I've never been one to actually write down my thoughts, partially because I feel as though my composing ability is not up to par. But you know what they say about practice. This past August I started my second year with Americorps and City Year. I'm working for Care Force, a service project guru that works with City Year's major sponsors by planning, prepping, and leading community service projects in neighborhoods across the US where our sponsors have an impact. My first day of work was a trial by fire as I flew out to Redmond, Oregon to work with T-Mobile at a local boys and girls club. The service we do is quite repetative from week to week but the service partners love it. We build benches, create murals (both on walls and on canvases that can be hung on walls), do landscaping, paint basketball courts, 4-squares, hop-scotch, etc. Ultimately not very hard and, I can tell after being on my 4th project, becoming rather boring
There are 7 senior corps members on my team and we've recently divided into two pods so that we can cover more projects throughout the year. Our second project took me to Thorton, Colorado; the third, Chicago, Illinois, and the most recent to Shepherdsville, Kentucky. This blog is not going to be about my work though. I may mention it throughout, but probably only mostly for the places that I'm sent or for specific things that pop up during my service weeks.
I really like my job for several reasons. The first is that I'm serving and once again directly benefitting kids. (On a side note it sucks that I'm not working with kids and only get to work with adult volunteers. I miss the kids.) I really like volunteer style work that isn't about the amound of money you make. I also love being able to travel almost everyweek. I have so many frequent flier accounts... its not funny. Because I'm in so many places though I get the opportunity to reconnect to many of my friends throughout the US. I've made it down to DC once, NYC twice, and Chicago 3 times since moving away from there. I hoping to branch out a little more as the year progresses visiting the Justins and Ryan in Austin, Suzanna, Joe and Val in Atlanta, Robin and Paul in Ypsilanti, James and Stacey in Las Vegas, and whoever I may be able to visit depending on my travel schedule.
As I was flying back from Kentucky today I started thinking about reality. I guess I'm realizing that recently I've just been coasting through my life. I haven't been very happy with my family for several reasons that I'm still going to keep private, but because of this I've been falling further and further out of touch and I'm afraid of the downward spiral this may be leading to. I'm worried about my nephew Bobby. I want to be a part of his life and to influence him as much as I can (partly because I doubt that I will actually ever have kids of my own). I also feel that I can provide him with some insight and experience that is different from Julie's. I'm not trying to imply anything exactly because honestly I don't know how he is being raised. I have created this chasm between Julie and me that I'm not sure I want to bridge. I'm sad that I've even begun to get distant from James. I know we don't talk much and when we do, it seems as though we really have very little to say to each other. He is such an awesome person and one of my role models that I don't want to lose touch and will do my best to make sure that doesn't happen.
I also have come to several conclusions and goals that I need to accomplish before the end of the year. I need to take care of my credit card (welcome to America!!!), get a new driver's license, manage my student loans, set up an IRA, get in better shape, get an eye exam, visit a dentist, take some serious refresher on my german, and figure out what I'm doing next year. I know that I want to go to the camping in the Grand Canyon with Justin this winter, and I'm 2 years into my 5 year plan to get to Africa, so I need to open some doors there as well. I also want to visit S. America within the next 5 years also. I would love to take that last Econometrics course to finish off my Economics degree and buy a digital camera so that I can start taking photos again.
I realize that a lot of these goals are your run-of-the-mill "New Year's Resolution" sort of thing, but seriously I need to do them and can if only I would get off my ass and do something a little more productive with my spare time. I'm glad that I am reading more now that I have time to do so when I'm travelling, but I want to experience more than I want to read. Where does wishing for change and making it happen intersect? I constantly forget about where I want to go and what I want to do, but who doesn't. I need to focus more.
I'm optimistic though about where I'm headed. I'm becoming okay with being alone for a majority of my time. I miss intimacy, but really enjoy my time alone at the same time. Its a weird balance. I don't know how often I'll write here but this was a start. We'll see what becomes of this.
