Showing all posts tagged money

In Culture, Environment, Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Politics, Relationships

A Renewable Human Future

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I dream of a future that uses renewable energy and focuses on the needs of human beings. For a long time now, I’ve been searching for a way to state this dream in a simple, straightforward sentence. Finally, at long last, I think I’ve found it in this phrase: A renewable human future.

My heart pounds with excitement to realise that loads of other people are coming to the same dream, at the same time. For decades, so many of us have been disheartened and then outright enraged by the technofascist push toward generative AI with no regard for the cost to humanity through lost jobs and the deliberate destruction of the environment.

It’s easy to be pissed and hard to know where to start to fight back with something like this. Climate change is the key existential threat of our lifetime, as our planet is heating up and the oceans are boiling, but the elected leaders in charge of these regulations have caved to billionaire pressure and rolled back so many environmental protections.

So we despair and recycle and do what we can in our small corners of influence, while the only planet we have to live on falls apart around us due to greed and stupid decisions. But then came the data centre construction, and now it seems we’ve got a physical enemy to focus on. I can feel the uniting hatred for the billions of dollars being spent on these abhorrent and destructive buildings around the world, and I think it’s finally bringing us together.

In Canada, where I live, our Prime Minister Mark Carney made a big announcement on June 4th called AI for All. The outcry on Bluesky was swift and immediate. Canadians like me who loathe AI and want zero investment in it. CBC followed up with a story about how public trust in Canada is among the lowest in the world for AI and the companies who provide it.

Trust should be low when the product fucking sucks. Canadians are smart in this area. It’s enraging that our elected leaders are so out of touch when it comes to announcing this strategy for AI as though Canadian citizens will embrace this awful tech with open arms. Data centres use a shitload of water and electricity. They are loud and damaging to the earth. No one wants a data centre built near them. I don’t want them built at all.

My response to Mark Carney’s excited announcement on Bluesky read “I dream of elected leaders who actually listen to what the people who elected them want. NO AI. Please, don’t think about money for just a moment. How about human jobs for human beings. Renewable energy. A future where we can breathe and drink water and grow food in our soil. Please. NO AI.“

I followed that post up with a longer letter to the Prime Minister, the AI Minister, my local MP, and the Premier of my province. I was going to write twice, once to express my disdain for the AI for All policy, and once to express my opposition to the way the Liberal Government is quietly dismantling our environmental laws and protections, but then I realised these two issues are really one issue.

The fight to stop any more data centres from being built is the fight to save our environment, and do away with this chokehold the tech oligarchs have placed on society with forced use of AI. This fight is one of the biggest issues of our time, and it’s happening right now. We cannot wait. Our planet is in peril, and it’s the only place we have to live. Please, join us in this fight.

Get loud. Write to the officials in charge to say NO AI DATA CENTRES. Sign every petition you can find, like this one to halt the proposed Vancouver data centres, and this one to pause AI in BC schools. Wherever you live, search for petitions on data centres and sign them to send a message to elected officials. In Vancouver, people are taking to the streets to protest loudly, and I plan to join them.

It’s healthy not to trust those who lie to us. The technofascists have lied, again and again and again, so I will not trust them when they promise that these new data centres will be different. We don’t need AI. What we need is renewable energy to heal our ravaged planet, and a future that centres human beings and not company profits or chatbots. We need to prioritise our human lives over money and computers.

To me, the environment matters more than anything else. If my kids and their future kids cannot breathe clean air or drink clean water or grow food to eat in the soil, and if they have no access to inspiring work that celebrates humanity instead of robots, then they have no liveable future. It’s up to us, right now, to imagine and then build a future that we can be excited about.

One that is renewable and human. The time is now, and this work is urgent.

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Care But Don’t Carry

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I’ve had a hard time this summer with my nineteen-year-old son coming and going every seven days for his job. He’s been driving a huge truck in a copper mine, working twelve-hour shifts that alternate between days and nights, seven days on and then seven off, with a seven-hour drive each week to get there and to come back home.

It’s been a challenging time for him. The learning curve was steep to manage the trucks and the driving routes. It’s a remote location. He’s working with seasoned veterans who have been doing this job a long time. It’s a radically different world for William from his university student life and his previous employment as a barista at Starbucks.

On the plus side, his two best friends from high school are working with him. They travel together, live together when in the Cariboo region of BC, and faced the same stress when training on the trucks. And they are all making very good money to pay for their upcoming tuition and living costs as students.

When I was talking to friends about William’s experience this summer, and my frustration with listening to him complain about how hard the job is and how he misses being at home, I found myself saying, “The job for me here is to care but don’t carry.”

I liked that phrase so much I wrote it down in my journal. I’ve been mulling it over, considering how it applies to parenting and marriage and family members and friendship and lots of other relationships. I realised I know how to care and I also know how to carry stress for other people. But I don’t know how to do one and not the other.

I found myself trying to gently explain this to William. I said, “You are nineteen now. When you were younger, I would help you with your anxiety by sharing it with you. We would talk, and you would discharge some of those feelings onto me, and then you felt better. But now you are an adult. You’ve taken on a hard job, and I’m proud of you, but you get paid a lot of money for this work because it’s hard. And you’ll have to learn to manage some of that stress on your own without complaining about it to me.”

