Toward Inconvenience
Irritation, Presence and the Herd
My neck seized up in mid-January. It was the same week federal agents started murdering people on the streets of Minneapolis. I couldn’t turn my head much more than an inch in either direction. I couldn’t turn away. I could only stare straight ahead, fully present to the ongoing brutality.
The neck symbolizes communication. It’s the bridge between thought and action. It’s a junction that I routinely neglect because communicating my inner world and opening myself up to public scrutiny often feels terrifying. These fears immobilize me as I open the Substack app and shy away from hitting publish week after week, unsure of what to say amidst the horror of this moment (though the horrors are certainly not new in the context of US empire). It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that my neck froze as the terror escalated, my body forcing me to stay present and attuned even as I wavered in how to respond.1
That same week, the dog had pieces of rope coming out of her anus.
A few weeks prior to that, I spent fourteen hours in a vet ER in Agoura Hills for another anus-adjacent emergency on a friend’s cat I was caring for. And now this wily German shorthaired pointer, in her owner’s absence and with me laid up, decides to swallow her dog toy. Inconvenient.
And just this morning, at my third pet-sit in less than two months, the dog honked down a rodent, bones and all, and has been hurling up its remains ever since. I keep getting drawn into these highly inconvenient digestive crises, reckoning daily with the symbolism of the anus, which offers a lesson in releasing our grip. These animals and their anal issues keep nudging me towards surrender, reminding me that inconvenience is often beyond my control.
When the sheep escape onto the local highway.
When a ewe lags behind the herd on a miles-long move from valley to valley, and a few of us stay back to tend to her wounds in the heat.
When the horse wedges his hoof in the fence while craning his neck toward greener grass.
These are some of the inconveniences I signed up for when I chose to work with animals. They are the ones that most reliably pull me out of my own head and into something larger and more meaningful. When the sheep escape in the middle of the night, I am temporarily freed of the tendency to wallow in my individual anxieties–I must rise to meet the inconvenience head-on, because the herd’s safety depends on it. I often wonder if I continue to choose this work precisely because I too often opt for convenience everywhere else, and this is the universe’s not-so-subtle way of edging me towards the discomfort of presence and surrender.
In my state of reduced mobility, I finally quit Spotify. I’d been putting it off for months because the timing wasn’t ever right, because learning a new platform and transferring playlists felt like a big lift (took all of 15 minutes). I am disturbed by how intolerant I’ve become of inconvenience, by how often efficiency wins out over my values. But unlike the inevitable catastrophes that arise when working with animals, these are the types of inconveniences that I can actually control.
Increasing inconvenience, or friction-maxxing (🤮) has gone viral recently as a method for boosting happiness in our daily lives. It’s the latest life hack: even inconvenience can be optimized for self-improvement. Tell that to your pet sitter as they ever-so patiently wipe up puke all morning. I cringe at the branding and mainstreaming of inconvenience, a concept that is so fundamental to life on earth. But despite the insufferable repackaging, I want more inconvenience in my life, not as a lifestyle hack, but as a practice of presence and a tool for change.
I want to go to the library and get lost in the stacks without a roadmap instead of having everything delivered via algorithm to my e-reader. I want to stop by my neighbor’s house for coffee even though it’s out of my way. I want to choose the less user-friendly platform even if the learning curve is high. I want to channel the energy of people who organize against ICE, who stand in their way, who reserve hotel rooms so they have nowhere to sleep, who blast ear-piercing music outside their windows at night. I want to channel the vast history of union workers who choose temporary hardship in order to demand more dignified conditions that benefit all workers in the long-run. Inconvenience as disruption. Inconvenience as resistance. Inconvenience as strategy.
Has human life ever been convenient? Why do we expect it to be now?
Convenience is sold to us as an individual right. It was once the purview of the wealthy, but the erosion of our communal and local structures has forced folks of all economic backgrounds to opt in. What full-time, minimum-wage worker can afford to spend an hour driving to the hardware store for a pack of screws when amazon delivers them cheaper and faster? Convenience promises more time, more energy, more freedom. But freedom for what? To work more? To consume more? To scroll through an endless feed of curated lives while our connection to real-life community dissolves? We are overworked, underpaid, under-resourced and now totally dependent on these systems that reinforce this gnarly hyper-individualism. Convenience offers empty efficiency while distracting us from the day-to-day care and responsibility we owe each other.
As Janaya Future Khan says on Dark Woke, “community matters more than convenience.” The more we orient our lives around convenience, the less we invest in the small, often annoying, acts that sustain thriving communities. And the less connected we are, the more easily we become divided, brittle and breakable. Inconvenience builds resilience. Inconvenience requires us to be present to each other’s needs and emergencies, to the realities of this moment. When I stop to aid that lagging sheep, when I am up at 3AM helping a ewe give birth, when my friend brings me food and offers to drive me and my obstinate neck to urgent care–this is us engaging in all of the inconvenient activities that sustain a herd, a community. All of these cumulative, seemingly small actions are the infrastructure of collective power. They are also what resistance is actually made of: not necessarily grand gestures, but the daily willingness to show up even when it feels irritating.
With my neck immobile, I’ve had no choice but to be present. My head won’t turn towards what has already happened or what might happen next. All that exists is what falls directly within my narrow field of vision. So I learn to live moment by moment. Like last year at this time, when I was recovering from top surgery, I rewatch Schitt’s Creek, a show I first binged in 2020 with a pinched nerve I got from slipping on some infamous Vermont ice, a few days into a new farm job and a few weeks into lockdown. I learn the same lessons about forced presence in the face of inconvenience as I prop myself up with pillows and braces to support the weight of my head. I meditate in the sun, I read where I can, I take the dog on slow and deliberate walks, I scrounge through the pantry for snacks that require little effort. I gently move my neck in small circles, small actions that amount to meaningful change each day.
Inconvenience is a shared condition and it looks different for each of us depending on our contexts. So how are you willing to generate a bit more inconvenience in your own life? How can you leverage inconvenience as a tool to disrupt business-as-usual, and to stay present to the needs of this moment and to the people around you?
OTHER UPDATES
The second issue of The Hitching Post (formerly The Roundup) is out now! It’s a 16-page newspaper all about queer country dance across the US and beyond. Order here!
I am on a bit of a line dance sabbatical these days but have a few classes and events cooking for March (stay tuned) AND Dancing in the Valley: A Queer Country Dance Retreat returns to Ojai on April 18! Save the date!! A day of workshops and an evening of social dancing for queer folks and allies at the Simoore Grange :)
I now have an analog newsletter! More info to come, but paid subscribers of this newsletter now get all the digital stuff plus 4 analog newsletters delivered to your door each year (one each quarter, around the equinoxes and solstices). First one ships out in a month! Upgrade before then to get the first installment.
VC Defensa has been holding trainings around ICE preparedness protocols in Ojai and Ventura. Save their number in your phone to report any ICE activity in your area and if you are in another part of California, find your local rapid response network here.
For anyone else who has experienced this freeze state, it helps me to remember that action is truly the antidote to fear. Taking any action, even small ones, can help motivate us to continue working towards change. Being involved, feeling like we are a part of something larger than us, is so big.
Reminds me of a quote I read in a recent book that keeps popping up in my life “You don’t know your principals until they become inconvenient to you”