Three months

I am unsure if I have ever said this before, but people are beautiful. I am so proud of a majority of the people I have choosen to let into my life. They are going out and doing amazing things. And it is really difficult for me to swallow the jealousy building inside of me. It is really hard for me to stay, while everyone else gets to go. I would be lying if I said I did not check the rideshare board on craigslist and thought all but seriously about replying to some of the offers for one way trips to Tronto, Arizona, or Florida multiple times a week. Who am I kidding, I know I have said this before. There is something about winter that ignites wanderlust inside of me and this, combined with the adventures so many are on, is nearly unbearable. Everything is growing too familiar. I find it nessecary to list the reasons why I am staying to myself daily to be sure that I am doing the right thing. I am doing the right thing after all. The biggest reason is to get my head above water, pay off some debt. And its hard for me to comprehend. Its disgusting how hard it is for me to understand. The second largest reason is to finish my medical screening and finacial paperwork and other paperwork. It is a lot. A whole lot. And the final reason Im staying in flint instead of running for the sun is guilt. My family has not seen too much of me over the past four years and it is quite possibly going to be the last chance some of them have. Two years is a long time, twenty seven months is a bit longer. Being in Flint right now is the responsible decision and it is probably the only viable way for me to prepare for service. It is just so difficult for me to convince myself that the end justifys the means, but in this case I have no doubt that in three months I will be on the biggest adventure of my entire life. The weirdest part is that I feel ashamed to tell my coworkers that I graduated from college and that I have had the oppurtunity that so many of them would do anything to get. It hurts so bad to think that some of them may think I am wasting my education. It is just really difficult convincing myself that I am doing the right thing. I am doing the right thing.

Reset your perspective

Meristem

When I was younger and I wanted to know what something tasted like I picked it up and put it in my mouth. And I chewed it, covered it in my saliva. A real experience. Slobbery and disgusting but completely fufilling and extrememly educational. When I needed to moblize I dragged myself around by my arms, rolled, butt scooted like a sort of half crab half octopus missing a couple of limbs, and then one day I figured out crawling was more efficent. Then with effort, wonder, wrecklessness, and very little regard for my own safety or pride I lifted my squishy little prototype human head and grabbed on to the nearest object and I dragged myself to my feet, and I fell over and over and over again. But one day I got on my feet and took some horrible uncoordinated steps. And sure there were people around encouraging me, but it was something I did on my own. My pathetic little baby mind only barely able to understand emotions and words. I knew nothing, new everything, only recently coming into exsitence, everything was new and everything was beautiful and captavating and of these things, the ones I coveted the most were the ones I was denied access to. People told me, "no" and in my little baby mind I thought the equivelant of. "fuck you, I do what I want." I was constantly looking for more growing tired of the things I already had a handle on. Of course this is all speculation because I remember nothing of this amazing highly sensational time. And while I in no way wish to return to a state of such little knowledge and understanding. I want to be able to experience my world as fully as I did then and realize now that I stil know just as little about my world as I did then. Ever since the day I realized I exsisted, whenever that may have been is a whole different debate, I, we all, had a thirst to learn, to experience, to feel and taste and smell and see and hear. Ever since I realized I was, I started to become and develop to learn and grow physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was not who I am now then. I do believe I know more about my world now, but I also believe that the world I have now to know has grown quicker and larger then my knowledge of that world has, yet for some reason my rate of learning and experiencing and sensation has not grown if anything it has diminished. Its like Ive gotten to know enough things now that the urge to pop objects in my mouth that have unfamilar tastes have been tamed, my urge to touch things that glow to see if theyre hot almost nonexsistant. I have not completely lost the wonder and I do make an effort to not lose it. And it is important to me to continue embracing my wonder and curiosity. I was talking to my dad the other day about California and I mentioned how he should visit and he said, "Why, I have no desire to go there." And it was so hard for me to understand. I never want to be so comfortable with anything to not want to try something new. I never want to be the person who can go into a resturant and order, "the regular." I want to pop disgusting things into my mouth so that I can learn theyre disgusting. Learn the correct way to plant a tree by doing it all of the wrong ways first. Close my eyes and jump head first, feet first, run arms flailing, crawl, and limp through life with a fufillment of truely learning, wholey experiencing. Forgiveness rather than permission. The more I learn, the more I know there is so much more yet to learn, experience. When a tree stops growing it dies. I wont stop growing.

