Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination by MacLeod Hugh

Author:MacLeod, Hugh [MacLeod, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Portfolio
Published: 2011-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

Embrace Crofting

“Crofting” is a great metaphor for the new world of work we now see emerging.

MY PATERNAL GRANFATHER WAS A SCOTTISH Highland “crofter.” He lived on a croft-that is, a very small holding of land with a small cottage on it-where he raised sheep and cows, cut his own hay, and grew oats, turnips, and potatoes. I used to spend my summers there as a boy. We were very close.

Probably the most famous crofters are the ones from the Isle of Harris, who spend their winters indoors, hand-weaving Harris Tweed so they can sell it to all the top fashion houses in the world like Burberry and Ralph Lauren. A revered little traditional cottage industry, indeed.

Crofting is a good life, but not a very financially rewarding one. It’s very self-sufficient, though. The interesting thing for me, looking back, is that crofters never did “just one thing.” Every day they had something else going on. One day it might be looking after their sheep. The next it might be a job working on the roads for the local council. I knew one crofter who drove the mail van. Another who ran the local post office. They would do their jobs, but after work they’d still have their sheep, cows, and potatoes to tend to. It’s the same with the Harris Tweed weavers, too. They keep busy.

The other advantage of crofting is, when the outside world is not hiring at the moment, you can always live on lamb, oats, turnips, and potatoes indefinitely if you have to. Not fun, maybe, but at least you can survive till times get better, which they always do....

As my dad is fond of reminding me, I seem to have inherited the crofting mentality. I don’t like waking up in the morning and doing the same thing every day. I do like having all these different balls in the air-cartooning, painting, consulting, writing, marketing, blogging, etc. Sure, part of me would like nothing better than to just “retire to the desert and make paintings,” but another part of me likes all of the running around in different directions. Even if all of this running around does get tiring, an endless torrent of stuff needing to get done.

The traditional Highland crofter is pretty much a thing of the past. As my uncle, a crofter like his father before him, recently quipped, “We just farm manila envelopes now” (farm subsidies from the European bureaucrats tend to arrive in manila envelopes). But since the BigCorp job-for-life is becoming a thing of the past, expect to see more “crofters” out there, even though it’s no longer sheep and potatoes we’re selling. I think it’s a sweet little term that conveys a lot, especially to those of us who seem to have a built-in aversion to salaried positions in other people’s companies. Don’t you?

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