Today is going to be a good day...

I try to be a really positive person. It's a goal I set for myself every morning when I get out of bed. It's something I have struggled to remind myself of recently as I take the below 10 degree commute to work, as the CTA threatens to make me late and as I approach each day with no real clue of what is going to come my way. But I learned something crucial during high school something I have internalized and it happened in a quick moment. The person who told the story probably had no idea the impact it would have on me. Even more amazing the person who the story is about is someone I never met and never will.

In high school I wasn't a very positive person. I mean I pretended to be, but internally I pulled the why me card a lot. That type of stuff brings you down. But life has its ways of putting you on the right path. I went on a Kiaros retreat in November of my senior year, it was without a doubt one of the most pivotal moments of those 4 years. We were sitting in a small group, in my mind it was very late. We were sharing stories and one guy talked about his grandpa. A man that claimed he never had a bad day in his life. Why? Because he woke up every morning and told himself that today was going to be a good day. And he went to bed thinking about how he accomplished this goal. That hit home with me, why I do not know, but I went on with the intent to live my life in that way. In a way that was really meaningful to me and allowed me to have countless positive experiences.

I really focused on those words, it was a real eye opener. Who was I to be so unhappy? It really wasn't that bad and every day actually brought me constant miracles that I had failed to notice because I had been too wrapped up in the little things. So I made every day just that, a good day. It's hard to do sometimes and some people might question how you can go through life failing to notice all the negatives and all the terrible things going on around the world. Trust me I'm not blind, I know it's rough out there, I mean I do work for a social service agency, but that is no reason that I can not bring a positive energy to everything that happens and be a positive force in the world. Hopefully, directly or indirectly encouraging others to do the same.

I attribute this revelation to the strong ending I had in high school and the beyond amazing 4 years I had at Miami. I vowed to make every day count, I vowed to live in the moment and at the end of the day, at the end of whatever dark tunnel I walked through, I would close my day thinking of how blessed I was, how much I had to be thankful for and to look forward to. Try bringing this positive energy into every situation, it's amazing how much you can accomplish.

So all of that is great. But I have come to see over this past month how completely I have failed at this lately. I wake up in the morning and honestly say to myself that I do not want to go to work today. That this sucks. Really? Where do I get off? When I have my dream job? How did I get to this point of so much self pity? If you read my last blog post you can see where I put myself emotionally, mentally and spiritually recently was not a good place.

This weekend I was with a bunch of close friends. Some one made a half serious complaint and a friend sarcastically replied "Oh your life is so hard." That's it. It's not so hard. If I only took a second to think about it I would realize once again how great I have it. So why do I complain? What happened to my positivity?

So I woke up this morning. It was early yes, but I told myself it was going to be a good day. And you know what? Sitting here at the close of my day, I can honestly say it was. Was everything perfect? No. But in the big picture I have it pretty good and I'm going to use that realization to hopefully project my positivity onto as many people as possible. All it took was me taking a moment to step back, to stay positive. Learn from each moment and move forward. It was a long day yes, but in the end I know this will move me to where I want to be.

So I need to remind myself: When I get up tomorrow or the next day, to commit myself to having a good day. I hope you will join me.

It all comes back to self-care

Self-care. That concept was introduced to me in July as something that was essential to my survival in this upcoming year as an AmeriCorp Volunteer. I brushed it off, how hard could it be to watch out for myself. And here I find myself 6 months later, one fourth of the way through my two years, and I'm more emotionally drained than I have ever been in my life. I have not been watching out for myself  and here I find myself close to burn out, but I have learned a lot.

It's really stupid too. I don't have lunch scheduled in my day, we eat as we find time and yes that means some days I don't eat at all. I know it's not healthy. I don't remove myself for some sacred time to focus on my work and I do not take advantage of comp time as much as I should. I learned this beats me up. I woke up one morning and found myself worn out and unhappy because of it. I feel really stuck in a rut and I do not know what to do about it in the least.

My job has provided an overall strain on my day to day life and I know it should not be this way. I come home and have no desire to do anything when I want to accomplish so much. I think part of it might be the weather, having the day end before I even leave the office, it's not the best feeling that for the entire time the sun is out during the day I am sitting inside an office. Yes the work is worthwhile, but that thought is mildly depressing. I know that other part of it is that I am not watching out for myself and taking care of myself. But to be honest I am stuck and I have not had enough time to slow down and figure out why, yet I know I need to do so.

I have a two week break coming up in a week that I am really looking forward to so I can reflect on everything going on in my life. I feel stuck and don't know what to do. My work is meant to bring me daily fulfillment, that's what service is all about but it more exhausting than I ever thought possible. I come so close to snapping on my clients on a daily basis and it's all because I am a point where I do not know how to turn things around.

