Friction-maxxing, according to its Wikipedia definition, “is the practice of intentionally choosing less convenient options in daily life to build tolerance for discomfort, resist technology-driven ease, and preserve what proponents describe as meaningful human experiences.”
In reality, it’s a fairly normal state of being on most islands, whether one chooses it intentionally or not. Yet what constitutes friction depends largely on one’s age and inclination.
Many ways to “max” have cropped up. One can healthmax; looksmax; money, gym, or sleepmax. The use of these terms seems more common among the younger generations.
These grand- and great grandkids of Boomers were born with smartphones in-hand. Ironically, one way a Boomer can now friction-max is to try using technology for ordinary tasks, like getting information with a QR code.
Doing almost anything on an island piles on the friction. The ferry service helps with this a great deal. At peak summer season on Islesboro, you’ll pay the best part of $100 to get yourself and the kids off island for a dentist visit, never mind a pleasant family excursion. Talk about friction. And please hope that the day you picked months ago isn’t when the ferry is off down the bay to Rockland to fill its water tanks. And we on this island have it easy compared to the others whose ferry trips last an hour or longer.
When you buy groceries in an actual store, cook from scratch, and eat on plates you have to wash, you are friction-maxxing.
When Boomers went back-to-the-land in the 1960s and ‘70s, they essentially friction-maxxed. Those days seems so quaint, now, building simple homes, planting gardens, sewing and knitting clothes, making bread, having babies with the help of midwives. (If enough birthing centers close in Maine, we may find ourselves birthing at home again—maybe even on our islands instead of at some mainland hospital.)
The problem with avoiding friction is that it doesn’t disappear: it merely shifts somewhere else. Let’s use salad as an example. These days, one can pry open a plastic container and dump the green contents into a bowl, add dressing, and eat. No tedious rinsing and spinning, then plucking apart of leaves into bite-sized bits, never mind stepping into a garden in the first place to select a head of lettuce which one has grown, having maxxed the effort by putting seeds into soil, watering and thinning, transplanting, and nurturing along by removing competing weeds and insect pests.
All that growing, harvesting, cleaning, packing, and shipping is performed by other human beings and machines. The growers are increasingly also preparing it for eating, while consumers merely consume as if plants set forth vegetable-filled plastic containers instead of leaves. Farmers and distributors absorb the friction.
Any benefit to a harder way to do things? Personally, I like choosing my favorite varieties of lettuce to grow from the hundreds that are available, sporting different colors, leaf shapes, and textures. Buttercrunch lettuce, for example, is a fabulous combination of tender, silky leaves and crisp, juicy stems. It can be hard to find in the grocery store produce section. Plus, vegetables’ nutritional benefits are at a peak the day they are harvested, instead of having lost many of them during travel across country, or even just a couple states, or mercy help us, from abroad.
I’ll make a trade. I can offer homegrown, same-day harvested, washed, and torn lettuce. In exchange, someone who has avoided their own lettuce friction can follow the trail of a QR code to help me operate a hunk of office equipment I just acquired. Just, please oh please, don’t make me do it myself. It creates too much friction.
Sandy Oliver is a food historian who gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro. She may be contacted at SandyOliver47@gmail.com.