There’s no switch to flick to turn our kids into adults. I know it’s a long process, filled with ups and downs. But I also know that I don’t want to be weighed down by stress that isn’t mine any longer. I want to offer support and love when people around me are struggling, but I don’t want to carry their load for them because it doesn’t belong to me.

I’ve been exchanging voice notes with a friend who has kids the same age as mine. We’re both trying to navigate our way through the rhythm disruptions of having young adult kids leave home, then return, and then leave again. It’s a stage of parenting that won’t last forever, so we are both trying to enjoy the kids when we still have them living here, but it also requires a fresh commitment to our own self-care and nurture to manage the sense of whiplash with all the coming and going.

Care but don’t carry. I’m living into this phrase. I want my kids and my husband and my friends and family members to know I can be counted on for help and a listening ear. But I also want to free myself from the pressure I can feel to carry burdens for others that I haven’t actually incurred for myself.

What are some ways you’ve practiced care but don’t carry in your life and relationships?

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Speaking, Uncategorized

Loving our Bodies Exactly as They Are

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

“What if we decided to love our bodies exactly as they are?”

I read this question on Twitter a while back, and I can’t stop thinking about it. As a woman, I’ve been told my whole life that something is wrong with me and if I spend enough money and time on the problem, I can hopefully fix it. So I’ve put highlights in my hair every few months, bought new and improved makeup to cover my blemishes, tried various weight loss plans and exercised more, went shopping for new and more flattering clothes, and the list goes on.

A few months ago I went to a skin place to treat some of the cherry angiomas that crop up more frequently now that I’m in my late forties. The technician gave me a brochure for a laser place that promised to get rid of the redness in my cheeks and chin for treatments starting at $199. As I drove home, thinking about this new redness issue that had never occurred to me before, I thought, “What the hell does it matter if I have some redness to my skin tone?”

Then I read that quote: “What if we decided to love our bodies exactly as they are?” What if we chose not to worry about redness in our skin, or some cellulite in our thighs, or grey hair at our temples, or wearing clothes we like that are five years old and not the newest fashion? What if we simply decided that we were fine as we were, and didn’t need to stress about it or pay a lot of money to fix ourselves up to meet a standard somebody else set in the first place?

In my presentations I talk about how the decision to change is the hardest step of all. After the decision is made, the rest is easier. Especially when we are trying to deviate from a social expectation or norm that is so familiar it becomes like the air we breathe. We don’t even notice it, so the idea of challenging it often doesn’t occur to us.

Thinking I’m too fat or not fashionable enough or that my hair shouldn’t be gray or that my skin is too red is under my control. I can believe those things or I can choose not to believe those things. I can decide. If I want to spend money and time on certain things related to my body, that’s up to me and I don’t need anyone’s permission other than my own. But I can also be as counter-culture as I want and choose to love my body as it is, without feeling ashamed, and this truly does feel revolutionary to me.

I’ve been dipping my toe into this idea and liking what I find. I’m the one who decides if I need to change something about my appearance, not the corporations marketing to me so I’ll spend money on their products. Just because something is available doesn’t mean I need it.

The world looks different when we decide to love our bodies exactly as they are.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Speaking, Writing

The Direction of Your Dreams

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
The Direction of Your Dreams

Are you walking in the direction of your dreams? Is there an activity or a pursuit that makes your heart beat a little faster when you imagine yourself engaged in it? If so, are you moving toward this?

If not, why not? Fear? No money? Not enough time?

The older I get, the more I see that courage is what counts when going after your dreams. You don’t have to be rich, but you do have to be brave. You don’t have to be organized, but that does help when it comes to managing your time. However, anyone can learn to be organized.

Guts and perseverance are really the two biggest ingredients. JUST START. Don’t think your way into the things you want most. You have to work your way in by going after it and not taking no for an answer.

This week I’m in Edmonton, presenting four sessions at a large teachers’ convention. In 2015, I submitted three proposals to a Calgary teachers’ convention after going into Ava’s grade six class to run a fiction writing workshop. Her teacher encouraged me to submit to the district conference, even though my first instinct was, “Who in the world would want to listen to what I have to say?”

I pushed through my timidity and submitted. When I was offered contracts for February 2016 I was terrified but went with my knees knocking (it was cold but I was also nervous!) to stand up in front of a room of teachers and talk about writing and run a literary salon.

Last winter I upped my courage and submitted all over the place. I spoke at three major conferences in Alberta and this year I’m traveling every week of February to speak again. I’m less anxious this time because I know I am up to this task. I have some new material this year that I can’t wait to deliver and see how it lands as I’m considering writing a non-fiction book proposal on it.

I looked over my writing, speaking and acting goals at the beginning of this year and I realized that I am actually living out my dreams. I’m still inching away toward some of the biggest ones, for sure, but the areas I’m focused on for my career and my overall life are satisfyingly real. It’s so freeing and exciting to use your best talents in our world. And after many years of not receiving an income, to earn money for the things I’m good at and I love doing is marvellous.

How about you? What’s your big dream? Are you moving closer to it? I promise you, it’s not as far away as you might think it is.