I'm now chair of the membership committee for EPIP-DC! I have some cunning plans (mostly digging around in the data on our current members, constructing some helpful reports in their Salesforce org, and maybe doing some prospective-member research with the steering committee chair later on) but I need to get less nervous about actually meeting with new members or prospective members and talking about the organization. I will shadow one such meeting and get a sense for what other people do before I try to represent EPIP-DC by myself.
I also had my second meet-up with a girl I met at the Peer Mentoring EPIP event- we've been having some great conversations about international development, professional growth, and philanthropy, and today we talked about dating experiences, so maybe I will make a new friend! She invited me to hang out at one of DC's public pools, so I might do that this weekend. I also need to follow up with my fellow database fan/Hairpinner from the clothing swap... or actually go to a Hairpinner book club meeting.
I have had lots of exciting travel adventures (San Francisco to staff a work event! New Orleans for the EPIP conference! Poconos with Michael, Celia, and Skanda!) and because we stopped at my mom's house on the way to the Poconos I also got to see high school Michael, which was awesome. I think he and my Michael got along, which is good. They have techy things, a tendency to plot world domination, and being amused at me in common, which is quite enough to be going on with. And we visited Laura, but she was working so I did not get to spend much time with her. :( Oh, and I talked with Emily for 7 minutes or so, which was a start but also insufficient.
(Now I am looking at my livejournal tags, which include such mysterious gems as: being tied to a bear, eldrich horror, juvenile delinquency, misinformation and lies, modern peonage, my life of crime, not a jelly slug after all, sucks like a muffin, taking things personally, the kitchen bug war, and wolf full of snakes.)
And now I think I have procrastinated enough on unpacking and other things I'm supposed to be doing.
Had a really busy day today. I spend the workday checking in with people about my projects and teaching coworkers how to do a bunch of administrative/data-gathering tasks (which I actually find pretty energizing, especially when people say that it was helpful!), and we had a sendoff for a coworker who is leaving us to become a department director at the Urban Libraries Council (which I did most of the planning for).
After work, I did happy hour with someone I'd met at an EPIP (Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy) peer mentorship event- we'd bonded over a shared interest in international development and I had passed along the 2Seeds Swahili language tutorial for a friend of hers. We ended up talking about what kind of skills we had now, what we might need to move forward and why we went to the colleges we did.
We also talked a lot about international development theory and practice. It was nice to get a chance to sort of talk out my thoughts- Ellie and I both think that real development has to be driven and owned by the people it concerns. I feel like I've grown a lot since starting at the Campaign, and one of the key things I've been thinking about is ownership- how owning a project or a process or a system kind of forces you to grow and develop as a leader.
I don't know what creates a sense of ownership- maybe it's different for everyone- but I know for me it helps to feel like the thing is a manageable size, that I know it well (or if I don't know it well, I know where to look for more info), that it gives me some benefit to be involved with it, and to know that I have some authority over what happens with it. I feel like I own the Campaign's database- it's a big job but I know what it entails, I know enough about it to help others use it, I can defend its usefulness, and when people need to make decisions involving it they solicit my opinion (or they don't, but I feel comfortable giving it anyway.)
And the database didn't start out as mine- it started out as something I was invited to help out with, and it became mine unofficially when the person who owned it before left, and officially when I joined the staff as the database manager. That gradual transition was important to my success, especially since I wasn't part of the original creation process. I think there are ways to co-create a development project and it's important to do that as much as possible, but if you can't fully co-create something at the start, you'll have to work really hard to bring people in as co-owners afterwards, or you've seriously fucked up and your project will be useless at best or actively destructive at worst.
Bleh. I have more thoughts but they're all tangled together and I don't know how to rearticulate them.
I caught all of the first two seasons and part of the 3rd before I stopped having access to it as it aired (ah, my halcyon sheet-ironing days in the Washington Room), but an early episode of season 3 really stayed with me. I recently watched it again and had Many Feelings about it.
In "Too Many Pinkie Pies", sociable and easily-bored Pinkie Pie is unable to choose between multiple conflicting friend events and clones herself so she can be everywhere at once. Slapstick hilarity ensues, except for where the original Pinkie Pie becomes depressed and withdrawn because she isn't sure if she's her authentic self, or if she's one of the clones with short attention spans. She comes up with a solution for how to tell herself apart, though. It's a watching-paint-dry contest, with losers getting "sent home" to the clone pool. In the end, the real Pinkie Pie prevails. As the episode ends, her friends all invite her to different events- and she tells them she'll catch up with them later, she's tired and wants to take a nap!
As someone who identifies really strongly with Pinkie Pie and her problems, I want to pin this episode to my wall and refer to the lesson at the end whenever I'm feeling torn between five different fun activities, or get caught up in something and forget to sleep or eat. I read a bunch of blog posts about this episode to see if anyone else was feeling it from the same angle I was, but while there were a lot of good observations and one or two interesting conclusions, I didn't see anyone making it personal (which I think you need to, to understand why this episode is emotionally powerful.)
One person suggested that Pinkie didn't learn the episode's lesson of how to make reasoned decisions because she goes home for a nap at the end instead of picking one of her friends' activities. I think that's missing a nuance; Pinkie's choice to opt-out of friend activities for once and do something by herself and for herself was actually a huge breakthrough. The lesson isn't "how to make reasoned decisions", it's how to prioritize choices without feeling guilty or anxious.
