workity work work. jobbity job job.

I know... I really probably shouldn't be writing this during the middle of the day when I'm clearly supposed to be working. But I need a minute away from the madness of an event week. Fortunately, it's our last event of the season, and then welcome back, weekends! Oh, how neat it will be to have some time back to myself without obligations and craziness. But all that busyness sure has made the year zoom by. I can't believe another school year is almost over. The kiddos have 12.5 class days left, then finals, then poof! they're gone... some just for the summer, others forever.

I guess that set of sentiments is probably the inspiration for my current general state and the blog I'm about to drop on you. I'm so excited that things are going to calm down a little bit, but at the same time, I'm not totally looking forward to the end of the school year. I've been fortunate in my 5 years of higher education employment to have some great students working with or for me, but this year is probably the first where I've felt truly attached to "my kids." While I'm so very appreciative of that little bond, I also understand that with it comes a certain measure of sadness in knowing that they'll move on. My senior is graduating. I'm so so proud of her and happy for her and the life she is planning for herself, but frankly, I'm just going to miss her. When I did my graduate internship, the administrative coordinator in our office said she thought the hardest part of her job would be getting to know and love the students and interns and then having to see them leave. It didn't really occur to me until this moment how true that might be in my life and job now, too.

It's an interesting mix of work that I do... I get to plan fabulous and informative events of all scales, coordinating fun things like promotional materials and logistics and catering and overall event look and feel. That's the glamorous side, I guess, and it's what people think of when they imagine "event planning." But unlike a lot of event coordinators, I also coordinate all the technical stuff - we create websites, build electronic registration forms, manage the database side, and provide numerous detailed statistical reports on attendance and evaluation data from all of our events. We compile multi-year reports of satisfaction scores and yield rates to analyze trends and determine budgets. My immediate work responsibility is both creative and extremely technical at times, requiring a lot of mental energy and detailed efficiency. That might be the work, but it's really not my job as I see it. If I did all of this for a random corporation, I'd probably be making a six-figure salary... or at the very least double my current one. But I've chosen to do this work in a college, which means I don't make six figures, but it does mean that my true job might actually be a little more important. To me, my work helps advance the institution that has hired me to do it... but my job is really to help advance the young people who have chosen to attend college at said institution. And how much more awesome is that than just planning dumb events? (Granted my events are friggin' awesome, but you get the point.) The work we do here actually has the potential to mean something to these students. And in the process of consciously creating a meaningful experience for someone else, I think it's almost impossible not to pick up a little bit of meaning in that for yourself.

I don't think of myself solely as an event coordinator (and now, my work involves doing a bit of that technical stuff for more than just events anyway)... even though my work revolves mostly around coordinating programs to help recruit students and grow our enrollment, my job is really that of an educator. I just don't have a classroom or a chalkboard (though we're considering painting my walls with that chalkboard paint because we tend to do a lot of note-taking in our planning... and how fun would it be to just write on the wall? awesome.) But I digress. The point is that I get to learn as much from "my kids" as I hope they're learning from me.

The greatest educational value I've ever had was probably my graduate internship. They taught me SO much and helped me learn how to deal with all of the crises inherent in working in a college setting. When I left there, I felt like I was equipped to handle pretty much anything that came my way. But I also realize now how much my supervisors and the staff in that office really cared about all of the interns - not just providing a place for us to do some work (interns=cheap labor), but really teaching us how to apply that to everything we do in the future. I appreciate so much the time they spent just listening to me process the new information that was coming at me. As I approach the end of this school year, I can only hope I'm able to provide a safe and fun place like that for my students to learn how to take on the world. It seems like if we create some awesome events and provide a fantastically efficient technical process, and they go on to do great and wonderful things when they leave here, then I've done both my work and my job.

procrastinating sleep.

It's a weird habit I have. When I don't really want to do what the next day entails, I tend to stay up way past the point that I should have gone to bed. Maybe in my mind delaying sleep time, which seems to go by so much faster than awake time, means I'm delaying the things I don't want to do the next day. In reality, it just means that I'm more tired while I'm doing what I don't want to do, and as Captain Crankypants with no sleep, that obviously doesn't do me any good. Oh well. Here I am. Not sleeping.

Last night was my first night in the new house. There was an insane storm that blew down trees and power lines and caught things on fire. Fortunately, nothing fell on my house or car, and nothing in my immediate vicinity was on fire. The Volvo two houses down wasn't so lucky. Smash-o-rama. The whole thing was almost too much for my exhausted-from-moving-for-four-days brain too handle. It's already a little creepy-quiet here for me in general, but sitting here in total darkness due to power outage with all the ruckus happening outside was even worse. Every noise I heard was either an innocent tree branch scraping the house or a big scary man seeking to axe murder me as I stared at the lightning-lit ceiling in my new bedroom... it was hard to decide, really. But obviously I'm typing this, so you know, I guess no one was trying to attack me. Or they didn't win, anyway.

Things are starting to come together here, even if I still feel a little annoyed by the boxes that are in my way. I can see the beginning of a real house, and I can see the end of my-life-in-boxes. It's a weird sensation surveying everything you own contained by a mountain of cardboard and plastic storage bins. Life feels so big and overwhelming sometimes, but seeing it all fit in one room (albeit one with 12 foot ceilings) gives you some perspective. If you can pare it down that much, then surely there's nothing so big or mysterious about it that would render you incapable of dealing with what it throws your way. There's something comforting about that.

The process of getting to know a new place is interesting. Many of the sounds are foreign (see previous axe murderer fear) and the smells are different here, but it already feels more like home, more like "me," than the last place. I feel more like I belong in this space and that it seems welcoming and inviting and interesting. Meanwhile, I'm still getting used to the creaks of original hardwood, the taps of limbs on the windows, and the clangs of all the church bells in the vicinity. I'm sure I'll come to love hearing the trains and feeling the energy of movement as they pass through town a few blocks over. I might even stop minding the frenzied excitement of sirens as the fire trucks leave the station and head over the downtown hills. I didn't think about how different I'd feel inside here in relation to the outside world... somehow this place is more connected yet simultaneously peaceful and relaxing (despite previous axe murderer fear, as referenced not once but twice above.) This change is good. It hasn't always felt that way over the last few weeks, but sitting here in the stillness after midnight, it seems like all is on its way toward rightness and balance... and nothing a good night of sleep can't fix.