influence that the land has on this city, the people have shaped this place by themselves into something that is absolutely worth my time. The Japanese Garden is not naturally occurring, after all; it’s the result of our cities acknowledgment of the ties between Japan (and Japanese immigrants) and Oregon, this mutual fascination we have with one another. It’s art for the sake of cultural enrichment and international goodwill. It’s the result of work, but the reward is one of play and relaxation for all. In an ideal world, work should culminate in an easier life, a more decorated and engaging existence. Is it really so wrong that we should apply this principle to the individual?
When those with the means to do so have turned away from collective enrichment, I think it may be even more important that we begin to forge these moments for ourselves. I’m working on an event with some work friends that is aligned with these values, for instance, and I think taking more PTO would serve that goal as well as my own health and wellbeing. More on that project if it actually gets green-lit, of course, but finding ways to create peace and moments of fun for myself and others might be a theme for the year. And it’s literally all because I had pierogis instead of a night in a hotel. Isn’t that awesome? Think of all the money I saved to get to that conclusion!
We had originally gone to the Garden to see the cherry blossoms. They’re blooming early this year in some parts of our city, but not there, not yet. I knew as soon as we found ourselves in a sparse parking lot; they bring significant crowds every year, as they should. The blooms were just beginning to bud as we approached, not yet ready to show their faces to the gloomy March weather. That’s okay. They’re resting. When they’re ready, I’ll come back. It will be worth it.
WAP??
I once sleepwalked in the middle of the night over to my charging phone, claiming that I needed to “send an email.” Once I got to the phone, I threw it all the way across the room with some amount of force; enough force to wake me up to find a phone on the ground some feet away and my boyfriend staring at me in confusion. I was hit with some amount of despair, though I wasn’t sure why at the time. Now I see this as proof that the phone is the warden of my mind prison and that I yearn to destroy it.
Like wrote my own sick notes to gym class so I could listen to my headphones in the bleachers, turned in written work to my ceramics class as a supplement because I didn’t bother to make anything with clay, and only showed up to my one extracurricular (theater) because I could talk to my friends the whole time levels of fucking off. It was awesome and I regret some of it but like… I turned out fine.
Trying not to take so many photos of places like this because it de-incentivizes my returning to them later.
I stole this term from The 1975, I’m not original. They use this term internally to refer to the sound of shoegaze-that-isn’t-really-shoegaze, more like pop guitars that have been drenched with just enough digital warmth to sound like they’re coming from another room. I think it translates to the energy of Portland quite well!