Aspiration

A. Three professional attributes that I believe will be indispensable to me during my service in Panama are patience, flexibility, and enthusiasm. Shifting to living and working in a foreign land is sure to bring drastic changes, from adapting to different customs to not hearing my native language. Dealing with the frustration of these changes and frustration with myself is going to take an immense amount of patience. It will also take patience to interact with the local people and push them to make changes relating to my mission of environmental improvement, conservation, and education. Working hand in hand with patience is a good sense of flexibility; it is indisputable that things will not always go according to plan, and I know the best way to deal with this is to change accordingly and from experience I know I am not one to blow up or shut down when something goes wrong. I try to always view things going wrong as a change in direction rather than a failure. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is enthusiasm, for nothing is as successful and rewarding than when it is done enthusiastically. I know that I will be enthusiastic in my position, because I am passionate about the environment and using the education I was so fortunate to obtain to protect the earth and help its people. That enthusiasm I possess will help me to be patient and flexible. Ultimately it will allow me to get things done and get them done well, because it is something that I truly care about and am invested in. B. Working effectively with my partners in Panama is essential and I aim to establish an effective team by maintaining open communication and gaining respect by showing respect. Being upfront and deliberate while interacting with my partners will establish open communication. By following through with correspondences and always being timely and prepared, I will gain respect. Making necessary changes to my current appearance will also prove my respect for Panamanian customs and traditions. These combined strategies will help me develop the productive relationship essential to cooperating with my partners in Panama, by allowing me to be aware of and responsive to the needs of my community and partners and allowing them to do the same for me. C. One of the things I am most looking forward to during Peace Corp service is fully experiencing a new culture. I am excited to embrace the Panamanian lifestyle. I know that adapting to a new culture may be challenging, but I think I can accomplish it by staying open minded and positive when experiencing new things, like food, housing, or even just social norms. Remaining aware of my own culture and sharing it to those who wish to know about it is also important. This will help me compare the new culture I am adapting to with my own. I can maintain this awareness by staying in contact with home and by keeping a journal where I can write about the differences in culture I notice. D. I expect pre service training will be intense and in depth and I am looking forward to all the things I will learn to help me during service. I really hope that more details about my exact duties will be revealed during training. I also expect to learn ways in which to effectively communicate with community leaders and the people I directly work with and improve my Spanish skills to achieve good communication. I am very excited to learn all the details of where I will be living and what I will be doing, and I hope to learn things that will aid me in being successful in adapting to the Panamanian culture and way of life. E. I have no doubts that Peace Corps service will be one of the most life changing experiences I will ever be fortunate enough to experience. I am fresh out of college with a degree in Environmental Science and I believe that using this degree in a place like Panama will teach me exactly what I am truly capable of, in terms of finding strategies to promote community environmental conservation effectively. I ultimately hope to apply my lessons and successes in Panama as they are needed in the Unites States, where there is an overwhelming need for conservation but little public awareness of that need. On a personal level, I hope that through my service I will find new ways to interact with people different then myself. I hope to gain perspective on what it means to not only be a citizen of America but a citizen of the world. I hope that my values rooted in conservation and social involvement continue to grow. I know that after my 27 months in Panama I will be a different person, a better person, and a person more driven and passionate about environmental conservation than ever before.

Retail

I work at Kmart a lot almost as much as I complain about working at Kmart. Almost. And I do not really like it as much as I would like to like it and that is okay. I am working at a job I dislike and I am okay with it. It is temporary. I just need to get these bills out of the way. Im doing it and I do not feel bad about doing it. I do not feel like I am betraying my dreams. It is okay. I am okay with it. And honestly as much as I complain about it, I like that I get to be active and run all over the store carrying boxes. Going up and down the sixteen steps to where the layaways are kept over and over again. I like making my costumers smile, the simplest yet somehow most powerful indication of humanity. I do not mind the irrate and horrible costumers who yell and cuss, because getting those few to smile to be happy for just a second make up for it. And I can honestly say that I have learned a lot in the small amount of time that I have worked there so far. And not about the cash register or how to properly bag a purchase or do a price check. No, I have learned more than I ever imagined about how people live. How people who I do not like to think about live. The people who have to put back the one box of mac n' cheese they brought to the register because their bridge card was empty. The people who put diapers on layaway. Who put toys for their kids on layaway and have to cancel them because they lost their jobs. The man without a home who pays for a loaf of bread whenever he can collect enough change from the cars exiting 1-75 to go to the mall. These people that I have pretended do not struggle as much as they do. The woman who tears open a box and hides it in order to sneak out unnoticed with the pregnacy test that was once inside. These people whose lives are so different from mine while exsisting in the exact same environment. These people with their smiles have taught me what I have known all along, what I am forced to learn over and over and over again. My struggle is another persons stability. My life is beautiful and something to smile about. Their lives are beautiful. Life is beautiful and we must always do whatever possible to let one another know, smile, and give, and help one another whenever possible. And I am okay with working at Kmart, because there are a lot of ways to spend my time until Feburary that are a lot worse.