Pinkie Pie had hilariously massive FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out): she literally cloned herself so she never had to prioritize one friend or activity over any other. This is obviously unsustainable and identity-effacing: the distracted and uninformed Pinky clones are a pretty good visual metaphor for 'being spread too thin', and it's hard to ground yourself or define yourself if you're always outwardly focused. That's why she was depressed and uncertain that she was "the real Pinkie".
But she came up with an elegant solution for finding herself again, which was forcing herself to focus on a goal that's in line with her most deeply held values. If she could soldier on through an unpleasant task, then she'd solidify her identity and also be able to be with her friends in the future. That's not decision-making, that's prioritizing. She watched paint dry in the present so she could have fun with her friends again in the future.
At the end of the episode, she judges which of the options explicitly presented (and not explicitly presented, but nevertheless implied- at one point in the episode, high-energy Rainbow Dash mentions just wanting to relax after working hard) is most in keeping with her goal of having fun with her friends. If she's tired when she hangs out with her friends, she's not going to be having as much fun as when she's hanging out with them fully rested. She prioritizes herself at that moment, so she can prioritize all of her friends in the future.
This episode was for all the FOMO-dogged people like me, who need to practice introspection and focus on what's most important to us before we overcommit ourselves.
I have to take a day off sometime this week b/c I worked all day Sunday (who holds an all-day meeting for tons of out-of-town attendees on a Sunday? apparently my employer) and I probably can't do it Thursday or Friday because I've got some calls then, so when I woke up this morning and felt like going back to sleep I decided today would be my day off. I slept all morning and now I've just been hanging out in bed, watching Buffy and trying not to think about work. It's sort of hard to take a vacation when you normally work from home, and you are still at home and not in some other place. :/
I should do my laundry and get more boxes from Annebeth's and make quiche, but it's raining and I don't feel like leaving my bed.
Now that I know where and when I'm moving, I've started to consolidate the things in my room and gather my stuff from throughout the apartment. I'm not moving till May 10-11, so I plan to throw out and organize stuff before shoving it into boxes.
I've separated out all the clothes I don't wear, gone through and organized my paperwork, and finally hung up and put away all my clean clothes. Next I'm going to tackle my health stuff (vitamins, hand lotion, cold meds, etc), my random electronics, and my craft supplies.
I kind of want to do it now, while I'm on a roll, but I'm also tired, and I have work tomorrow. (You would think I'd have flexibility, working from home, but everyone I work closely with is up and working by ~8:30 am, so I have to do it too. Also, if I started my morning work whenever I felt like it, I'd lose all discipline and structure.)
I've been doing data entry/database searching of one type or another all week (and for most of last week) and I'd been having cravings for more narrative things to listen to. Sometimes I put on a musical or Disney movie in the background, as a sort of compromise between music and narrative, but I really wanted a narrative today. I thought about starting the History of Rome podcast, but then I wondered if maybe I could find free audiobooks of Harry Potter or something. So I searched for "Harry Potter podcast" and one of the first things to come up was "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". I'd always sort of meant to read that fic, and here was a perfect opportunity, so I started listening.
It is pretty amusing. Harry hovers close to the line between irritating and entertaining, but so far he's mostly stayed on the entertaining side.
Although I am also happy to be home again, however briefly. I had an acceptable level of work to do today (as opposed to having almost nothing or having five million things) and my life is seriously exploding with new and old relationships of all descriptions right now. I feel really connected to my Annapolis community- the favors I owe some former bosses are going to get called in mid-August, which actually makes me happy that I can give back- and seeing 2Seeds people again was great, and talking to family and friends these past few days to tell them the news about me and Michael was really nice... I just have so much going on right now! Eventually it will all overtake me and I will have to go sleep for a few days, but whatever, I will enjoy my improbably high energy levels while I have them.
Goals for the rest of today: work out logistics for happy hour tomorrow, write cover letter, go to potluck if I have time, chat with Michael briefly, sleep forever.
Oy. Worked for 7 1/2 hours today- at Reynolds, which means standing/running around a lot. I'm kind of beat. I was test-running the hostess position for outdoor pub seating to figure out what should be on the job description, which is kind of a cool job in theory, but in practice means being a hostess without actually having been a hostess before, and in an area of the restaurant I'd never had occasion to get to know. >_< I did fine- it's all pretty intuitive and I'd typed and printed out signs with all the relevant rules in the past couple days, so I always knew how to answer people's questions- but I hate the occasional "hey I need x food item five seconds ago, can you fetch/prepare it for me?" requests I got hostessing because they're so prone to being fucked up due to inadequate information or someone making a bad call, and if I fuck it up and bring it out, the customer gets mad at me. It's the triple threat of being punished for something not my fault, having someone mad at me, and feeling like I fucked it up for someone else. That sort of thing happens much less when I'm busing in the restaurant- I do a decent amount of foodrunning then, but usually there's a manager there to mediate the request with more information/proper technique.
Bleeeegh. And then I stopped by the Reality party on the way home and it made me sad, as the Reality party on Saturday always does.
cheerful
thoughtful
giddy
blah