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| taking a toll on my body. i feel like bridget jones. my fellow campaign staffers commented on my thighs, hips and belly today. it's that fried chicken! jamaican meat patties, cheese pizza for lunch and dinner, dozens of glazed donuts.
i'm in southeast queens -- st. albans, the "harlem of queens" -- campaigning for the labor union DC 37 to get billy thompson elected as the next mayor. it's been great bonding with the ladies, the african-american retirees who reliably show up every day for eight hours to make phone calls and leaflet. today, a guy came into the office trying to sell us stolen meat out of the back of his truck. he wore an apron and another counted money. they tried to sell us oxtails, pigs' feet and fresh steaks for $4 each instead of $12. we admired the bones, but didn't buy any thanks to miss maylene, one of our ladies who used to work in a butchery shop and could identify the freshness of meat and when and where it was packaged.
"i can't deal with you," she solemnly told the young men. they jumped in the back of the truck and sped away.
we daydreamed aloud about steak till it was time to head home.
it's a rare opportunity for me to spend days and hours steeped in a neighborhood of queens that i would never have known about. a neighborhood where louis armstrong and billie holiday supposedly lived, in the big houses up the block. a 20-minute bus ride from the end of the E train. where gang initiations still occur, men waiting at bus stops with tears tattooed beneath an eye. where it's about the democratic club, the NAACP and the reverend. where everyone recognizes someone on the computerized phone list.
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i feel myself prioritizing career over everything else in my life. it was a pact i made with myself, i'm not quite sure when. i do still see the need for balance, for sanity, for space and the breathing that i value so much.
after the mayoral election, my colleagues and i are hitting the hamptons for a couple of days to recharge and reconnect. it's going to be awesome. cooking meals for each other, grocery shopping, having deep, earth-shattering discussions. i've come to expect that now--to be challenged and to test one other. but to encourage, as well. | | |
| setting up structure when there is none. standing by your work. submitting something you're proud of.
i've been listening to lady gaga on repeat and eating the spiciest som tum (green papaya salad) from chao thai to force myself to stay awake after a night of debauchery (more or less) and read several groundbreaking papers on undocumented students' access to higher education across the united states. i am so impressed by the collective work of this woman to shed light on this incredibly vulnerable population. she quantifies data that is absolutely necessary for city, state and federal law to be passed in order to give thousands of people a chance at a future.
i hope that i can pull together my shiznit to make my very first policy memo happen. i want this to be useful, goddamnit.
in other news, it's been so good to get together with old friends and party like it's 1997. i hate the mta right now because its service changes are taking away hours of my life and depleting my wallet as i try to shlep between elmhurst and civilization.
a few hours of rest, and then back to business. | | |
| I'm working tonight on presenting my Adaptive Challenge tomorrow. This is a challenge that requires a change in people's minds and hearts. Versus a Technical Challenge - something that has a mechanical answer and may just require a phone call to an expert.
Just a glimpse of some of the hard and involved work my colleagues and I are up to lately. I have undergone more change than usual... I moved suddenly to a neighborhood I wasn't planning on moving to. I'm experiencing government work for the first time and figuring out how to serve the people in a large bureaucracy. I am single and unattached for the first time in months. I am enduring the loss of my grandfather. I am uninsured. I have a horrible haircut that I hate that looks nothing, nothing like Heidi Klum's.
The usual sob story, I guess. I am just trying to focus on what the heck it is I want to do with my life. What my purpose is. The adaptive challenge. | | |
| so tough to leave your workplace of three years! emotional roller coaster. the first two weeks of giving notice is all about all the work you have to do and how will you ever do it? how can you put the waking hours of the majority of your life into a microsoft word document? i had to choose between step-by-excruciating-step or teaching the whys and hows and the meanings behind the seemingly mechanical tasks. there is a method to my madness.
everyone at work threw me a party today with wine, cheese, a marshmallow fluff cake and a MEMORY BOARD! it felt like the bat mitzvah i never had. i felt 13 years old. it was wonderful. i got such wonderful cards and messages with houses and fortune cookies on them, a digital voice recorder for my future at CNN, and an ann taylor loft gift card for all the new work clothes i will need. so this last week the emotion finally hit me and i was really sad. i don't know - i hope i am not leaving a huge mess for my willing replacement. keep your head up! stay above water!
oh there is so much more to life but i cannot comprehend right now. i met up with my new roommates tonight and they were pretty cool. i can tell that i'm going to learn a lot from them. obama organizers! we figured out our rooms and went to a rooftop barbecue in the lower east side. ate delicious turkey burger, ate grilled corn slathered with i can't believe it's not butter, drank oj and called it a night. speeding over the williamsburg in an suv taxi. and last night, we raised so much awareness at southpaw and listened to fun brooklyn bands. rocking out. i am going to miss my freewheeling nights.
change! thank goodness i still have my darling apartment to come home to. not for long, but for now. | | |
| Tonight I watched Julie & Julia with my good friend Sarah. I thoroughly savored it. Yes, Meryl Streep blew Amy Adams away, as everyone predicted. But Amy Adams was cute with her checkered Vans and disheveled hair in her Long Island City apartment. That's me! Just kidding.
I loved the movie because it awakened that deadened feeling that we all have sometimes when we are not doing what we love. I am not saying that I don't enjoy my work, or looking forward to the year ahead of me, where I live and who I spend time with. I do. But we are meant for more. Whether that is cooking through Julia Child's cookbook, or blogging, making jewelry, writing, whatever that is - there is a massive project that awaits our undertaking of it.
My mother just called me and my neighbor is asking me to eat cookies so I will come back shortly. | | |
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