I have never been in a more emotionally drained point in my life than I have ever thought possible. A friend once told me that sometimes we focus so much on helping others that we do not pause to help ourselves. It all comes back to self-care, something I am learning more and more everyday I am not well prepared to address until I drive myself to the point of burn out.

It's time to make a change at this point in my life to focus more on how I can watch out for myself. This is my next goal. Taking time to help myself so I can successfully help others.

Realizing all you have accomplished!

It is the end of a crazy week and I feel empowered at what we have accomplished and done in such a short time. I had several amazing client meetings today that I really needed to round this week out and even placed one family on a subsidized housing wait-list that was one 10 people long with 12 units opening up in a month. For those of you that have never dealt with subsidized housing before, this is a huge win (wait-lists are typically in the 2-3 year range and are several hundred people deep). I really needed that.

To sum up my week I'm just going to post an e-mail I sent to our Summer Fellows and Interns:
"I know it was a busy week, but we made it through. We are so appreciative of all the hard work put in this week!

I just pulled the CORI Report for this week and with an hour left to go in Friday; we assisted 82 unique clients this week in some form or another, applied for about 40 jobs, worked on 16 resumes, made 75 calls helping clients find housing, refereed to 11 housing programs, got two clients on housing wait lists along with countless other services and hours of support! With only 7 of us in the office during the week those are extremely impressive numbers and a huge impact to be making in the community! The number of thank yous and smiling clients I have seen leaving the office after working with each you really shows how all the hard work is making a difference." 

It has been a crazy week to say the least and I predict many more to come in the future, but taking the time to look back and reflect on what has been accomplished is often all you need to move forward. Service is definitely challenging work, but in the long run the rewards pay off in huge dividends! 

It's realizing you can't help everyone...

I work for a small non-profit (though I still think we have a big impact), thus we are constrained by the number of workstations we have to how many volunteers are there any given hour. Thus, we can at max see 5 clients an hour. But stuff comes up, volunteers are working on other projects, walk ins show up, clients come in early. Stuff gets crazy. Manning the front desk this week was particularly hard for that reason. We knew going into this week would be rough and it was. There were so many walk-ins who needed help now and could not go on unless they received it. "I'm sorry we just can't see you now. Can you make an appointment for late next week?" became words I came to despise.

I think one of the hardest realizations to make going into this whole service experience is that you really can't help everyone who walks through the door. The internal optimist in me wishes that wasn't the case, but the organization would overload and not go anywhere if we were always in client meetings - there is the other-side to the non-profit. And yes I cave (maybe more than I should) and stop what I am doing to help someone for 20 minutes or find a way to squeeze them in, it's hard not to do so. However, there was one client that came in looking for a walk in and it was too much to handle, we really couldn't see them. I had to leave the room to "see what I could do" and collect myself the whole situation pushed me over the edge a bit. But I had to face reality, we really could not see the client at that moment and I had to turn them away. All in all it was too much for me to handle at that moment and the reality of it still hasn't really sunk in.

Thankfully, Thursday I got to step out of the office environment and attend a community partnership day at Loyola. I was on my own for the first time and representing my organizations to all these other groups. I was nervous but it was a great learning experience (and chance to practice my LIFT pitch countless times!) and I connected to countless other community partners. Props for that much needed break!

Finding time to take a breath

I have to admit, finding time to take a breath has proved to be a difficult task to accomplish these last two weeks and this has caused a delay in me posting anything at all, something I promised myself would not happen when I started this. Getting ready for training institute, traveling to training for a week, having friends visit, visiting friends, moving, figuring out my job...I guess it all has kept me a lot busier than I realized and yet I feel refreshed, recharged and ready to go. So it was a good type of busy, the kind I intentionally create for myself to stay sane.

LIFT training institute was just what I needed in this AmeriCorp journey. The chance to connect with the other Site Coordinators and know that there are people out there going through the exact same journey, who are just as lost as me some days and willing to help each other out along the way. I was inspired as I watched my LIFT network grow and come to realize I can do this and I can make a difference, not matter how small it may be some days, weeks or months. I felt a renewed sense of responsibility from the national organization and overall think it is kind of awesome that I can be an innovative force in the fight against poverty. Hence, coming into this week, I feel a little bit better about everything, though I will admit still very overwhelmed.

That's a quick update for now. More to come later today/early tomorrow as I take a few moments to myself to breathe.