Flow

A river is simply water moving down a slope as a result of gravity. The environment the water travels through may change dramatically, but the water never stops flowing. The headwaters of a river may look like tiny creeks from melting patches of snow along a ridge and the mouth a vast estuary, hardly resembling its start, yet the river is one. Through the mountains the water flows. Through the forests, the plains the water flows. Through the city, neighborhoods, and countryside the water flows. Over cliffs the water falls, cascades, but never does it cease its flow. The water flows under sheets of ice, around rocks, over logs. The water flows tirelessly carving into the earth leaving its mark in the canyons, the oxbow lakes. We can dam the rivers but the water continues it flow, over our walls, eventually building the force to take the wall down entirely and any amount of stagnancy we were able to fake all comes rushing at once, flowing, beating, moving forward relentlessly. You may stand in a river and in thirty seconds standing in that same water is an impossibility, the water will not cease its flow to linger around you ankles. Time is so much a fluid, so much a river. Flowing. Life is defined by time and fluid in the very same way as minutes and rivers. Life is not defined by huge life altering events, for these are very few. Life is so much a fluid, so much a transition. You graduate from High school, vacation in Italy, land an internship, graduate from college, land a job, get a promotion. Those events add to three weeks, being generous. What did you do for the other 205 weeks? Cease to exist? So much much of our life is spent not being able to wait for (insert awesome thing here). I am currently the worst offender of this, refusing to move fluidly through me life, I had my mind made up to live the next 6 months of my life as though they did not matter. I have already said multiple times that I cannot wait until February. In order to correct this mindset, that is ultimately wasting 6 months of my life, I am pledging to embrace the fluidity of life and take full advantage of the free time I have stumbled into. These next 6 months will be just as meaningful to me as any other moment of my life. After all nobody looks at a river and values it for individual liters of water. We look at a river as a river and when I look at my life it will be as one whole constant stream of experience. Each one fading into the next, a moment never fading before a new one comes into existence. My life has no beginnings no endings. No hellos and no goodbyes. Like a river flowing to the sea, the words in a run on sentence, the minutes in a day, fluid. A river is fluid. Time is fluid, life, existence.

Sentimental

Sure I will have a degree in four weeks but I think the most important things I have learned in college were less than directly related to my coursework. This is a list of what my four years as a wildcat have taught me. 1. I may not be as celebrated or as highly regarded as a wolverine or spartan, and I may tell you I attend NMU, and get, "Why New Mexico?" as a response, but there is a certain quiet pride to the green and gold, to not seeing every other person wearing my school's colors. A wildcat is exclusive, a wildcat is proud, and a wildcat is humble. 2. Expect the unexpected. Just because it is 75 degrees and sunny in December does not mean the winter will be mild, in fact if there is still snow on the ground mid April, the most seasoned yooper will hardly bat an eyelid. 3. It is not conducive to one's mental health to visit Walmart on a Sunday. 4. If somebody cares about you, they will let you know. If somebody does not care about you, it is not worth it to trip over yourself trying to gain their approval. Turn to the person who is letting you know. 5. The sound of waves breaking on the beach, the wind shaking the leaves and needles of every branch in every tree, and the local bluegrass folk reggae fusion band are more beautiful then the top 40 artists headlining at major universities. 6. People in this world are amazing, tell them good morning and give them a smile. A positive attitude and kindness can brighten up the grayest of winter days. 7. Never start drinking when it gets dark outside. Yeah sure, in August it gets dark at 10pm, but in December it gets dark at 4pm. 8. The end will never justify your means. Never suffer doing something you are not passionate about, in order to gain something you think you want. Do what you love and never stop. The means are the end. 9. Don't skip a commitment to lay in bed to mope and don't stay up late every night on the internet. Do skip the occasional "important thing," to check out a new hiking trail or get in a round of cliff jumping and stay up late for that Aurora Borealis, meteor shower, or beach bonfire. 10. When that guy in a suit, that woman in glasses, that older relative, or person somehow in charge of you questions your collegiate/career goals. You look them in the eyes and say, "I respect your opinion, but I got this." 11. Craft beer is worth your money. Always 12. Never say no when you mean yes, always say yes when you don't know.