Showing posts with label living alone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living alone. Show all posts

Thursday, June 09, 2016

Things They Should UNinvent: any policy that requires you to have a support person

From a recent Carolyn Hax chat:

Hi, Carolyn. Love your weekly chats! Thanks for all you do! I have to have a (non-emergency but necessary) medical procedure (think a colonoscopy). The facility will not admit me for the procedure unless I am accompanied by someone who will be there for the duration of the procedure and drive me home. I cannot take a cab home, and I cannot arrange for someone to pick me up when I'm ready to go. I'm not married, I don't have kids or other family that could take me, and although I have good friends, none that I feel comfortable asking to take a day off work to sit in an office waiting room with me. So I've repeatedly had to delay the appointment. What do people like me do in this situation? I have a chronic medical condition, and I'm suddenly very depressed about the fact that I have to go through life wondering who is doing to take me to my various appointments. I realize that this is a silly logistical question, but it's really triggered some profound feelings of loneliness and fear, and I'd be interested in your thoughts. Thanks!
This is actually a serious procedural problem in the medical system. The job of the medical system is to take care of you, so it's simply not appropriate for them to require you to bring someone to take care of you. 

You arrive at the doctor's office capable of getting home yourself, so they should release you in a condition where you are capable of getting home yourself.   Maybe they can achieve this by letting you rest in the recover room for longer, maybe by providing you with food and drink or additional medication - they're the medical professionals, they'd know how. To do anything else is simply a failure to care properly for patients. Policies like this should be prohibited.

***

And you know what? Let's be bold and extend this rule beyond simple medical care.  All aspects of life should be achievable by anyone without a support person, and if they aren't the relevant organizations should change their policies and practices.  Driving schools should organize their standard courses so people can get fully licenced without having to find their own accompanying driver to practice with. Dresses should be designed so the wearer can put them on and do them up completely without help. The school system should be set up so students can be just as successful even if they don't have a supportive parent.

People who, for whatever reason, don't have a someone who is a fully competent adult who speaks the predominant local language and is able to drop everything to help them when needed are already at a disadvantage. Society and its institutions should be set up to mitigate this disadvantage, not reinforce it.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Possible new academic year resolution

My new year's anti-resolution is working well, so I'm considering starting another for September, because after 19 years of my life spent in school it's still the psychological new year.

Potential resolution: when shopping or considering a new purchase or new ongoing spending, I don't have to worry about good value for money, I don't have to worry about whether I'm getting screwed over price-wise. All I have to do is stay in the black. As long as I don't fall into the red, I can spend whatever money I want on whatever I want. If I feel after the fact I didn't get my money's worth, I don't have to buy it next time.

I'm not sure if I'm going to go with this resolution. It feels risky, but I think it would reduce stress.

One thing I love about being a grownup and living alone is that when I do decide to make some kind of change in my day to day life, I can just quietly do it without telling anyone. (Yes, I know I blog some of them. I don't blog all of them.) When I was a kid, I'd usually have to tell my mother if only for logistical reasons, which made me feel like both my idea and my ability to execute my idea are up for scrutiny. I like being able to do things without anyone noticing.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Another benefit of living alone

I impulsively dyed my hair (a subtle auburn rinse intended for a lighter brown, causing my hair to shine red in certain lights and doing fascinating things to my greys) for the first time since I started living alone. And it's SO much easier when you live alone! If I forget to bring something to the bathroom, I can walk out and get it regardless of my state of undress (because putting clothes on with a headful of dye is impossible). When it comes time to rinse the dye out, I can take as long as I need to under the shower, just relaxing and letting my mind wander under the warm water until the water runs clear, without having to worry about anyone pounding on the door and asking if I'm going to be in there all day. And, of course, if I miss a spot when cleaning up afterwards, I can just catch it later without any lectures about ruining the bathroom or people disingenuously pretending to mistake the dye for menstruation so they can run from the bathroom screaming "Ewww, gross!"

Friday, April 27, 2007

How roommates would affect my ecological footprint

The Globe and Mail proposesthat people living alone are "an environmental time bomb."

This seemed off to me, so I calculated myecological footprint. Here are the results it gave for me living alone (I apologize for the all-caps, but it came that way. The bolding is my own):

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 1.8

MOBILITY 0.1

SHELTER 0.6

GOODS/SERVICES 0.7

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 3.2


IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.


IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.8 PLANETS.


Then I recalculated for if I lived in a household of six people. I kept all other variables the same, just changed the number of people:

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 1.8

MOBILITY 0.1

SHELTER 0.2

GOODS/SERVICES 0.3

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.4


IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.


IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.3 PLANETS.


"But six is really a bit much," you're saying. Okay, so let's do it for a household of two:

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 1.8

MOBILITY 0.1

SHELTER 0.4

GOODS/SERVICES 0.5

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.8


IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.


IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.6 PLANETS.


As you can see, the difference is really negligible. Already I'm only occupying about 1/3 of the average footprint. If I increased my household size to six, my footprint would shrink by only 0.8 hectares, which is only 9% of the average footprint in the country.

And that's with changing only the number of people - none of the other variables were touched. So that means I'm cramming six people into this 500 square foot, one-bedroom one-bathroom apartment. For a savings of only 9% of the national average. That hardly seems worth it, especially since I'm already 70% below the national average to start with!

But what if we did something more realistic. I have no idea how much space you'd need for six people, so I redid the calculations for 2 people in an 80-square-foot apartment. Why? Because that's the smallest apartment in this building that I think I could share happily with mi cielito. We're both introverts who need our space.

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 1.8

MOBILITY 0.1

SHELTER 0.9

GOODS/SERVICES 1

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 3.8



IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.




IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.1 PLANETS.


Not only is this higher than for if the two people lived in the 500 square foot apartment, but it's also higher than for my rating living alone. So it looks like the "problem", if there is one, isn't that people live alone, but that people who can afford to do so live with the amount of privacy we expect in our society.

But you know what? I'm not giving up my privacy. My privacy is the single greatest joy my home gives me. I'm childfree, carfree, vegetarian, and paying higher than average rent to live in a building with l33t new environmental features; and my ecological footprint reflects all that. I've done my part. If you want me to give up my privacy, work on getting everyone else's environmental footprints down low enough that mine even begins to approach the national average. Then we'll talk.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Living alone redux

Apart from the fact that it's a crash course in the joys and responsibilities of adulthood, there are two other things:

1. You get to spend some time with your true, uncensored self. There's no one else around to impress or accomodate.

2. You can keep almost any aspect of your life secret from almost everyone.

It really teaches you a lot about yourself and your priorities to have complete freedom in your private actions, and complete control over who finds out about them.