This is all a bit overwhelming

The exciting and somewhat terrifying part about AmeriCorps, outside of trying to get by on a really small budget, is the turnover in the positions. Thus, you're trained fast and the learning curve is intentionally steep. I'm lucky in the fact that I'll most likely be at this for two years and that I do have someone who has already been there for a year working with me for the next twelve months, but even then our workplans are kind of completely different, so I'm still on my own for a lot of it.

As a Site Coordinator (SC) the position is kind of really independent and self-lead compared to the bulk of the other positions for which I applied. Thus the Chicago Executive Director is these more so as an adviser to the SCs, he's a great support system, but for the small day to day operations and running the site we call the shots. Scary for someone who has only been at this for two weeks and already I'm expected to be somewhat of an expert. Sometimes it takes a lot of deep breathes to keep it all together and keep from panicking. A lot of telling myself "you can do this." I'm primarily in charge of volunteer engagement and I'm already completely freaked out about recruitment in the fall. Don't get me wrong, I am so psyched that I get to keep working with college students and actively contribute to the fight against poverty, but I have never done this before and I really only have myself to follow. Though I do those 40 or so Loyola students who are giving so selflessly of their time will give me the motivation to figure it all out.

I love the work I am doing and it is awesome to get to engage in direct service, work with clients and get up every morning knowing I am making a difference. However, it was not until this week that the full weight of everything has hit me. These are real people I am working with the problem is no longer a distant issue, I'm not just looking at statistics in a classroom or reading the news and wondering why Congress is so slow to act. For example, the job benefits extension bill sitting in the Senate takes on a whole new meaning, when in two weeks I am met countless people whose life directly rest on the decision of a couple hundred politicians in some distant city. Their struggles are mine and I feel so fortunate that I get the chance to understand poverty on a whole new level, an eye opening experience that I think can only allow me to better make a difference in the world.

It's both scary for me and inspiring that these people put their full trust in me to secure them and their five children housing, to find employment so they don't get evicted from their own or to guide them through applying for food stamps so they can eat everyday. What is most shocking to me? Several of our clients have their bachelors or masters degrees and are struggling with homelessness or have worked for years but are now "unemployable." They've been fighting to get out poverty for months or years, it makes you think there has to be a better way to do this. I've always thought I really knew all I did about these issues, I had no idea.

I've never done any of this before, but I guess that's the point of this type of service.I am learning more than I ever thought possible in such a short amount of time and experiencing real world problems that make me both value and love the eduction and lessons I learned through my International Studies and Geography courses. I am in someway both applying and gaining a deeper understanding of education, I guess it did all pay off in the end.

Sorry for rambling a bit through this post, I had a lot in my head at the end of today, but I am excited to see what tomorrow will bring. Everyday is different and unique and so far I love what I am doing.

Poverty is complicated...getting out of it shouldn't have to be...

Here we go

So here we are. I'm not new to the blogging world, though this is my first time going at it alone and this time around I felt a new space was needed for a new approach. Don't worry I am not abandoning my efforts over at apt212, I'm just branching out into a new place to diversify my thoughts.

My life has been a whirlwind lately and I have thought often about blogging about my new experiences, but needed sometime to put my thoughts in order. Graduating college, returning to Chicago jobless, finding a job, moving out, starting a new chapter of my life. It has been a crazy two months.

I had been a little up in the air, as with all things in my life, about what I wanted to do after college. I was sure I did not want to go to grad school right away, I did not want to enter the corporate world and I knew I wanted to give back to the world. So I applied and applied and applied and then I came across the perfect experience. I applied, I interviewed and I got it! So on Tuesday, July 6th, I embarked on two years of Service as an AmeriCorps*National Direct Corps member serving LIFT as a Site Coordinator in the Uptown office in Chicago, IL.

A few people asked me if I was going to blog about my experience and I had thought about it, but that was the push I needed. I feel like this is going to life changing and thus I want to chronicle my experience and I want to share it all with you. My friends and colleagues from Miami University, the people I have met along the way and those who happen to stumble upon this.

I am still not sure what I want to do with my life, but I hope these two years will help solidify where I want to go next. Thus this blog comes with the tag line "Finding my inspiration"" and I believe I will find it at LIFT whether through my own work, the volunteers I work with or the clients I serve. Additionally, I am a huge believer in getting your hands dirty and facing global challenges, instead of just talking about how terrible things may be. I spent a lot of time discussing solutions in classes without every getting to get out there and experience. It's time for me to put my words into action. Therefore, you get the title of this blog, in addition to it being a line from my favorite song.

I hope you will follow along the next two years as I enter my post college life and embark what will sure to be an exciting term of service. I will do my best to entertain you along the way.

Peace out!