Truly, Madly, Deeply

I have had an eventful past couple of weeks. The Phillies winning the world series, the parade, this rocking halloween party where I got to meet some new peeps, work work work work work everday, the election, new boss, blah!

Last night I hung out with some friends and watched the showdown of the election. Then we ran out into the streets into the thrungs of celebrating, drum beating West Philadelphians and celebrated the beginning of what will hopefully be a more optimistic and hopeful future for us all. Hopefully.

I have a dip in energy as the result of many things. And of course my emotions are on some sort of rollercoaster today. I'm keeping myself away from emo like music and reports on poverty and have instead overstuffed on chocolate and twangy country songs. I have to take a comp day because I worked on Sunday but I always find it hard to take time off cause there is so much to be done. I'm just a ball of hormones.

Last night I got a box from home and I was so excited as I was opening it up. Mom sent pictures which I was more excited about than the actual abundance of warm clothes and jackets. I now have this picture me and a few of my friends took at school last year. It makes me smile, and I can't think of a more wonderful gift than that.

Work on both ends has been busy. It's funny to me to see the stark differences in personality in my volunteers. It's something I've never realized before when working with people or maybe just not this acutely. I just see these patterns yet am still consistently amazed. The weird thing is that I just see it with my volunteers and not so acutely with other people. I don't want to peg them so easily but there definitely consistent patterns in how they interact with information, the people around them and how they perform in general. I also see the patterns in the needs of our office so I'm starting to feel more confident about how and where to place our volunteers to maximize their impact. I also care about them deeply and want to see them grow and reach their goals. This is the heaviest burden. I've had to learn what I can and cannot do in their movement forward. You can't be everything to everyone but at least be something to someone.

We have had an increase in clients. I hope that our clients leave our office with lives more enhanced then the ones they entered with. I've developed that focus almost like a flash of insight. Connecting people with information and resources that move their life in a more beneficial direction excites me.

I almost don't want to have too high expectations or goals. The feeling of falling short or even the thought of it is highly debilitating to me. But I was struck by something last night. Not the first time this has happened to me either. As much as I was excited last night I realized that were was a distinct difference in the energy and enthusiasm displayed by the people around me. I was only minimally engaged. I didn't have the thrill and rush of victory that others who had put in personal contributions, energy and dedication and who had wanted this, really wanted it. I envied them because they felt something I wasn't able to feel, accomplishment.

I did think it was interesting that Obama didn't really win a landslide victory in terms of popular votes. It was really almost 50/50 everywhere. And considering that Obama did a lot more campaigning and such, it will just all be an interesting turn out of events these next few years.

Okay, so I'll see you. Trugging through this day. I work almost every night this week but fortunately it has been slow. There are couple of managers training this week at our store and I really love one of them. I hate goodbyes more than anything. ever.

Quote: Failure's hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever. Po Bronson.